Crawfish season off to a good start; businesses say cold weather not affecting the mudbugs

Crawfish are hot and ready. It’s the season many have been waiting for.

“The season’s looking pretty good. The catch is starting to come up, the fishermen are actually getting started, so we should see a very large influx of crawfish in the area soon,” said Elvondae Raybon, owner of Pit-N-Peel.

Raybon has been serving the Baton Rouge community for the last nine years. Pit-N-Peel has been selling crawfish this season since November, and the outlook for this year is promising.

“What I’m seeing in the Delcambre and Breaux Bridge areas are very large crawfish coming out of the basin. Hopefully, we’ll continue to get spillway crawfish,” he said.

Raybon says that, luckily, the freezing temperatures we’ve been experiencing on and off for the last month won’t have any effect on the bugs.

“You start to see molts as the weather changes, but the crawfish is going to be plentiful no matter what,” Raybon explained.

But they do come with a big price tag.

“Prices are very high, but they’re slowly trending down. We’re actually starting our day off at $6.99/lb. Hopefully, that will continue to go down as our workers hit the ponds on Monday,” Raybon said.

He says customers should see the price cut in half just in time for Mardi Gras.