Out of the shell

Just about anywhere you find fresh water you can find crawfish.

With a trap and a little effort, you can be boiling a mess of mudbugs and preparing for a Cajun feast.

Good crawdad fishing can be found in most of the rivers and lakes in north central Idaho, western Montana and Eastern Washington. The Snake River is particularly good but so is the Spokane, the Grand Ronde, parts of the Clearwater, Elk Creek Reservoir, Dworshak Reservoir and more.

“Anywhere there is water you’ve got gobs of them,” says Wally Biederstedt, 76, of Lewiston.

He said it’s not uncommon to pull a trap out of the Snake River holding about 5 pounds of crawfish. “It’s a freshwater lobster we are catching.”

Biederstedt baits his traps with fish flesh, throws them out along rocky banks of the river and about 12 to 24 hours later he returns to haul in his catch. On one morning, he and his wife, Julie, bagged about 15 pounds of the freshwater lobsters. Less than an hour later, he prepared to turn them into a feast.

Biederstedt poured about a cup of salt into the 5-gallon bucket full of crawdads and let them sit for about 20 minutes. The salt causes the crawfish to purge themselves and also knocks off freshwater lice clinging to their crustacean bodies.

Once purged, he dumps them into a pot of boiling water, chucks in some German sausage, a Cajun spice mix, stirs and waits.

“Oh, I love that smell,” he says standing over the pot in his shop. “I could stay in here all day when I cook them.”

The boil lasts about 7 minutes and he lets the crawfish sit in the hot water for another 10 before they are ready to eat. Then he drains the water and pours the bright red crawfish onto a table.

He twists the tails off the bodies and cracks the shells to expose a morsel of lobster-like meat. He also uses pliers to crack the claws, where more meat is hidden.

“It’s just like crab,” he says of the claw meat.

Biederstedt has been building and selling two sizes of crawfish traps for years. They can be purchased in for $30 to $50 at Camp, Cabin and Home and Riverview Marina in Lewiston, and The Water’s Edge in Clarkston.

Some Spokane sporting goods stores sell various crawdad traps.

The season starts in May and lasts into the early fall. As the water temperatures warm, the fishing gets better. Biederstedt says his best months are August and September. The regulations are different in Idaho and Washington.

Idaho anglers must have a valid fishing license to fish for crawdads. In Washington, licenses are not required, but anglers are limited to 10 pounds of crawdads a day and can’t use more than two traps. Idaho limits anglers to five traps, but there is no limit on the number of crawfish they can catch.

Twenty pounds is plenty for a large feast, especially if sausage, corn, potatoes and onions are added to the boil.

There are many other ways to prepare crawfish.