How do you tell if their are crawdads in a river,stream,lake, or pond?

Get a siene net and move over some rocks and skim the mud, you will find em>

Easy, they are in almost every body of water in the US

They get there by the birds

Lift up rocks and logs, skim through bottom-dwelling vegitation, or set traps. Odds are they will be there.

Get a trap or you will see one eventually if the water is clear enough.  They will be there in lakes and rivers and your best bet is they are their in ponds.

I never knew there were crawdads in a small lake that I fish a lot until about a year ago. I cought a fish and when I lifted him in the boat, and a crawdad fell out of his mouth.

i fish a small farm pond which is just a pit dug into the ground and filled with water.

i know its full of crawfish (even though ive never seen one) because i see their holes all over the shoreline. there are little "towers" of mudballs with a hole that goes thru the middle and into the ground (see picture) all over the place. these are crawfish holes.

Several ways I think of off the top of my head:

Gently turn rocks and look.

Look for burrows in mud shorelines and offshore humps.

Look for broken claws in shallows.

Gently squeeze fish bellies to feel for craws.

Seine or better, a baited crayfish trap.

Walk shallows at night with a flashlight. You may be shocked at how many craws are there!

I agree with fishizzle, see a body of water and know that there is a 99% chance there are craws in it.

There are more than 300 known species of crawfish and they have been spotted on every continent except Africa.

Set a trap

http://www.cabelas.com/prod-1/0002258014322a.shtml

Its a trap!!!!!!!!!!!!

They get there by the birds

Please elaborate.

They get there by the birds

Please elaborate.

There is the theory that birds carry things (in this case crawdads) and people will say bass (or other fish) eggs on their feet and bellies and drop them into other bodies of water. I have heard that science doesn't support this theory.

Yeah, I've heard the theory, but some people actually believe this is how. Realistically, this might happen 1 in 10 million times. Most bodies of water a connected at one time or another and the crayfish or fish more than lilkely colonize this way. Its not like they are sessile creatures.  :

I wondered the same thing, and didn't realize those mud towers were crawdad holes. I just thought they were really big mud dawber holes. :-[ Thanks dsaavedra.

Prog

Bigbadaaron, a couple of the guys talked about trying to catch a few of them. This is great advice. That way you can get a feel for the size and color of the crayfish (excuse me, crawdads) in the water you're fishing. There can really be quite a variation from one body of water to the next. Good luck crawdad hunting.