City of Columbia Crawdads?

On a recent three day trip to Owensville Oliver and Ann’s Dad made some Crawdad traps. We had hoped to employ them to catch some big Crawdads down on Table Rock Lake, but time got away from us, and we weren’t able to get in a fishing trip that involved a four-hour one-way drive.  At least not for a while.

But we couldn’t just let these traps sit. So I decided to give the closest waters to my house a try: Twin Lakes, a city of Columbia park. Twin Lakes isn’t known as a crawfish paradise, but perhaps that is only because no one ever tried to catch them there before. This was my hope, anyway. It has a nice floating dock, so it was easy to put the traps out without getting wet or muddy. I set one near the shore, and the other two out at the end of the dock. On several peoples’ recommendations I baited them with canned cat food.

I checked them with the kids after about an hour and hadn’t come up with anything. I’d read that crawdads are more active at night, so I left them overnight and came back the next morning. I had caught about half a dozen minnows, and 1 crawfish.

Since that wasn’t working, the following night I moved the traps to Stephen’s Lake. There’s a bridge there that goes across that lake, so once again setting them out was a breeze. I put them out with the Henry and my nephew Carols at night. Both boys appreciated a nighttime adventure, since the in summertime we are usually calling it a day by the time the sun is down.

The next morning Ann’s sister Tracey (who was visiting for a few days with her kids) took the kids back to check the traps. No crawdads, and not even any little fish on this run. And the traps were stinky. Nine Lives gets rank after sitting out in warm lake water for two nights in a row. Henry immediately decided that if this was what cat food smells like, he never wants to own a cat.

So according to my field research, crawdads aren’t plentiful in city of Columbia lakes. I think we’ll stick to un-impounded waters next time.

(Editorial note: It seems you can use the terms crawdad, crawfish, or crayfish interchangeably, but for goodness sake never say craydads. That would just be silly.)