Read all the time about crayfish hibernating.. We catch fish all winter here ice fishing and they have crayfish in their bellies. Makes one wonder!!!
Just because the lake is frozen over does not necessarily mean the water is colder than 55 or so where the crawdads may be still out and about. Some spring water never gets below 60 degrees in small isolated spots. Then again there are lots of crawdad varieties and they do adapt to their environment. I once caught a big rainbow trout in 150 feet of water at lake Tahoe that spit up a live crawdad. Tahoe never gets above 60 degrees during the mid summer and 150 feet down it must be in the low 40's and I didn't know crawdads went that deep! I do know that crawdads in our western highland, hill land and canyon type reservoirs the crawdads do hibernate, however our deep lakes usually have water in the mid 50's at 30 to 40 foot depths. You need to look at this as guidelines and apply them where they fit.JohnPorter said:Read all the time about crayfish hibernating.. We catch fish all winter here ice fishing and they have crayfish in their bellies. Makes one wonder!!!
I live about 20 minutes from lake tahoe i am going up there in december to go scubadiving for oceanography then were going to monaray baybut my teacher says even in december we will see huge crawdads i think they have adapted because like old school said that lake never gets really hot. me and my friends go up there in june and swim and the water is still freezingoldschool said:Just because the lake is frozen over does not necessarily mean the water is colder than 55 or so where the crawdads may be still out and about. Some spring water never gets below 60 degrees in small isolated spots. Then again there are lots of crawdad varieties and they do adapt to their environment. I once caught a big rainbow trout in 150 feet of water at lake Tahoe that spit up a live crawdad. Tahoe never gets above 60 degrees during the mid summer and 150 feet down it must be in the low 40's and I didn't know crawdads went that deep! I do know that crawdads in our western highland, hill land and canyon type reservoirs the crawdads do hibernate, however our deep lakes usually have water in the mid 50's at 30 to 40 foot depths. You need to look at this as guidelines and apply them where they fit.JohnPorter said:Read all the time about crayfish hibernating.. We catch fish all winter here ice fishing and they have crayfish in their bellies. Makes one wonder!!!
Tom
ps; do the shad survive where you fish?
Yeah lake tahoe is probally the clearest lake in the us im going scubadiving there in december its gonna be freezing but tons of funLakeCityYankee said:wow! You could see to the bottom in 75 foot of water? Amazing!
It makes sense to me that crawdads stay active even in cold water. They are related to lobster? Lobster and crabs are active and caught in some of the coldest waters there are.