Crawfish lovers aboil
South Louisiana seafood lovers start asking for boiled crawfish as soon as they get tired of eating crabs.
That’s the joke Tony’s Seafood Market and Deli Manager Steve LeBlanc tells when talking about the start of Louisiana crawfish season.
“We started boiling in November and December,” LeBlanc said Friday about his Plank Road operation.
By mid-January, the store is boiling crawfish every day, close to 1,500 pounds a day Monday through Thursday and between 3,000 and 4,000 pounds daily on weekends, he said.
The price depends on harvests.
“We’re not going to have an abundant or a banner year, but I don’t think we’ll have a bust year, either,” said Stephen Minvielle, director of the Louisiana Crawfish Farmers Association, a nonprofit organization that represents about 1,500 crawfish farm operations across the state. He farms about 70 acres in New Iberia.
Currently, crawfish harvests are coming in about 20 to 30 percent below average, Minvielle said.
Minvielle blamed the slow start on the droughts that hit the area during late summer and early fall.
“We’re trying to make it happen,” he said. “If I had a crawfish magic wand I would be using it right about now.”
During a drought, crawfish must dig deeper into the ground to seek moisture while they hibernate, Minvielle said.
When crawfish dig too deeply some are unable to dig themselves back out, which leads to higher mortality rates, Minvielle said.
“We had three to four months of virtually no rain, which means a lot of them dug really deep,” Minvielle said.
David Savoy, president of the Louisiana Crawfish Farmers Association, farms about 1,500 acres in Richard, which sits about halfway between Church Point and Eunice.
“Last season was a benchmark for lack of quantity,” Savoy said. “We were at 20 percent last year. If I’m 100 percent better than last year, then I’m still running 40 percent of a normal year.”
He, too, blamed the shortages on last year’s severe droughts. He says the farmers now catching crawfish are likely the ones who were fortunate enough to get rain last year.
Savoy said prices have dropped every Monday for the past four weeks. However, those prices have not dropped on the retail end, he said.
“If you want a better deal, find a farmer and take a ride,” Savoy said referring to buying directly from a farmer.
Better deals or not, seafood fans are heading into local restaurants and stores to savor the sights, smells and tastes of boiled crawfish.
Sammy’s Grill on Highland Road in Baton Rouge was selling three-pound trays of boiled crawfish, with corn and potatoes, for $14.95 and four-pound trays, with the same sides, for $18.60 Friday, said John Bell, a Sammy’s Grill manager.
“They seem to a be a decent size right now. A little bigger than normal for this time of year,” Bell said.
Sammy’s Grill has been boiling this season’s crawfish since November.
“I would say boiled crawfish accounts for 20 percent of our sales right now,” Bell said.
Courville’s Seafood Market on North Alexander Avenue in Port Allen has been selling crawfish since last year, Courville’s employee Quin Nguyn said.
The price per pound of boiled crawfish at Courville’s was $4.49, Nguyn said.
Tony’s Seafood Market and Deli was selling boiled crawfish Friday for $3.99 a pound.
The cost for live crawfish at Tony’s was $2.99 a pound Friday, LeBlanc said.
LeBlanc said he predicts prices will go down some starting next week now that duck season is over.
“The hunters will go back to farming and will fish their areas. That leads to the pipeline (of crawfish) getting filled, and once it’s filled the prices start to go down,” LeBlanc said.