Sort of
Here's my findings after a month with the canoe and 8 pots, 4 times a week, and a different approach to how I fished land based.
Rockmelon is the best bait compared to cat/dogfood/fishframes but is eaten quickly and then the crays look for a way out. Left overnight with just rockmelon the catches were lower than if pulled after 2 hours and it was verified that in empty pots, the crays had found their way out as the rockmelon was eaten.
Daylight catches larger specimens but lower quantities................left overnight there
were always a lot of smaller ones, though larger ones were still taken.
A container with holes punched in it containing dried dog food and tinned dog food, didn't pull as many as rockmelon during the day but more than rockmelon overnight because as stated previously, the crays found their way out after eating the rockmelon............the container food proved more difficult to access/eat so kept 'em in there longer.
Rockmelon and the containered dog food together was more successful than just one or the other. I'm guessing that initially the rockmelon was the crowd puller but the dog food kept 'em interested once the melon was gone.
Tips to keep 'em in the pot longer.........Buy the small screw top canisters from the reject shop for 1.25. Holes can be made in the sides without drilling, by piercing slowly with sharp scissor blade and twisting blade to enlarge hole. Two holes in bottom for cable tie secures to bottom of pot. Write your details on lid to negate the use of label. Make holes large enough so as the dried dog food expands in water, it pushes out a berley trail of the tinned dog food. Do not fill the tub..........allow for expansion with space to spare so that water can flow through holes. Cut reasonable sized pieces of gutter guard.........enough to roll up the slice of rockmelon like a kebab and wedge this under the bottom spars of the pot so that it doesn't float up or is easily eaten..........the little mesh bags that come with the opera house pots aren't big enough for a decent piece of rockmelon, get ripped to shreds, and allow the crays to feed quicker and then look for a way out.
Check the shape of your pots and adjust..............many of the opera house traps have the opening only just clear of the floor of the pot.
Best depth was 7 to 10 metres with 12metres of rope so if you're land based, wading is the go. Several times the pots were found on the other side of the lake with cray still inside. These pots (I'm guessing), had been set on a steep slope allowing 'em to slide down the slope when the crays kicked off. On reaching a spot deeper than 12m, the float carried 'em across in the wind.
Have tried the same as above at my land based spot and results are the same.
Since writing this for another forum I've found that banana is just as good as rockmelon..................but no bananas if you're in a boat
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