It takes a lot of rain to trigger a dispersal cycle when the potholes have enough habitat that holds their numbers once that starts to dry up predation and starvation set in they are seen traveling cross country looking for livable conditions. It’s a rather quick cycle as nature goes time wise the cycle in my area doesn’t happen often or last but several year when we get the rain and rats.

Going to really need to scout out an area and make sure it has rats. There has been a good about of rain the last 2-3 months that have filled up a lot of potholes, spots that look good may have been dry or very low water this spring and may not have had time for the rats to cycle back up.
Floats have worked fine for me in the fall, just need a good quality food lure to use on them.

I always check the interstate heading to Sioux Falls to get some idea how the rat population is doing, if I see rats splattered across the highway things are looking good then. LOL

Is trapping in ND similar to hunting, in that you can access the private lands if they aren’t marked?

This makes me wonder to what extent the narrow leaf catttail has invaded ND,or Minnesota

No, you need written permission to trap on private land. Most road right away trapping is out due to private land going to the center of the road. There is also electronic posting now for hunting. So no signs mean nothing.
I would consider it a bad time to try to trap rats in ND. The water is down a fair amount in my part of the state and I feel that hurts rats as much as anything. There may be more water over east, but I can not say I know of any good population of rats. If you want to come out and trap 100 rats in 10 days, you might do that. I don't think anyone is going to take 100 rats a day this season. I have caught a few rats on flats in the fall, but I always felt it was a low percentage set in the fall.

caught 2444 in 20 days, never did the rat trapping thing before this trip.

Interesting. We used to have crazy amounts of rats here for alot of years. Since about 2018 till now rats are almost non existent. Always see a few around but you would be lucky to get 100 in a week. We had sloughs all over and every one had rats in it. In the last few years most of the good rat holes are cultivated up and in crop. Culverts that were under water now have crop beside them. Some lakes I’ve never seen dried up in my life are gone. Water makes rats from my experience. There still rats around but when you have crazy amounts of water all over the rats explode.

Was not hard two catch 2000 rats in a couple weeks….. used to be lots of fun! I think the first best check I had one fall was 348 rats. I only use round and square colony traps so you can stack up rats quick. Most culverts I trapped we’re the same size of a round trap so you could fill them up! Most I got in one round trap one was 23 on a first check. Would like to get another season before I get two old……


Had a drying rack that had most rats dried by the time you check all the traps. Bounced around and took most of the water off before you got home. Hit them with the leaf blower and you were ready to skin

With the rains this year up north in the eastern side I’d bet in about 2-4 years might be some around again..

In the north central and north western part of ND the water level is down from last year at this time. A lot of the sloughs have a lot of shallow water before it gets deep enough to keep from freezing out. I feel rats always do better in raising water. Mud flats are not good for rats.

Skogmann, if those weeds are not the phragmites (fox tails is what we call them here) mentioned above, do they look like cat tails but have no center stalk with the punk above? That is what we have replacing cattails in my area. Our cat tails are 75% gone in most places......j.k

Some of the sloughs in my area have no cattails. They can be close to sloughs with cattails and never have any start. There will be rats in both sloughs with and with out cattails. I have no idea what the vegetation is that is in the sloughs with out cattails. There is a half a dozen different types anyway. Some sloughs a covered in cattails from bank to bank. Some sloughs will have very few rat houses, mostly bank rats, others have both.

Back in the 70's I used to trap central Oregon river rats. Some places had no cat tails at all, but lots of rats. All bank dwellers. They would dig in banks with grass, eating the roots.

Potholes, Sloughs, Swamps, Lakes.......Cattails, Phragmites, floods, droughts. You guys should see my area of PA- rocky tree lined creeks with the occasional mud banks are my only option, that never really held a great rat population, even when things were good. My Mink population was booming the last I trapped about 4 years ago.

Trapper 338, make sure you read this twice. ND isn't Iowa or MN. Right of way trapping is minimal

With all the rain this year and low prices you would think the country in this area would be full of them. I am a hour east of the Red River, we have a lot of ponds and lakes but have seen much for action from them yet.

I believe the Rat population will be down this fall in SE N.D. they have had good rains but no run off. The slough are really down right now. And unless we get dumped on for rain they won't be filling up anything soon. But it's to late for this year for rats I think. I use to trap them in the 70's and into the 80' s till all the sloughs dried up. Then when we got all the snow in 96 and 97 the rats really took off. I only trapped the big sloughs that had 50 to 80 huts on them. I would run around on the sloughs after freeze up with a 4 wheeler and run them back in the huts. I would catch 150 to 200 in a day. I would trap every Fri and Saturday and Sunday till there was to much snow to drive around on the sloughs. It was not hard to catch 350 to 400 rats in a weekend. Like I said the big sloughs that were 250 to 300 acres produced lots of rats.