It's probably just a crawdad that survived the golden algie attack (mutant?)

I was out walking my dog along the banks of Lower Lake Whitney when I saw some kids catching something under rocks. I went over to take a look and much to my suprise they had a bucket of small crabs. So I came home and searched freshwater crabs on this site and found this thread. I had no idea they were wild in our texas lakes. So who is going to invent the first rubber crab bait??

Is this the fish you are talking about?



That is a picture of a Log Perch provided by the Ohio Department Of Natural Resources. Texas has these fish as well, but for some reason the TPWD does not have a picture.

From your description that is my best guess.

As far as Freshwater Crabs:

I do not think that they are in fact, native to Texas. However, there are now breeding populations in several lakes along the Brazos River, including Whitney and Granbury.

The first time I saw them myself was at a recent Carp Tournament I fished at Granbury. They're all over the place there under logs and timber.

Pretty cool!

I was at PK in june and saw a young man catching the crabs like crazy, I fished the lake when I was young and don,t rember ever seeing them before.

As for the first rubber crab bait, D.O.A. makes a very nice soft plastic crab, I havent tried it on whitney yet but it might be worth a shot.

i first saw the crabs at P.K. about 4 years ago while striper fishing below the damn. Very unusual i thought. Been fishing down there for over 25 years and never seen anything like this before. I am glad other people have seen them now, because almost nobody would believe me.

when all the rich folks at PK close up their million dollar "lake cabin", they dump their tropical fish aquariums in the lake. all kinds of strange fish show up there time to time..