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Joys of fishing: Catching crayfish

David Royal

David Royal with crayfish, Seymour
David Royal with crayfish, Seymour
Photo: Nick Drayson

'I'm the little boy who never grew up. I started off with yabbies, and the natural progression was catching crayfish. And we're really lucky in Australia, we've got a really diverse population of crayfish. We've got the biggest selection of crayfish in the world. And we've got the biggest and we've also got the smallest in the world. And a big crayfish is a thrill to catch, it's unlike a fish, it can bite back. It's got massive claws on it - a big crayfish has got spikes all over him, and so just being able to handle them is a bit of an art. Yeah, never grew up, just enjoy catching them.

Left: David Royal catchiing crayfish, right: a Murray crayfish
Left: David Royal catching crayfish, Seymour. Right: Murray crayfish ( Euastacus armatus).
Photos: Nick Drayson
'You could go to a yabby dam and just about fish it out completely and in the summer months, within six to eight weeks, have eating-size yabbies again. But the situation with Murray crayfish is that they take up to - I believe - nine years to reach breeding age. And I have a little bit of a conscience to think that something that gets to the stage of being over a kilo in weight is probably 20 years old. Me taking him out of the river could have an effect on the river, and I know a lot of people don't think that way but that's just the way I do. I don't enjoy the idea of eating the spiny or Murray crayfish just for that reason. I like to take a photo of him and put him back in the river and go to the fish shop and buy a bit of flake.'
Audio

Listen to David talk about catching crayfish and view the audio transcript (Quicktime embedded file 251kb)

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