Crawfish supplies mixed in this area

Staff report
As the peak of the crawfish season approaches, two Tri-City seafood restaurants are reporting mixed results as they try to secure their supplies.
“We can get them every day, seven days a week,” said J.J. Starbuck, manager of Lapoint’s Steak and Seafood in Patterson.
“Our supplier is from Eunice,” he said of his pond crawfish. “The price is about average for when you get crawfish from a pond instead of the spillway.
“(Crawfish) is harder to get and the price is up there... Once the spillway comes up … we have two boats and we will be catching our own,” Starbuck said.
Although restaurants are currently getting them from ponds, not all suppliers can provide the needed amounts.
“We go every day, but when we ask for a certain amount they cut us way down because the catch is way down,” said Glinda Armond, owner of Glinda’s D&B Seafood in Morgan City, about her Church Point supplier.
“That is mainly due to the weather,” she said.
The price is “not too, too bad for the time of year,” Armond said. “It is to be expected really.”
As to when the spillway crawfish will be available, she said, “It depends on the water. There is no water now.”
The LSU AgCenter says the season started slowly but is starting to show promise.
Cold water has dulled the appetite of cold-blooded crawfish, keeping them small.
But Agent Mark Shirley is finding good numbers of small crawfish, which he hopes will grow to marketable size and boost the local supply.
“Right now it looks like we should have a sufficient supply of crawfish on into springtime. It’s just right now during Lent when we want a lot of them, it’s a little bit in short supply,” Shirley said.
Also typical for this time of year is smaller crawfish. But for consumers, Shirley said, this is not necessarily a negative. “Larger crawfish have less percentage of meat because they have big claws and heavier shells,” he said. “So if you’re looking to get the most meat out of the crawfish, enjoy some of those medium to smaller crawfish.”
About 15 percent of a medium-to-small crawfish’s body weight is tail meat, Shirley said. This drops to about 12 percent for large crawfish, so it takes about 8 pounds of large crawfish for 1 pound of tail meat.
For medium crawfish, it takes about 7 pounds.
Diane Fears of The Daily Review staff contributed to this story.