Gotta question about crawdads,,,are the commercially harvested crawdads flushed out before they are frozen and bagged… or do they just catch them and bag em up?
Ive been catching ALOT of crawdads that make it into my minnow traps, but I just use them for bait primarily because I really have no way to keep large amounts of crawdads alive for long periods of time in an attempt to flush them out.
I just don’t know how the crawdads we buy in the stores are processed.
I don’t know if a flushing process is necessary.

No

I don't know your water,,,,,,but
In east Central NE and West Iowa,,,,, everything taste like the pond now

water is still cold in WA

the frozen/cooked ones from down south are washed with a sprayer to remove some of the mud and other crap, but theyre not purged. local cashwise foods stores here have cooked/frozen ones in bulk, but theyre a product of egypt, so i dont trust that, and dont know how those are processed. plenty of videos of the places in louisiana where theyre processed and shipped out. if theyre not purged out, the intestine will be full of craw-crap, so you should remove that from under the backstrap before you eat them, but the crap will be well cooked and most likely wont hurt you. a small tank and bubbler will keep them alive for 2 or 3 days and thats plenty of time for them to purge out. hope this helps.

I've cooked crayfish both purged and fresh from the creek or pond. I prefer to purge them overnight.

Those 250 to 350 gallon, IBC, plastic totes are great for keeping live crayfish, fish and turtles in. You can run aerators in them and keep a lot of aquatic life in them if you place them in a cool, shady spot. Crayfish can climb aquarium tubing. I learned that lesson in my teens, when my mom woke me yelling that there were crayfish loose in the kitchen. 17 of about 60 crayfish I put in a 55 gallon aquarium, upstairs in my room, escaped and were recovered live in different parts of our house. 4 more dead ones were found later. You can just drill holes to run the tubing through, so the crayfish can't climb up and out on them.

You can find many ads for the totes on Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace. A few weeks ago, I picked up 17 free totes and paid $100.00 to have 9 cut in half totes and another whole tote delivered. I'm going to use them for plants, manure composting and fish.

Look for totes that nothing toxic was kept in, that were well cleaned.

I wish I had the totes when I used to catch large numbers of turtles. They are much cheaper than the Rubbermaid stock tanks I used and better than the metal barrels and buckets I used.

Keith

CliffNotes......
Purge this time off year....

We use to seine them bushells at a time from a good creek. We never bothered to purge them and they always tasted good. We also use to find them for days around the body shop. Nowdays with our polluted waterways purging might be a good idea. I do it with mussels and others.

I seine them. I like to pop the meat out of the tails. Takes awhile to do a 5 gallon bucket and get a mess. Then I fry them in butter with a little garlic fried in before the meat. Our water comes from a reservoir. Rain runoff from all the farm/ranch ground. Not much point in purging. We are drinking the same water they live in.

Purge them for a day in a cooler with fresh well water and a bubbler.

Thats what I do.Then I freeze them till I get enough for a feed.

Thanks for the help guys…greatly appreciated

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