Over the past few weekends I've been heading to the hills as much as possible in an attempt to get in as much camping as I can before the winter rolls in. The exercise got exceptionally excellent recently when the campfire was lifted, and I recommend that you get out there while Mother nature is on your side.
Jones Lake outside of Chilliwack (which I called "The best place to go camping in BC" last year) has become a go-to, and it gets even better this time of year. The reason? Once the noisy party campers have gone back to school/the holes they crawled out of it signals the turn of the season when the gigantic native crayfish start to make their way closer to the shore to be caught. Yes, as this headline promised, there are gigantic crayfish that live in lakes near Vancouver. Below is one we caught this past weekend.
The species are called Signal Crayfish and they're native to BC. If you look hard enough you'll find them in many of your freshwater spots, most often in high elevation lakes. I'm not exactly sure why they make their way closer to the shore this time of year, but I've been catching them for a few years now and September has just proven itself to be magic crayfish time. Dusk is when they start to come out, and if you're curious if they're in a lake you;re at just walk along the shoreline after dark and shine a flashlight in there for a minute or two and see if you can spot any.
They're managed by the Freshwater Fishery Society, which means that you're allowed to catch and eat them if you've got a freshwater fishing license (available HERE). I decided to get serious this year and mail ordered this $15 crayfish trap pictured below. We baited it with a chopped up beef wiener this weekend, walked it out about 30 feet in the lake (where it was about 3 feet deep) and left it there overnight. This is what was in it when we pulled it out in the morning!
To prepare them you first have to rinse them off really well so that all the mud gets off of them. Next you cover them in salt and essentially purge them of the mud that's in their systems, then you simply boil them and eat their tailes... much like you would lobster. As a side note, they're best served with Awesome Session Ale as pictured below. ;)
As far as I know there's nobody harvesting this natural resource and selling it in stores, but a couple years ago the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans conducted a study where they successfully bred wild BC Signal Crayfish in order to see if they could be farmed. The experiment proved a success (read it HERE), but it's not likely you'll see these in the grocery store anytime soon; you'll just have to go out and catch some for yourself!
