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“Worst Crawfish Season Ever” 2023 Drought Leads to Poor Crawfish Production for Gulf South
Louisiana crawfish farmers are in the midst of what they categorize as the worst crawfish season they’ve ever experienced. The 3-month drought over the summer wreaked havoc on the rice fields making the mud too dry for the crawfish to burrow down. Farmers were hopeful that the rain that fell over the fall and winter months might have been able to re-populate their ponds with crawfish however they said they are only catching a handful of crawfish in each trap.
John Devereaux of Breaux Bridge, LA, is one of those farmers who’s seeing the demand at an all-time high but has no crawfish to supply the seafood buyers with. “The bugs just aren’t there. I’m catching a fraction of what I normally catch this time of year,” he said. Devereaux said he’s seeing crawfish going for $8.00 a pound. “The buyers want the bugs but we just can’t get them. It’s frustrating,” he said.
As the rice field farmers are struggling, Louisiana’s river fishermen are seeing a more plentiful crop. I was able to make a trip with CJ Mayeux to the Honey Island Swamp. The swamp is fed by the East Pearl River which serves as the border between Mississippi and Louisiana. Mayeux said the river crawfish could escape the drought over the summer because they always had access to water. “The river was low this summer but it didn’t go dry like the ponds did,” he said. Mayeux uses what is referred to in the crawfishing industry as “pillow traps”. These traps are shaped like a pillow with two openings on one side. As we approached his first spot he tossed a few cut pogey’s (menhaden) into the trap. He also added a 6-inch piece of processed crawfish bait called Cajun World Crawfish Bait made by Purina. Mayeux tied the trap to an overhanging cypress branch and set it at a 45-degree angle. “If you lay these traps flat on the bottom you won’t catch any because the entrance holes aren’t touching the swamp bottom,” he said. As we maneuvered through the swamp Mayeaux set 30 traps before we headed back. “I’ll check these traps every other day during crawfish season,” he said.
Mayeaux is starting to catch crawfish but admits it’s not like it will be when the weather warms. “In April and May I’ll be catching a sack of crawfish (40 lbs.) for every 10 traps I check. While the wild-caught crawfish fishermen are working overtime to fill the absence of pond-raised crawfish, the amount of crawfish they have caught is a drop in the bucket when compared to how much is produced by ponds. Farm-raised crawfish account for approximately 85% of crawfish harvested, and production from natural rivers and swamps accounts for approximately 15%.
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