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It’s crawfish time: What to expect from the 2022 season

If Super Bowl Sunday was any indication, it’s officially crawfish season—a celebration that will continue as warmer weather approaches and COVID-19 restrictions continue to ease.

“We sold everything we had for the Super Bowl,” Heads & Tails Seafood General Manager Ryan Francis says. “We feel like it’s here. From now until the end of the season, there will be a rush on crawfish.”

The Silverside Lane seafood market and restaurant, which marked 40 years in business earlier this month, sells between 3,500 and 4,000 pounds of boiled crawfish on weekends during the season, Francis says.

Insiders say the 2022 crawfish harvest will be plentiful thanks to a warm fall.

Mild temperatures across south Louisiana in October, November and December helped hatchlings, so-called “young of the year” crawfish, to grow quickly on regional crawfish farms. The vast majority of crawfish consumed in Louisiana are pond raised, and hatchlings first emerge in mid-fall.

“They had a good head start on growth,” says LSU AgCenter area agent Mark Shirley, who is based in Abbeville. “Being a crustacean and cold-blooded, water temperature greatly influences how fast they grow.”

Before farm raising took off in the mid-20th century, crawfish were harvested in the wild from the Atchafalaya Basin over a shorter period that spanned late spring to early summer. Pond raising has extended crawfish season to run roughly from January to June, Shirley says. The peak of sales is usually during Holy Week, leading up to Easter Sunday celebrations.

A mix of sizes defines the first part of the season, when traps yield both mature and younger crawfish. But as the weather warms, crawfish continue to grow. That’s when select crawfish, or those graded larger, are easier to find.

“At a certain point in the season, we serve only select (larger) crawfish,” says Joey Faciane, executive chef of Sammy’s Grill Highland, a popular restaurant for eat-in or take-out boiled crawfish. During the season, Sammy’s serves between 2,000 and 3,000 pounds of crawfish on weekend nights, Faciane says.

After the disruption of the last two seasons, it looks like buying patterns are returning to normal, Francis says.

“We’re seeing some encouraging signs,” he says. “We have a lot of corporate clients, and they’re starting to throw big crawfish boils again.”

The price of crawfish usually comes down as the season progresses and supply grows. But Shirley warns diners that farmers are paying more for labor and materials, and the price of mudbugs could be higher this year.

“Consumers need to appreciate that, just like everything else, farmers are paying more for bait, traps, fuel, labor—all the inputs required to bring the product to market,” he says. “Don’t begrudge the farmers. It’s still reasonable and important to eat local.”