Joe Stephens - Dealing With Cray Fish

Fortunately, here in the UK, there aren’t many lakes where cray fish are actually present. But if your venue does hold them, then it can be a real problem, causing plenty of annoying issues to deal with.

Tangled rigs, chewed or missing hookbaits, leads moved of the spot and putty removed are just a few issues you might encounter. Thankfully, there’s a few alterations you can make to help combat the crays and their annoying habits.

Firstly, when fishing cray infested waters, I like to use a stiff boom. Boom, IQ2 or an XT Snag Leader would be my recommended hook links, all plenty stiff enough to keep presented and unlike braid, the cray fish won’t be able to tangle it, so you can be sure your rig is always presented and can reset itself.

In terms of bait, then I’ll look to fish either a Tiger Nut or plastic hookbait. I’ve been using the Korda plastic dumbells lately, soaked in Goo, and they really hold the flavour. On venues where nuts and plastic is not allowed, then I’ll use a shrink-wrapped pop up, which I then glug to boost the attraction.

Cray fish also have a nasty habit of removing bait stops, so I always use a large extender stop, which just makes it that bit harder for them to slide it off.

For the hook itself, I’ll add a layer of Kamo Kote to the hook point, which I always do and if the crays are that bad, I’ll switch to a thicker gauge hook such as a Wide Gape X pattern. With the thinness of a Kamakura hook point, the cray fish could easily nick the point, so an X pattern just gives me that piece of mind.

And lastly, cray fish absolutely love putty and are experts at removing it. Because of this, I’ve been using the Korda Balancing Weights and since their release last year, they’ve really changed my fishing. Reeling in before work to see my putty had been removed was a killer, so using a balancing weight around the swivel is a game changer and so much neater than a split shot or big blob of putty.

Thankfully, crays are something we rarely have to deal with but if you’re heading to Europe or on a new water where they are present, it’s definitely worth preparing yourself for the crays.