One of our club waters which is about 12 acres in sise ,
have had a crayfish problem for quite a few years .
There use to be great fishing in june with big sedge skating across
the surface not no more .
The water is open all year stocked with rainbows and small browns
which grow on to double figures.
We have licence for the water of the council who have just told
us to stop stocking as they intend poisoning the water killing every thing
water will be closed for 6 months.
,
There is a team of cray fish experts coming down from the north of england
this month to see if it is feesable to do this.
As a club we are greatfull for help with the crayfish but to kill every thing,they reckon its to big to electro the fish to remove them.
The council didnt realise how much we spend on stocking each year.
Have any club had cray fish eradicated in this way before or are we the first
to try this method, if it goes ahead?

cLAW

I have read somewhere that they use traps on some of the chalk streams with quite a bit of success, to kill everything in the water seems a bit drastic.

Where abouts are you situated? Something like this should have been done on a pond near my river years ago.

Is this a Stillwater or river situation?

I have fished several times at Hazelcopse fishery in Surrey/Sussex where they have large numbers of the crayfish. It doesnt seem to affect teh fishery in anyway an the owner allows people to catch them in Summer too.

apparently, a bit of butter and garlic and you are A for Away


SKB

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How about 20 of these with a bit of road kill in each.

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Crayfish-Prawn...3A1|240%3A1318

bit of rope and a float to each, and sell the crays! big money to be had.

help here;

http://www.efishbusiness.co.uk/forms...needtoknow.pdf

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I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,9 bean rows will I have there and a hive for the honey bee.

I may well be wrong here, but i think it's actually illegal to remove signal crayfish from the water to eat/sell them. particularly if they are removed from the site alive. It's daft and i've eaten tons of the things, but i seem to remember seeing something saying it wasn't allowed.

As for this fishery's problem, i trust you are to be compensated by the EA for your lost fish? Not the solution with those lovely browns i know, but at least it'll sweeten it a bit?

Some of the posts here summarise how blinkered anglers are to the long term wellbeing of the environment and its native indigenous fauna.

I am not sure about blinkered but there is a lack of understanding just how devastating Signal crayfish in a river with Whiteclaw (native) crayfish can be.

Your knowledge of these things is far greater than my mine so feel free to add.

The Signal crayfish was introduced to this country from America as a business/food producing initiative about 30 odd years ago. Thy ere introduced to still water ponds, under licence of the Rivers Authorities (now EA) and they then either escaped or were cynically stocked into other water courses.

They are far bigger than the natives, out competing and (i think) killing the natives and they carry a disease, "Crayfish Plague", which kills all the native crayfish, which are rare and highly protected.

Signals are far more destructive in general terms that the smaller natives and consequently have a deleterious effect on our environment, whereas he natives are in harmony with it and are an important link in the maintenance of our rivers and lakes.

Warren is trying desperately to protect the native crayfish on his rivers from the march of the Signals and the plague they carry so he feels very strongly about these things.

I hope he might give us all some further insight into why the native crayfish is so important to our rivers.

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"The sun was so delightfully warm, and the stone, which had been sitting in it for a long time, was so warm, too, that Pooh had almost decided to go on being Pooh in the middle of the stream for the rest of the morning."

www.monnow.org

removed as duplicate.

Do they? most are saying that crays (and i presume they mean signals) are detrimental to our native fauna and should be removed? which in particular are you singling out?