A little background:

I have permission to a small property that borders the Ohio River. The river fluctuates a lot depending on rain, a lot of times a foot or more at a time. Most of the time there could be 10-20 feet of river bottom before the large bank. The property has a small (tiny) creek, more of a road runoff, that enters the Ohio River which has 2 small beaver dams about 30 feet apart making a small pond above the top dam. When the Ohio River is high, it actually will go over top the lower dam. The small creek portion, I trapped last year and thought I did fairly good trapping since it was my first year trying for beaver. I trapped 6 beaver in about a week. All on crossover sets between the dam and the Ohio River. I’m told, by the landowner, the beaver are back stronger than ever before (he wants them gone).

So for the couple of questions I have.

Should I trap longer and more consistent, expecting beaver from the river?

Any river type sets for beaver or otter to try? I never trapped the actual Ohio River last year because of it fluctuating so much.

Use a floating V set with a 330 for beavers in the big river and your set will always be working for you.

Im trapping some of the smaller rivers and creeks that come into the Ohio River right now for beaver. Im pretty much sticking to snares at the tops of slides with some lure a few feet above the snare. Beaver traps are getting too expensive to replace when they get collected by logs and root balls barrelling down the river.

As for how long to set, probably depends on how close you are to the river. When the floods hit, you get beaver moving everywhere trying to find a place to lay up for a while and you can catch some displaced beaver in the back waters. With as short of season that we have, we really dont get the chance to trap the dispersal period. I wouldnt leave sets out all season unless their convenient to you.

Some people use a floating log snare set, though I'm not really sure how best to set them up. Something for you to think about though, payotetrapper.