Crawfish farmers seeing high demand for Easter weekend

IOWA, La. (KPLC) - It’s Easter weekend, and so many across Southwest Louisiana will be celebrating with a crawfish boil. With packed lines at the restaurants and the drive-throughs this Good Friday, even behind the scenes, crawfish farmers are also feeling the rush.

For crawfish farmer Joel Stelly of Stelly Farms, last year was tough.

“When COVID came out, they dropped the price to a dollar right away. And we either couldn’t run, or the price was just down to a dollar.”

his partner, crawfish salesman John Denison of Bayou Rouge Crawfish says this year also started off rocky.

“With two major hurricanes that came through, we’re not sure if that was some of the-. We lost some of our crop to that, but definitely a challenging year and a slow start from normal years.”

Stelly says, after a 10-day delay following the freeze, the crawfish crop is finally starting to grow.

“The crawfish catch started out slow, but it has in the last couple weeks picked up to where it should be. So, things are looking up.”

For them Easter weekend is a busy one. Denison calls it the big day for crawfish.

“It is a super week, we sell a lot of sacks. We have a lot of product that’s going to Texas.”

Stelly is hopeful their good catch will continue throughout the summer.

“I feel like the catch is just starting to come in really good. And I feel like it’s going to recover, and we’re going to have a great year. I feel like we’re going to have crawfish until mid-summer.”

All day, trucks have been loading freshly caught crawfish to restaurants and consumers just in time for Easter weekend.

For more on Bayou Rouge Crawfish, call 337-661-9319.

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