Crawfish industry’s Holy Grail

Holy Week is the height of crawfish sales in Louisiana. On Friday and Saturday combined, Tony’s Seafood on Plank Road expects to sell more than 100,000 pounds of live and boiled crawfish to consumers planning Easter weekend crawfish boils, says owner Bill Pizzolatto. “It’s always our busiest time for crawfish,” he says.

All week long, producers have fished their ponds furiously in an attempt to extract enough mudbugs to meet soaring demand. “Depending on conditions, I might end up fishing my ponds twice a day during Holy Week,” says Rayne crawfish farmer Aaron Melancon.

Prices for mudbugs at Tony’s are $2.79 per pound for live and $3.79 per pound for boiled. “You see higher prices this week, and next week they usually drop off,” Pizzolatto says. “Except for the unusually chilly conditions this week, which have slowed the catch, 2013 has been a good year for crawfish because of a warm, wet fall.”

The lion’s share of Louisiana crawfish is raised on ponds where rice crops are co-cultured or rotated. Crawfish from the Atchafalaya Basin come later in the season, and will begin arriving in larger numbers shortly, says Pizzolatto. “That’s going to make the crawfish supply really heavy in the next few weeks.” —Maggie Heyn Richardson