I'm having a boil next weekend and having my bro-in-law bring it in from Lake Charles. How is the crop at the moment? Expensive? Size?
Don't know the exact price but can find out for you; however, they should be cheap- usually plummet after Easter and farmers often keep all or a large part of catch to stock/re-stock lakes that will be fished the next year. We ate some last week and I was surprised at how good they were. Nice size and they weren't dark red/hard. When the water starts getting hot, their shells harden and turn dark red. The greenish shells are the optimum choice cause they've molted recently when you see that and aren't hard. It probably depends on where you get them though, different lakes, different O2 levels, etc. all affect that. We even had large crawfish fields where the size varied by "Cuts" levees. When my sister would come with friends to catch some for a boil, we'd tell her which cut to go in.
Pretty cheap. I paid 1.09 for mixed crawfish on Saturday and 1.39 for selects on Sunday. The mixed were so-so in size, but the selects were worthy of serving to mom on Mother's Day.
Just called a farmer who also is part owner of a crawfish distributorship and he said .65c. For our Cajuns who live out of State- if you type in "Live Crawfish" there are several businesses that will ship to you. Here's one I just pulled and have no idea who the owner is or how the service is.
Buying seafood at a market in BR is always more expensive than you guys. Guess the price of delivery has gone skyhigh b/c of gas prices. I haven't paid .65 for crawfish in over a decade.
Oh, no doubt, we buy directly from the farmer and knock out the middle man. It's getting to where they "Contract" all of their crawfish but will sell a few sacks on the side to close friends/family members. That would definitely explain the price difference. The farmer always takes the hit, the retailer always makes there profit by just adjusting it on the other end. When we had 300 acres, when they fell below .50c, we'd quit selling them and keep our catch for stocking other lakes
I use to drive down to Belle River to buy from the fishermen when we had large crawfish boils. I stopped doing that when gas prices went up. Also, large crawfish don't seem to be large anymore. Ticks me off when I pay select price for unselect crawfish. Guess they are shipping out the large crawfish to get top dollar?
