Andrew Leech started a co-operative business with his brother and some fellow crayfish trappers which became very successful until the law changed and suddenly it wasn’t. So he found a way to trade within the new law but it wasn’t easy.
The law says stop catching crayfish
It all started with a barbecue in the garden on the river Lambourn which is a tributary of the River Kennet, a clear, shallow river in which could be seen many a trout. A friend at the BBQ threw a chicken bone into the water and it was mobbed by what looked like small lobsters. Andrew Leech was instantly hooked.
Research told Andrew that the ‘mob’ were American signal crayfish, imported in the 1970s to farm for the Scandinavian market, where they were much in demand. The crayfish had escaped from the farms and thrived in the wild. Andrew is a design engineer so he designed a crayfish trap as a variant on a lobster pot and soon he, his brother and a few local crayfish trappers...
