I'm going to be perfectly honest here. I am not handling winter well this year. I'm freezing cold all the time, I just had a two-day bout with the stomach flu (that I'd rather not relive here), and worst of all, aside from some short 45-minute lunch hour romps at a local pond, I haven't had a decent fishing trip since October. Luckily though, if I play my cards right and don't relapse into the stomach flu, I'm going to have a day-trip tomorrow. I haven't decided yet where (maybe Bennett Spring, maybe Blue Spring Creek, probably Montauk), but I do know that wherever I go, I'll have a new trick up my sleeve.
If you look closely in most any body of water in Missouri, odds are you'll find a crawdad. I remember pulling up an old wire cage out of my grandpa's pond as a kid and there being dozens of the little crablike creatures scurrying in the trap. They are typically pretty well camouflaged in stream beds, but every so often, you can catch one swimming by, with surprising agility. It is no surprise then that with their prevalence in the Missouri water system that they are a significant food source for fish, even trout.
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| A real Crawdad, pulled from Bennett Spring |
