Commercial Crawfish

Louisiana fishermen have been harvesting crawfish commercially since at least the late 1800s. In the late 1940s, rice farmers developed a method to farm crawfish. Farm-raised and wild-caught crawfish crops generally complement each other—farm-raised crawfish are available late fall through mid-spring, and, if conditions are favorable, wild-caught crawfish dominate the market from mid-spring to early summer. The rivers, bayous, swamps, and lakes of the Atchafalaya and Vermilion-Teche basins are significant sources of wild crawfish, but the vast majority of the state’s crawfish production is farm-raised in thousands of acres of crawfish ponds. With more than 1,000 crawfish fishermen and more than 1,300 crawfish farmers, Louisiana leads the nation in crawfish production, supplying 100 to 120 million pounds per year. Louisiana’s crawfish industry contributes more than $300 million to the state’s economy annually.