"In 1976 a Cray commando unit was sent to the UK by the USA for a crime they didn't commit. These crayfish promptly escaped from a maximum-security farm to the English countryside and went underground. Today, still wanted by the environment agency, they survive as food for foragers. If you have a hunger, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire the crAy-Team."
KNOW YOUR ENEMY /
DINNER
North American Signal
Crayfish – The Foe
Length: Adults
usually about 15cm but can be up to 30cm
Body: Generally
bluish-brown to reddish brown. Smooth all over. Two pairs of ridges behind the
eye sockets. Spines absent from behind cervical groove. Rostrum well developed
with parallel sides and long apex.
Claws: Smooth on
both sides, underside bright red in colour.
Habits/habitats:
Aggressive. Invasive. Lives in streams, rivers, canals, reservoirs,
water-filled gravel pits. Burrows extensively.
Distribution:
Found across England, especially in the south. Wales but also in present in
Scotland.
Status: All
Signal Crayfish caught should be humanely destroyed. It is illegal to put them
back.
European White-clawed
crayfish – The Friend
Length: Adults
usually about 10cm but can be up to 12cm (excluding claws)
Body: Usually
brown or olive brown in colour. Smooth but pitted. Two pairs of ridges behind
the eye sockets: however second pair may not be visible. Has a row of sharp
spines behind sides of cervical groove. Rostrum (extending point on top of
head) triangular with very short apex.
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| Photo courtesy of www.castlebar.ie |
Habits/habitats: Relatively
docile. Lives in streams, rivers, canals, reservoirs, water-filled gravel pits.
Capable of burrowing.
Distribution: Found
in central/northern England and eastern Wales
Status: Protected.
All white clawed crayfish caught should be released. It is illegal to kill
them.
Licensing:
A License from the Environment
Agency is required to make sure people aren’t going to go out and start
trapping in an area where UK Crayfish or Water Voles are present. To get a
license and get trapping you’ll need two important things, 1. You’ll need to
find a place where you know the signal crayfish are present, 2. You’ll need the
landowner’s permission to trap there. This may seem like quite an obstacle to
over come but when you consider that around 75% of the UK’s rivers now have
Signal Crayfish in at some point it gives you some hope., that and the fact the
crayfishing licenses are FREE! Once permission is granted you’ll receive a
credit card sized license for each of the traps you have applied for which must
be attached to the trap when it’s in the water. The traps must be UK legal
which means the entrance to the trap must be no more than 9.5 cm across if the
entrance is more than 9.5 cm across, there must be an otter guard or
restriction on the funnel leading into the trap the holes in the mesh must not
be more than 3 cm across, the trap itself must not be more than 60 cm long or
35 cm wide.
My Story:
I had been interested in trapping crayfish for some time but
had no idea where to find them so it was a stroke of luck when a guy who came
to Hunter Gather Cook for work experience mentioned he used to catch them on a
river nearby. That’s all I needed to know. The very next day I sneaked off with
a couple of friends down to the river in question armed with a piece of bacon
and some string (hi-tec I know!). My friend who was local and had fished that
same stretch of river all his life was sceptical, “never even seen one on in all
my years……” he had to stop short as I’d just picked up a sizeable claw from the
river bank, he was stunned and immediately started taking photos of it with his
phone, tweeting and messaging his fishing friends as we all unfortunately tend
to do these days. The claw was most probably the leftovers of a herons dinner,
I have quietly witnessed them wading along the river plucking them out.
With that we tied the bit of bacon around the string and
threw it in the water not really expecting much to happen, within a minute or
two I mentioned to my friend that I thought I could see something in one of the
small holes that lined the bank of the river, another minute passed and whatever
it was gone from the hole. I had a little tug on the string to see if anything
was happening at the other end, and there it was! my first crayfish hanging on
to the bacon like his life depended on it, I gently pulled him closer to the
bank but just as he was about to surface he shot off backwards like some kind
of rocket propelled mini lobster. That day was early last summer, since then I
have acquired licenses for personal consumption for about 5 miles of river and
20 traps, my friends and I have
consumed no less than 300 crayfish and I am about to upgrade my licenses to
commercial ones with hopefully 150 traps.
To some that may sound greedy but my time spent around the
river has made me realise how destructive these little blighters are not only
do they carry a plague that has all but wiped out our native species, their
burrowing in the river bank has cause parts to peel away and fall in causing it
to silt up massively and this has proved detrimental to the trout populations.
In short the less of these in our rivers the better, I hope to be able to
remove, eat and sell as many as possible and in doing so give something back to
the local eco system I so regularly use as my food source.
Trapping and
Preparation:
Night before:
1: Check all traps to ensure not broken (if broken in
someway could end up snaring unwanted wildlife.)
2: Fill my bate boxes for each trap with the bait of the
day. Stick in the fridge for the morning.
Casting Day: Head
down to the stream with traps and bait.
Look for the tell tail holes in the bank where the crayfish
nest, around that area place the trap with the bait box inside in one of the
deeper pools nearby. Secure the trap with paracord to the side of the stream.
Repeat for the number of traps you have.
Once finished check the time. Never leave the traps
unattended for more than 24hrs as other wild life may be caught and you don’t
want to cause any unnecessary suffering.
Trapping Day: Back down to the stream for the same time as
the day before bringing a holding cage.
Gently rope in the traps as you can often find Crayfish on the outside of the trap. Once the trap is landed carefully pick off the Crayfish on the outside and place them in the holding cage, then open the trap and shake in the rest of the catch.
Repeat with each trap.
Once all the traps have been emptied in to the holding cage
close and secure it ensuring none can escape. Similar to the trap find a nice
deep bit of stream, secure the holding cage to the bank with paracord and drop
it in.
At this point the Crayfish should be left to purge,
essentially they are sitting in the holding cage with no food but don’t worry I
have been told they can actually survive several weeks without food so the 3-5
days they’ll be spending in there won’t bother them much.
The purging period enables the crayfish to get rid of much
of the crap and gunk that you come across should you decide to just eat them as
soon as they come out the river. It also adds a certain sweetness and flavour
to the meat.
In the deep south of America they have a preferred method of
pouring a lot of salt over the crayfish before boiling, this essentially
agitates the crayfish causing them to vomit and crap and to me looked like a
pretty unpleasant time of things for the little blighters.
Once purged my preferred method and the one recommended by
the RSPCA is to place them in the freezer for around an hour. This stupefies
them putting them into a state of semi hibernation. Once in this state they can
be put into a pot of boiling water with little worry that they will suffer any
pain. Once the water is boiling
they should be ready in 5 minutes. They’ll come out Bright Red and ready to
eat. If you are not serving immediately it is best to douse in cold water
otherwise they will continue to cook in their shells and become tough and
chewy.
So that’s it for now, if you’d like to learn a bit more about
preparing them for the table and perhaps meet a few crayfish in person before
you make the leap in to trapping yourself why not book onto one of the Hunter
Gather Cook Courses this year and get cooking with these tasty little critters!
Photos by Nick Weston
