To start, buy 3x15ft wire mesh at home depot. For tools a get straight edge to fold the mesh against (piece of plywood works, 2x4 etc, whatever's handy) and a pair of wire cutters or dikes, some tie wire (rolls of mesh from home depot have alot of spare wire you can use) and probably a few band-aids, the mesh has alot of sharp edges.
Try to lay it out flat, makes it much easier to work with.
From the end, measure 3" and place your straight edge. Bend the mesh up 90 degrees. Watch out for sharp edges.
From the new bend, measure 12 inches and make another 90 degree bend.
From this bend, make another 3" measurement and bend it 90 degrees. This should now form a "box".
Measure from the last bend 12" and cut it off with wire cutters (I like to measure a bit over 12" to give my self a lip to overlap and wire it closed.
It should look roughly like this:
Join the two cut edges with wire wrapped between the two edges.
Now measure 4" from the end, and while leaving one 12" wide end, cut off 4" from the remaining 3 sides.
Bend the "flap" inside the trap, at a 45 degree angle. This acts as both a ramp to let crawdads in, as well as keep them from exiting. You can adjust the "gap" between the top edge of the flap and the top of the trap. Closer the gap, the fewer that will get out... but if you make it too small, it will prevent the big ones from getting in.
Repeat for the other side. When finished you should have two openings to your trap.
Now cut out a 5x5" section from the bottom and make a bait door out of it. This will allow you to wire the bait (chicken leg) to the door which keeps it in the center of the trap.
You can paint them or not, in this picture the bottom one is pained with olive, the one above is unpainted. Both catch the same amount of crawdads. The olive one is harder to see though and hence harder to steal.
That's pretty much it! At the time I took these pictures, I was using a Coke bottle painted orange as a float marker. After having a few traps stolen, I use plain colored bottles now
Feel free to modify this design however you want. If you do find something different that works better post and share it! Now get to building some traps and catch some of that finger sized fresh water lobster
-DallanC
