I was lucky to invited by Stina to visit her hometown in Stjärnsund a small (300-person) village, 2 hours north of Stockholm. I arrived in the evening, right after work. We had dinner at her home and then her family took me out on a crayfishing trip with their friends, the family of Anders. Anders' house is right by the lake and they own a motor boat that they have used for crayfishing for decades.
We set out on the boat around 9pm, right before sunset, when the pink moon starts rising over the horizon. We 'drove' (went with the motorboat) to their traditional spot by a small island, and then turned off the motor that is driving the boat. Then anders took two wooden paddles, and we slowly approach the white styrofoam floaties that mark the location of the crayfish trap that Anders and Classe (Stina's dad) under the water in the afternoon.
Now, this white floaties have a long string attached to it, and as we wound that string, we pull the crayfish trap cage from the bottom of the lake...
Then you take the collect crayfish out into a bucket. And here is Classe with one of the crayfish. He has to hold the creature from its tail so not to get pinched by their red claws.
After we emptied the cages, we'd put more fresh fish baits in, and lowered the traps again, which is to be collected on the next morning. In the mean time, we keep the crayfishes alive in the bathtub overnight. Remember, they have to be boiled alive!
The next morning at about 8am, we set our boats again to collect more crayfish! Here you can see how calm the lake water is, and you can see the sky on its reflection. And about that fake owl there, it bobs its head up and down along with the swaying of the floating wooden deck. It's set there to scare away the sparrows from pooping on the deck.
It was a warm fine day, as warm as it gets in the part of Sweden, and I took some short videos where you can see how the crayfishes are lifted up from the water and taken out of its cages.
Here is Stina pulling another crayfish cage. In total, with one night and one morning outing, we caught 133 crayfish with ten cages, out of which, 35 are small (less than 10cm, so we had to return them to the lake). The catch for different cages varies by location. We had one cage that caught none, while another cage got 19!
A little about the crayfishing tradition. In Sweden, the crayfish party is a special traditional celebration marking the end of summer. The crayfishes maybe abundant in local waters all year round, but because the risk of overfishing, when, how and how much you can fish these delicacy is highly regulated. You cannot fish these delicacies most of the year, but the first weekend of August marks the beginning of the crayfish season where people who own land by the lake, can legally fish them. Not every Swede gets a chance to crayfish every summer, so I was pretty lucky to be invited into one.
The part I find amazing about this system that, these legal frameworks do work, people do report the crayfish they got and return the smaller crayfish to the lake, and as a result, the population of these sought-after creatures are pretty stable. Oh, and its worth noting too that the crayfish they have in Sweden is Canadian crayfish. Most of the local crayfishes died a few decades ago because of a fungal disease outbreak.
And this is Mr. Crayfish with his feisty red pincers! And you can see Anders at the behind him. Soon, Mr. Crayfish and friends will be boiled alive, with some dill, salt and pepper! Yummmms!!!
And the crayfish party is not complete without the toast, cheese, beer and... schnapps! And songs too! Lots of traditional Swedish songs that I don't know what it means but sounds good anyways~ I think we should sing more at parties!
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