Seining some bait, catching some cats...

So there is this one creek I know that is simply overrun with crayfish. So tonight I took the old seine net, a bucket and a spinning rod. In my pocket went a zip lock baggie with some baitholder hooks and an assortment of split shot and egg sinkers. Besides the crayfish I caught some beautiful darters, a couple shiners and even a baby smallmouth. The drill is the net is strung between two sticks about the length and diameter of a good walking stick. The seine has weights along the bottom edge to keep it down on the bottom. You kind of shuffle along upstream poking around the rocks with each stick and small fish, crayfish, hellgrammites, dragonfly larvae or whatever else is living in the rocks flushes into the net. Catching bait is just about as much fun as the actual fishing. Though the fishing ended up being fast and furious. I was throwing into a very fast run and had enough weight on that the crawdad would slowly bump, bump, bump down the run. Almost no casts made it all the way thru the run without a sharp tap and then line twitching as a channel took the crayfish. I guess I had twenty craws and caught 12 or 15 channels. No giants but it sure was a great way to spend a late summer evening.