How Crayster came to be.
Mike, an avid fisherman, took his family to the Oregon coast for a family reunion. While there, Mike took his son Jake who was five out on an excursion catching crabs off a dock. This was the first time Jake fished the ocean or caught crabs. They had an amazing day catching many legal-sized crab. They went back to the reunion where they had a great crab feast! Jake could not stop talking about the day’s experience. About two weeks later, Mike’s family was back home in Idaho.
Jake could not stop talking about how he wanted to go crabbing again. Mike wanted to go as well but with the coast being so far away an idea came to mind. Crawfishing was an activity Mike enjoyed doing with his dad in Oregon. He remembered that it was much like crabbing. Mike called Idaho Fish and Game asking if there was anywhere around the local area to catch crawfish. A nice Fish and Game officer said, “There are lots of crawfish in our area, but few people fish for them.” Mike told Jake that night about crawfish in our area that were like little lobsters or much like crabs. After learning the details of crawfishing, Jake was so excited to go on their new adventure.
They bought 4 cylinder traps, rope, and some chicken for bait and headed towards a reservoir Fish and Game recommended in search of crawfish. The first trip they caught about a dozen medium sized crawfish about one or two per trap in about an hours soak each. Then, went home and cooked them up. They were delicious, tasting like little lobsters! The next trip was at night. A short time after setting their traps they shined a flashlight on one and to their amazement there was a huge lobster-sized crawfish walking on the trap. It was trying to get into the trap but couldn’t get its claws through the opening. Jake jumped up and down yelling, “Dad, I want to catch that one”. To their disappointment the gear was not adequate to catch large crawfish. Jake left wishing they could have caught the big one.
The next day, Jake was adamant that they needed to get different gear, so they could catch big crawfish. So, they ordered a few different type of traps off of the internet, some were quite expensive. When they arrived they didn’t look like they would do much better. But wait, maybe they could modify them for their purposes. To make a long story short. None of them worked the way they wanted them to. At the lake, they ran into other crawfishermen who would tell stories of huge crawfish and how they would spot them, but rarely caught them because they could not fit into the traps.
With Mike’s son looking up at him with frustration, Jake said, “Dad, you know what we have to do, we need to make our own traps.” Mike thinking that sounded like a lot of work paused, then looked at his son and said, “Ok, we will make our own traps.” The first thing they talked about was how they would make a trap to catch huge crawfish other traps could not catch. Other traps seemed difficult to use, let’s make them easy to use. Let’s make the bait last longer, let’s make getting the crawfish out easier, let’s color our traps like mud and see if we can catch more in the day, and finally, let’s make them stronger, tougher and sink straight.
They went down a father and son path that was amazing and inventive. They started from scratch. Not with other’s ideas, but purely what they wanted the trap to accomplish. They built a few traps and tried them out. They started having a lot more success. It was like Mike and Jake were trying to make the fastest pinewood derby car, but they were the only ones racing. No one seemed to care about better crawfish traps. Finally, one day they had perfected an amazing trap. It was easy to use, the crawfish got trapped in the traps fast, catching decent numbers of crawfish in the day, and most of all they were catching huge crawfish easily.
Mike and his family took a trip to Montana to see his parents. Mike and Jake took one of their newly built traps to show Grandpa. He was amazed by the trap. Mike’s dad,who had caught a fair number of crawfish in his life said, “This is amazing where did you buy it”. Mike and Jake told him that they had made it. He did not believe them at first, it looked so professional. Once Jake and Mike convinced him they had made it. He then said, “It’s so unique you should patent it.” And they did. After many years of patenting the United States government rewarded them with a patent based on its new design, being much more effective than other traps on the market, and overall originality. While they were patent pending, Mike’s hunting buddy Ash said, “Let’s do a crawfishing trip and put it up on Youtube.”
They called their channel Crayster (a name Grandpa came up with meaning a crayfish and lobster combined). People enjoyed watching and corresponding with the Crayster channel and it grew in popularity. To this day Mike and Jake and a team of field researchers all over the country still love crawfishing and being outdoors. Mike and Jake still have fishing innovation in their blood. They have come up with many improvements in crawfishing that you will see in the future.
Overall this was a story of a kid and his dad solving issues and having a great time living the dream outdoors. Jake and Mike truly love fishing and have been appreciating all of the time they have spent together. Their invention has allowed them to meet a lot of people and make many new friends. With their perseverance and efforts they have become leaders and forerunners in crawfish trapping and techniques. They are still having amazing father son adventures and rest assured there will be more to come!
