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snowleopard

snowleopard

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i.e. freshwater crayfish

Having been told about the plague of crayfish in Britain's waterways I tried dangling some bacon fat on a bit of string and soon had a bucket full of the little beasties. My informer said that they should be kept in clean water for 24 hours to clean out their gut but within a couple of hours they were looking very dead and I didn't fancy food poisoning.

Any experts around?

I believe the imported American variety are fair game but the natives are protected but how do you tell which is which?
 
I think you need a special licence to catch them now. When they first appeared it was encouraged and open season.
I saw a NB at Abingdon last year, surrounded by baskets and full of crayfish. The local restaurants were buying all the bloke could catch.
 
I've eaten them and they were very tasty. N.B. they were American Signal Crayfish. My mooring pal did not do the the 24 hour cleaning BUT this all occourred very uptream on the Thames as far as boating is concerned. There was also a tasty trout...

I don't think I'd eat anything from the Thames which had been rinsed in the effluent of all those dodgy 'live aboards' I keep reading about.

SL - Ive an unused cray fish net here you can have for free.
 
If anyone wants to come here and try for them, I don't know how successful they'll be but they're welcome to have a try. Year before last the former Harleyford MYC BBQ'd a whole ton of them and also grilled a further ton in a huge pan of garlic butter. They'd been caught at Abingdon. I had tasters and they seem nice but bland.
 
Nice but Bland.

Exactly, Byron!

I can hook up around 25 Red crayfish in half an hour on the River Lea, with a line and some bacon, using a kids net to land them.

Overnight in a bucket of fresh water does leave them a bit limp, but alive and purged, and once cooked (3 minutes, careful not to overcook!!) you have to peel the wretched things, and are left with a huge pile of armour, and a tiny pile of meat.

The claws taste better than the body (Take the black strip out of the body meat!!) and taste of very little, despite lashings of Garlic, Lime, whatever.

The whole exercise is a bit pointless, and it's more fun catching them than eating them. In fact, playing 'tanks' with a pair of aggressive ones is even more fun :o

Nobody in authority up here gives a monkeys if you catch them and how, as long as you don't put them back. They are destroying anything they can eat....
 
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