Deep Freeze Slows Crawfish Harvest in Vermilion Parish
By Karl Wiggers
Louisiana Farm Bureau News
KAPLAN, La. — An early sunrise in Vermilion Parish revealed a layer of ice still clinging to the water in Adler Stelly’s crawfish ponds — not enough to step on, but enough to stop the season in its tracks.
“Yeah, this week right here we’re going to see very little fishing,” said Stelly, a rice and crawfish farmer from Kaplan. “Definitely need to let the temperatures get above freezing before we can get in the water to try to get anything harvested.”
Stelly said farmers in his area begin setting traps as early as November, and by January they’re typically “pretty much all in.” Even before this week’s freeze, he said production was running below normal at a time when many growers were hoping to build momentum.
“After the rice season we just had, I think we were all hoping for a big blowout start,” Stelly said. “But, I mean, it is a start. We are seeing crawfish for our future, but it’s a little slower than normalstart. Mother Nature is here giving us another little slowdown, but, I still think it’s going to be all right in the long term.”
Weather can swing crawfish production dramatically from year to year, Stelly said, and some seasons look much different by the time January rolls around.
“Other years when it doesn’t get as cold, I’ve seen this being, you know, almost full swing in January,” he said.
Stelly also pointed to the growing importance of crawfish on Louisiana rice farms. With crawfish acreage expanding over the past two decades and continued investment in research and markets, he said the relationship between the two commodities is tighter than ever.
“Crawfish is almost a necessity to growing and harvesting rice,” Stelly said. “With the input cost where they are and price of rice where it’s at, rice farmers are depending more and more on crawfish to try to make ends meet.”
The timing of the slowdown is especially frustrating as farmers near a stretch of high-demand dates for Louisiana crawfish, such as the Super Bowl, Valentine’s Day and Lent.
“I mean, we’re getting close to Super Bowl, Valentine’s Day around the corner. The first week of Lent right there,” Stelly said. “Hopefully, Mother Nature gives us all this cold right here and is gone by the time those swing around. Every week you miss in the crawfish business is a week gone. You don’t get it back.”