Crawdads ... Crawfish... Mudbugs?

When I was a kid we called them crawdads, but you may know them as crawfish (pronounced "cray-" or "craw-") ... or even mudbugs.

Hunting for crawdads was a favorite summertime activity. You HAD to go wading in the creek to catch them. What a miserable prospect for a kid! The creeks in Benton County Arkansas were spring fed so the water was icy cold even on the hottest days. I'd go for the small ones since I was afraid of getting pinched!

When you catch crawdads you have to watch out for their claws. They can pinch and they can hurt if the crawdad is big enough. As soon as they notice you coming towards them, they start backing up, their claws extended toward you, in an attack position. You have to carefully reach over their back to get them with out getting pinched.

Some people use the pinchers to help catch them ... once the crawdad pinches you, you've caught him!

I remember one expedition with Grandad Sisk in particular. Judy and I discovered that if you hunt for crawdads in a lake filled with water cress, you can find the crawdads hiding in the plants. When you pull up clumps of water cress, the crawdads are embedded in the plants and easier to pull off without getting pinched. We managed to collect enough crawdads to have a crawdad and water crest feast that day!

My eldest son got to experience this adventure in Benton County once, when my Uncle Bill took him snorkeling to catch crawdads. The water was so cold that Jeremy turned blue and had to be pulled out of the water ... but I think he had fun.

When my kids attended the Learning Tree preschool in east Dallas, the entire school went "fishing" for crawdads at a pond on the property of one of the teachers. Fishing for crawdads is a very different experience from catching them by hand. The water in the pond was so muddy you couldn't see the crawdads, so you HAD to fish for them. We tied pieces of salt pork to a string on a fishing pole. The crawdads grabbed the salt pork. We caught huge numbers of them! One of the parents happened to be a chef at a local restaurant, and he prepared a crawdad dish for the kids to sample. It took a few days, since he went to the trouble of "burping" the crawdads before preparing the dish. I don't remember what it was ... but it was delicious!

Now you can go to any grocery store, in the Dallas area at least, and buy crawdads. You've got to try a Cajun version of a crawdad dish ... Crawfish Etouffe!

For more information check out this web page: http://www.lafayette.travel/foodtour/crawfishexperience/