How do you rig a live crawdad?

86ranger · Post by **86ranger** » Fri Jul 15, 2005 9:46 am

What size Hook should I use? How do you rig it? How do you fish it?

Bill kizer · Post by **Bill kizer** » Fri Jul 15, 2005 11:08 am

If they are the small crawdads I just run a 1/0 or 2/0 drop shot hook through the tail Then I put a spit shot about a foot up the line.
Be carefull because the crawdads like to crawl between rocks so you need to twitch your line every so often.
A friend of mine likes to use a long shanked treble hook. He lays it on the tail eye back and secures it with a rubber band. He says it's less tramatic to the little critter. He's also a tree hugger (everyone needs to have at least one escentric friend). To much work for me.
Bill

Elmhurst bassman · Post by **Elmhurst bassman** » Fri Jul 15, 2005 4:18 pm

Just because your uncle beat you to the elusive 10lber are you giving up on plastics?? Poor Gary Yamamoto and Andre Moore. They may have to cut production and lay off some employees if you switch to live bait. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!

Fish Chris · Post by **Fish Chris** » Sat Jul 16, 2005 9:46 am

In the past, I have fished live dads a ton ! I still really enjoy this type of fishing, but for really big bass (read: trout-eaters) they are just not ususally as effective as a trout patterned swimbait. And I find that live bait sucks during the spawn too (while bedfishing).

All that said, here's an article I wrote about fishing with live dads,
http://www.trophybassonly.com/id47.htm
and BTW, if you read nothing else, please note, it has been my overwhelming experience, that hooking dads in the tail, not only "greatly decreases" your number of hookups in the first place, but also "greatly increases" the number of deep hookings.... neither of which are acceptable for me.

Hope this helps,
Great fishing to you,
Fish Chris