Hi all,

My husband is doing his Master's thesis on freshwater crabs in Texas. He has a list of lakes that have confirmed populations of these crabs (PK, Granbury, Whitney, for starters) but there are three lakes that have unconfirmed populations of them. Has anybody ever seen freshwater crabs in Belton, Stillhouse, or Braunig?

Thanks for any info you guys can offer up!

No help here (I've never actually seen one in Whitney, but I'd expect them to be there), but tell him I'm very interested, an excellent subject. Harrisii aren't they?


Keep us informed upon completion, and projected publication.

Texoma has them.

Makes you wonder why pk,granbury and whitney have these freshwater crabs..I lived on pk when they started showing up and when they did I noticed crawfish were harder and harder to find.Any coincidence?

They have them because they were introduced there, (most likely by TPWD fish stockings). And yes, there is a good change they can damage crayfish numbers (as they compete directly with them in the food chain).

There is some information available on them, but it has only been just over a dozen years since they began so show up, so there is not a lot yet.

Texoma is one of the lakes on his list to sample. The point of his thesis is to help determine whether they came from one specific stocking or several of them.

Bret, you are correct. He is looking at R. harrisii.

He's just looking for lakes where they have been rumored to be in, but haven't been confirmed.

There is a small lake in here in West TX that has them as well. I assume they are the same species. They are very small crabs. They are in Lake Champion just outside of Colarado City.

Tradinghouse has them, though I believe it's already documented. I caught some there between 1988 to 1989.

I saw some very small ones on Sqauw Creek.

ive seen them in texoma

we used to have blue crabs and mullet up in clear creek and mary's creek in pearland.

we'd catch bass, catfish and crappie next to blue crabs.


it was weird

fishlady:
could you post a picture of the critter? I have some very lagre crawdads at my shore. but would like to know what a freshwater crab looks like.
eddie lane

Do a good image search for "Rhithropanopeus harrisii".

They look much as you might expect, they're literally a tiny little crab just like you'd see in the ocean. Usually a sandy or dark brown color, and no bigger then a quarter.

I have seen lots of them in Granbury

a tpwd biologist told me there was an active blue crab population in fairfield. he said most likely people emptied them out of their baitwells after fishing. i never saw or caught any there and this was before the last big kill.