NEW ORLEANS– Tomorrow’s Good Friday and that means it will be a huge day for crawfish sales. We all know how to eat them, but what about catching them? WGNO’s Kenny Lopez talked to a crawfish fisherman about how he catches those delicious mudbugs.
Have you ever wondered where crawfish come from? Well, they come from crawfish ponds like the one at Melancon Crawfish Farm in Cut Off, Louisiana.
Just down Mudbug Lane, there’s a pond where the mudbugs live on Melancon Crawfish Farm.
“It takes about a month to prep and plant rice and let it grow to make sure the crawfish have good and clear water,” Lance Melancon said.
Lance Melancon is a crawfish fisherman who uses his 1,600 traps on his 32-acre farm to catch crawfish. He says the crawfish like the rice in his pond.
“Crawfish eat rice, so we plant rice, and when the rice goes down it makes algae and it gets soft and they start to eat it. That’s what they live off of,” he said.
Today he took his boat out to empty the crawfish cages and see what he’s caught.
“I would say average about 3-5 pounds a trap.”
After caught, then the mudbugs are grated, sacked, weighed, and tagged. Then they head to the coolers until they are bought.
Melancon says the secret to his success is, “Just plant a lot of rice. Pump a lot of water. Keep the water clear and you’ll grow good crawfish,” he said.
This Easter weekend, he hopes to catch 2,000 sacks of these crawfish for everyone to enjoy.