Crawfish prices down, size good

Now that the height of crawfish season has passed, prices are down and there are plenty mudbugs to go around.
“The attitude right now is ‘Let’s go out and get some crawfish,’” said Jeff DeRouen with Prairie Cajun Seafood Wholesale Distributors and Crawfish Enterprises. “The price is down to about $1.50 a pound retail. It’s down almost 50 cents since Good Friday.”
“The peeled price is also down. We are barely keeping up. We are shipping out crawfish every day to the East and West coasts. Crawfish and gumbo are the two foods Louisiana is known for. The availability and size — a good medium — are good, too. Now’s the time to get them.”
DeRouen said recent heavy rains have been good for this year’s crawfish crop, but as temperatures warm up, the crawfish season will cool down.
“All this rain has been good for crawfish but bad for sales,” he said. “But it’s good environment for crawfish to grow in. The wetter the better for crawfish.”
“We should have crawfish through about mid-June, depending on the weather. If there’s not enough rain, farmers might have to pump water and as it warms up, they will burrow and get hard. We always have to deal with Mother Nature.”
Fresh boiled crawfish at College Junction Mudbugs are going for $4.29 a pound and for $3.99 a pound for those purchasing 15 or more pounds.
“Business is going good,” said Clint Aucoin with College Junction Mudbugs. “We are now getting large crawfish. They are finally at that point, and we noticed the size increase about two weeks ago.”
Aucoin said this year’s sales have been much better than last year.
“Last year was not a good crawfish season,” he said. “We will try to keep boiling until July 4, and I think the price will drop a little more in the next few weeks.”