Success in hunting for crayfish depends primarily on the correctly chosen season and on how much interest the cancer shows in the bait offered to it. The bait should have a strong aroma and either match the diet of crayfish, or serve as a kind of delicacy for them.
Success in catching crayfish depends on many factors: crayfish design, seasonal factors, time of day, but the most important element will be the attractiveness of the bait. Despite the fact that crayfish are considered orderlies of reservoirs and are able to cleanse them of carrion, baits made from stale products work rather poorly, contrary to the popular belief that crayfish prefer rotten meat and fish in their diet.
Fish bait
In order to attract the crayfish to the trap, a bait with a strong smell is needed. However, stale meat and fish can only attract very hungry crayfish that live in reservoirs that are not distinguished by the richness of flora and fauna. In addition, the seasonal factor has a significant effect on the success of fishing: in the autumn months and at the beginning of winter, when crustaceans accumulate reserves for the winter and begin to hatch eggs, fresh fish, frogs, shellfish, and meat products will be the best bait.
The best bait for crayfish is considered to be roach, bream, crucian carp, gobies, silver bream. Cancer eats perch, catfish and pike reluctantly, only in case of emergency. The most optimal bait will be fresh fish, cut along the back and turned inside out - such a bait has a strong smell, which is good for crayfish. For the same purpose - to give the bait the strongest smell, you can thoroughly clean the fish from scales or drip a little fish oil into the cuts on the carcass. No less effective bait can be purchased frozen fish: capelin, hake, pollock, etc.
Garlic bait
In summer, rye bread with garlic is considered the best and very easy to make bait. To make such a bait, you can skip a loaf of black bread along with garlic through a meat grinder and roll small balls from the resulting mass, which are placed in a trap. If there is no time and desire to mess around with a meat grinder, then it is enough just to knead the garlic well in a device for grinding it and mix it with bread crumb. In order to prevent bread sagging in water from spreading and being pulled apart by crayfish, bread balls are placed in small gauze bags.
You can also use dry garlic, which is stuffed with slices of bread and rubbed with the crusts of bread slices to increase the intensity of the smell. Sometimes a few sprigs of dill are added to bread with garlic. A couple of centuries ago, crayfish were even caught on pieces of brick, which were preheated and rubbed with garlic cloves.
