Bill Kiene semi-retired
07-15-2012, 09:14 PM
About 30 years ago a neighbor and good friend Dino Moreno had the idea to get into commercial crayfishing in the Sacramento River.
I believe in Sweden they really loved crayfish and had had a disease which killed all theirs.
http://www.skandland.com/crayfish.htm
At this time people in the US where commercially catching them with a series of big baited traps in the Sacramento River, Lake Almanor and Lake Tahoe.
They sold them to Sunshine Fish and Meredith Fish Company in South Sacramento.
We took a large 24 foot outboard wooden cabin cruiser and cut the cabin off. Then we decked it with a boom and hydrolic powered pulley on the front for bringing in the lines that held the traps.
Dino's wife Bonnie made up a hundred or so large wire traps the size of an oil drum. We bought cans of dog and cat food that we used to bait the traps. We punched holes in the cans with a rock hound hand pick.
http://briarpatchoutdoors.educationforthesoul.com/images/crawfish_7.jpg
We had lines that were 100 feet or so of yellow nylon braided rope.
We had colored jugs on both ends of the string of traps with a red brick with a hole in it on both ends.We had our commercial number from the CA DF&G on those jugs.
We had a thing called a herring snaps like they use for commercial salmon trolling to attach the traps to the line.
We had a box that was built to hang out over the side to sort the crayfish for size with metal bars on the bottom spaces 3/4 of an inch apart.
We had big plastic totes that were given to us by Sunshine Fish that we put wet gunny sacks in to keep the crayfish alive.
Just like on the TV show "Deadliest Catch” we had a short piece of chain on a nylon rope with hooks welded on the sides to throw and catch the rope on the front of the line of traps.
We fished mostly south of Sacramento on the Sacramneto River setting our traps along and out from the rip rap.
At the end of the day we took in our catch and got paid for it. They had big fiberglass boxes like the ones on the tomatoe hauling trucks locally and they filled them with fresh water with aerators. They put the crayfish in the totes for several days to clean out their system.
They then cooked the crayfish in a special solution of spices and brine which they use to freeze them in too.
They showed us the shinny freezer boxes with a photo of a plate of red cooked crayfish that they used to package the crayfish.
They filled freezer containers cars up and then they were shipped off to Sweden.
Ever so often I would high grade out a dozen or so big ones and take them to my mom's and have crayfish dinner.
.
I believe in Sweden they really loved crayfish and had had a disease which killed all theirs.
http://www.skandland.com/crayfish.htm
At this time people in the US where commercially catching them with a series of big baited traps in the Sacramento River, Lake Almanor and Lake Tahoe.
They sold them to Sunshine Fish and Meredith Fish Company in South Sacramento.
We took a large 24 foot outboard wooden cabin cruiser and cut the cabin off. Then we decked it with a boom and hydrolic powered pulley on the front for bringing in the lines that held the traps.
Dino's wife Bonnie made up a hundred or so large wire traps the size of an oil drum. We bought cans of dog and cat food that we used to bait the traps. We punched holes in the cans with a rock hound hand pick.
http://briarpatchoutdoors.educationforthesoul.com/images/crawfish_7.jpg
We had lines that were 100 feet or so of yellow nylon braided rope.
We had colored jugs on both ends of the string of traps with a red brick with a hole in it on both ends.We had our commercial number from the CA DF&G on those jugs.
We had a thing called a herring snaps like they use for commercial salmon trolling to attach the traps to the line.
We had a box that was built to hang out over the side to sort the crayfish for size with metal bars on the bottom spaces 3/4 of an inch apart.
We had big plastic totes that were given to us by Sunshine Fish that we put wet gunny sacks in to keep the crayfish alive.
Just like on the TV show "Deadliest Catch” we had a short piece of chain on a nylon rope with hooks welded on the sides to throw and catch the rope on the front of the line of traps.
We fished mostly south of Sacramento on the Sacramneto River setting our traps along and out from the rip rap.
At the end of the day we took in our catch and got paid for it. They had big fiberglass boxes like the ones on the tomatoe hauling trucks locally and they filled them with fresh water with aerators. They put the crayfish in the totes for several days to clean out their system.
They then cooked the crayfish in a special solution of spices and brine which they use to freeze them in too.
They showed us the shinny freezer boxes with a photo of a plate of red cooked crayfish that they used to package the crayfish.
They filled freezer containers cars up and then they were shipped off to Sweden.
Ever so often I would high grade out a dozen or so big ones and take them to my mom's and have crayfish dinner.
.