Crayfish fishing!

The Boyfriend’s dad called and told us that he’s found a river in Northampton where we could fish for Crayfish.  He’d been down there last weekend to catch dinner and wondered if we wanted to have a try.  Hell yea!

We met the family at the house and the dad drove us to the river which I had no idea where it was. 

As it turns out, fishing for crayfish couldn’t be simpler.  All we did was, grab a small fishing net, hook a bit of bait, in our case a bit of raw chicken, onto the end of the wooden fishing pole and head then head straight to the river bank. 

Crayfish don’t swim and they walk along the bottom of the river bank so we had to lower our fishing pole right down to the bottom of the bank.  We waited patiently for the crayfish to come and eat the chicken.  Five minutes’ gone and I still couldn’t feel anything biting the bait so I decided to pull it up and check.  To my surprise, there was a crayfish at the end of the pole.  YAY!   I yanked the pole and tried to scoop the crayfish using my net, only to see the buggar scurry away!  Arrrh!  Apparently the technique is to go SLOW and STEADY when pulling the crayfish to the surface so they hang on long enough for you to scoop them up.

Champ

An hour in and still no luck.  Unfortunately my lack of co-ordination (and dare I say patience) meant crayfish fishing did not come naturally.  The Boyfriend and his family had caught a whole bucket of crayfish already , and I had still to catch one.  However, my despair turned to joy 15 mins later when managed to land one! 

My first crayfish!

It may have only had one arm, but I didn’t care, I had caught my first crayfish!

Only one claw...

Now came to my favourite part, cooking and eating the crayfishes.  Place the crayfishes in a deep pot covered with cold fresh water for 30 minutes, then rinse well.  Place the crayfishes in a steamer and steam for 6 minutes and they’re ready to eat. 

Best bit about fishing

Serve with a garlic vinegar sauce:

Garlic vinegar

100ml Chinese vinegar

3 knobs of garlic, finely chopped

A small knob of ginger, finely chopped

One medium red chilli, finely chopped

2 tablespoons of light soy sauce

1 tablespoon of dark soy sauce

½ teaspoon of sugar

Simply mix or shake together and serve.