Freshwater Crabs in Texas Lakes

There is this species of Crab that can be found in some waterbodys and freshwater lakes here in Texas. It's a small Crab called Harris Mud Crab(rhithropanopeus harrisii)They were introduced. Anybody seen one?

They are in the several watersheds in Texas. I hooked an old can in Lake Granbury and it was full of them. I have also seen them in Squaw Creek. They are very small and easily overlooked. I have a picture of one that showed up in a photo I was taking of a crawfish. I will try and dig it up.

Here is a photo of one. It is in front of the crawfish.

About thirtyish years ago one of the bait companies introduced a small soft plastic crab with a piece off the side to rig weedless. A friend gave me a bag of them and they caught bass on Conroe. I didn't feel that they worked any better than any other soft baits, but they did work. I'll bet half a big blue crab soaked on the bottom would catch some big catfish.

Here is all the lakes and freshwater watersheds where these crabs are established. https://nas.er.usgs.gov/queries/CollectionInfo.aspx?SpeciesID=197&State=TX

Appear to be in the Brazos River basin and it's tributaries .

With the high salt content.

They are in Hubbard Creek in abundance.

I saw one on texoma about 15 years ago

That is really interesting. I had no idea!

they are in possum kingdom

Yep Possum Kingdom has a bunch of them.https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=pfbid05ZUWDbSfH7ZQN1dFRmEGKrpkKCwSKnqP8usxp7XWmnzH4nFouZEoqS98uz7mwNdGl&id=1230593797105318&mibextid=Nif5oz

I got em from a girlfriend in high school.

I have done a lot of research on these buggers. I started seeing them in PK in the mid 90's along with a decline in crayfish numbers and small mouth bass. it seems that the contruction of damns along the brazos river and increased salt from the upper watershed have provided the crabs with a stepping stone platform to move up the chain of lakes. they have slowly decreased their need for brackish water and have slowly adapted to the fresh waters up through the whole brazos system. theres a few research papers on the web.

Now if you could just get redfish to move up the Brazos we could have some fun.

My parents live on a 2 acre private pond south of houston that connects to oyster creek during floods. I've caught big blue crab in it multiple times.