Crawdads

How deep can Crawdads live in North Texas Lakes?

Good question. I used to dive Possum Kingdom. We would flip rocks and catch crawdads. We sometimes saw curious stripers that would swim fairly close and we would fin out a little deeper, drop the crawdads and watch the stripers go hambone on them. It was really cool.

That said, we never found them deeper than 3-4 feet. I reckon they can live anywhere though and depends on the lake.

I think I've seen video from the great lakes where smallmouth are eating them in pretty deep water (20-30 ft) but I honestly have no idea if they go very deep here in tx.

In clearer reservoirs, I've captured some in crawfish traps in 10fow.
More stained/muddier reservoirs, I agree that the vast majority stay shallow.

Snagged a minnow trap in winter on PK in 30 ft of water that had a craw dad and a small perch in it.

I know that if you throw them on an old sunken bridge on Lake Fork they will live about 2 seconds.

My brother has seen them in the Centex lakes as deep as 25' while diving. He also used to dive a private lake near Houston that he saw them deep all the time but that water was crystal clear.

https://www.ecospark.ca/crayfish

About 10 years ago, I was fishing Amistad and somehow snagged an old Beanie Weenie can on the bottom of the lake in about 35 foot of water. When I reeled it in and unhooked it from my football jig, there was big crawfish in the can. Scared the [censored] out of me. So I know at least one weenie-eating crawdaddy lived deep at Amistad.

Thanks for all the replies. It looks like they can live in deeper water.

When was the last time you saw a crawdad in PK? Its been ten years at least for me. I believe the harris mud crab that has populated the lake over the last 20 years outcompeted them. explains the loss of the small mouth population as well. I've been real tempted to snag 50 pounds of crawfish during the season and throwing them out around our house.