# How do you induce crawdads to moult?



## rutnut245 (Jan 18, 2009)

I love fishing for smallmouth in Lake Erie and my favorite live bait are softcraws.The one thing I really don't like is paying $6.00 a dzn for em,sometimes we'll go through 10 dzn.I have an unlimited access to them and need to find a way to induce them to moult.

I've tried epsom salts which is supposed to take 2-3 days and eyestalk ablagation/pinching or cautorizing the eyestalk,which should take about a week.I've also tried feeding them like crazy to get them to outgrow their shell.That worked but it took too much time.

I don't want to torture the little buggers,I just want them to shed.Anyone have any other ideas?


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## HookSet Harvey (Aug 12, 2010)

Is it even legal to do it? I have heard its not but just word of mouth.
I have heard something about damp news paper. Put some crawls in wet news paper n they will shed. Never tried to tho.


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## firstflight111 (May 22, 2008)

why do they have to be soft ..we get them out of the creeks around the house.... some of them up to 5 in... big smallies dont care....


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## rutnut245 (Jan 18, 2009)

Guys are allways telling me it doesn't matter to the fish but from my experience it makes a big difference.I've tried both kinds at the same time many times and the soft craws allways got the most bites hands down.I think the fish can sense or smell the difference.If there wasn't a difference why would bait dealers even bother to sort the soft from the hard crawls?


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## firstflight111 (May 22, 2008)

because they can make more money on them ...some of the perch we got last time had 3 in craws in them and they were hard shell i will put up a pic later today


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## cjbrown (May 22, 2007)

Put them under a light 24 hours a day, see if that does it....Something I vaguely remember hearing when I was younger.


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## rutnut245 (Jan 18, 2009)

Thanks CJ,I'll give that a shot.From the little bit of info I've been reading on this subject it seems anything that stresses them should work.The light certainly seems the most humane.


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