>>2527215You probably won’t catch any. In Louisiana, they burrow into the mud in winter and emerge during the spring, aka crawfish season.
The best way to catch them recreationally is with square crawfish nets. You bait them with trash food (cow spleen/melt, turkey necks, whatever’s cheap), and lay them maybe 20ft apart. If you’re laying them from the shore or side of a road it helps to have a 10’ length of 3/4 pvc to place and retrieve the nets, as ideal spots are rarely easily accessible.
Before cooking, most conditions require crawfish to be purged. Since they live in mud, their digestive tracks will be pretty nasty, and all of the contents will be emptied into your boil. There are two ways to purge; let them soak in clean water for a long time (which I’ve never done), or dose them in a lot of salt right before cooking (which I and everyone else does). You use a full 26oz canister of salt of salt per sack of crawfish (a sack is 30-35lbs). I know the crawfish they catch in the PNW don’t need as much purging, as they live in more Sandy conditions. It really is a matter of environment.
If you boil them in plain water and season them afterward you should just kill yourself right now. Get online and buy some Zatarain’s seafood boil or other equivalent.
