Don't wait for crawfish; Early signs point to good season

Crawfish are starting to get more plentiful in restaurants and seafood stores in the area as the pond harvest picks up, while the Atchafalaya Basin season is just getting underway.
South Louisiana's crawfish ponds are producing "a fair amount for this time of year," and the catch is beginning to pick up slightly, said Mark Shirley, an LSU AgCenter aquaculture specialist.
The majority of the crawfish available in Louisiana now is from ponds. The Atchafalaya Basin typically produces more crawfish later in the spring, Shirley said.
Anyone who wants crawfish should be able to find them available at seafood establishments, Shirley said.
"If you're hungry for crawfish, don't wait on them," Shirley said. "There's crawfish available now. And go ahead and enjoy them."
There should be a substantial supply of crawfish all through the Mardi Gras and Lenten seasons, Shirley said.
A sufficient supply of crawfish is on the market to meet demand "because people are just starting to think about eating crawfish," Shirley said.
Melinda Fields, owner of Boiling Madd in Patterson, said the restaurant is getting its supply from ponds in the Opelousas, Rayne and Breaux Bridge areas.
"But we do hear that there's some fishermen testing the waters (in the Basin)," Fields said.
Compared to January 2016, the Basin is looking better than last year, she said.
Pond crawfish that hatched in October and November are just getting big enough to stay in the traps, Shirley said.
Mostly small to medium crawfish are available on the market currently, Shirley said. With the mild temperatures the region is experiencing, Shirley expects crawfish to continue to grow "fairly rapidly," he said.
Sidney "Peanut" Michel, owner of D&B Seafood in Morgan City, said the Basin harvest "looks promising" early in the season, Michel said. But the water levels have to stay high enough for an extended period of time to make the catch successful, he said.
Normally, the water stays up through the spring, and that makes for good wild harvest season, Michel said.
The pond harvest from Abbeville to Opelousas "has been a little slow," so far, Michel said, but most of the ponds in the region should be catching crawfish by the end of January. Michel gets his crawfish mostly from the Church Point area.
When the Basin season picks up depends on the water levels, which are influenced by snow melt up north and rainfall in March and April, Shirley said.
Crawfish size should increase during the next three to four weeks. The catch should increase more in February or March, too, Shirley said.
If the warm weather continues into the spring, the crawfish crop will keep increasing in both size and volume, he said.
A few crawfish ponds were probably affected by the August floods, but the vast majority of ponds didn't sustain major damage
Crawfish prices are typical for early in the season, Shirley said.
The day-to-day supply and demand for crawfish are among factors that influence price, Shirley said.
"Prices started off really, really steep,” Fields said. “They have dropped a little bit since we started getting them around the holidays.”
Fields doesn't expect much more of a drop in prices until after the Lenten season.
Boiling Madd is selling boiled crawfish currently at around $54 for an 8-pound bucket, but hasn't begun to sell live crawfish yet, she said.
"We haven't started selling live because we're not getting enough to sell live," Fields said.
Boiling Madd's prices are a little higher than other places in the area, but Fields and the restaurant's employees invest a lot of time and effort to try to perfect the boiling process, she said.
Michel is seeing decent demand for crawfish considering the state of the economy, he said. He's been selling crawfish for about $3 per pound live and $3.50 per pound boiled.
D&B sells crawfish just to carry out customers, while dine-in restaurants have to charge more because of greater labor costs, Michel said.