This crayfish was discovered in Okanagan Lake at Rotary Beach in Summerland.

Image Credit: SUBMITTED/ Laura Hecimovic

Laura Hecimovic and her family are spending their first summer in Summerland at their new vacation home enjoying the many outdoor spaces and activities the small city has to offer.

Currently living in Vancouver, Hecimovic has spent many summers visiting family and friends on Okanagan Lake, so she wasn’t expecting the catch her young daughters scooped into a net the night of Aug. 22, off a rocky spit at Rotary Beach.

“My girls are new to fishing, we just bought them rods and they’ve been fishing off piers and docks and a rock that juts into the lake,” she said. “They see all these little fish and crayfish between two and three inches long.

“My youngest saw a big crayfish come out from under a big rock and got a net and scooped it up, and all of a sudden I hear them scream.”

Hecimovic estimated the crayfish was between eight and nine inches long, much bigger than any crayfish she has ever seen come out of Okanagan Lake.

“It was quite exciting, the girls are still talking about it,” she said. “They are funny looking things with big pinchers. I did a bit of research and apparently crayfish of this size are pretty rare here.”

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Freshwater signal crayfish can be found in rivers, lakes, and streams across the Okanagan and is the only native species of crayfish in the region. The signal crayfish is one of over 500 different species of crayfish found worldwide and one of 11 species found across Canada.

The crustaceans look like small lobsters that are brownish and colour but can appear red or blue as their shells dry out. Crayfish tend to live in rocky areas closer to shore and generally grow to roughly three inches in length.

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Crayfish can be cooked the same way as lobster, and with a freshwater fishing license, BC residents are allowed to catch up to 25 of them per day, but they are generally so small it takes a lot of them to make a small meal.

Four years ago a scuba diver found a crayfish roughly a foot in length in Okanagan Lake about 30 feet below the surface of the water, which came as a surprise for local researchers.

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