Lafayette (LA) Daily Advertiser, July 29, 1997

Crawfish been harvested in St. Martin for decades

by Jim Bradshaw

Mrs. Charles Hebert, the proprietress of the Hebert Hotel on South Main Street in Breaux Bridge is said to have been the first to serve crawfish in her restaurant, early in the 1920s. There was probably a local market for her crawfish dishes, but it was probably very local. As late as the 1930s, a U.S. Department of Agriculture agent complained in a letter to his superiors in Washington that crawfish were plentiful and would be an excellent source of protein for poor Cajuns, but that he could not convince them to eat crawfish frequently.

It might also be that the Cajuns were eating the crawfish behind the agent's back, because there was a stigma attached to eating crawfish at one time. And there weren't a whole lot of chefs experimenting with them in the kitchen. A dish seemingly definitive as crawfish etouffee did not begin to appear in the restaurants until the 1950s, when a few entrepreneurs first made peeled crawfish tails available commercially. Since then, of course, crawfish have found their way into surprisingly new dishes in surprisingly new places--but they had to come a long way to do it.

The Atchafalaya Basin has historically been the state's most important source of wild crawfish, and they have always been used by people living in the Atchafalaya Basin. There is an old description, its source unknown, of how Native Americans caught them:

"When they have a mind to get these shell-fish, they take a Piece of Venison, and half barbakue (sic) or roast it; they then cut it into thin Slices, which Slices they stick through with Reeds about six Inches asunder, betwixt Piece and Piece; then the Reeds are made sharp at one end; and so they stick a great many of them down in the bottom of the Water (thus baited) in the small Brooks and Runs, which the Craw-fish (sic) frequent. Thus the Indians sit by and tend those baited Sticks, every now and then taking them up, to see how many are at the Bait; where they generally find abundance; so take them off, and put them in a Basket for the purpose, and stick the Reeds down again. By this Method, they will, in a little time, catch several Bushels, which are as good as any I ever eat."

Simon Le Page du Pratz, probably the first Frenchman to chronicle the natural history of Louisiana, noted in 1753 that frog legs were used for bait.

Another writer, apparently roughly contemporaneous with du Pratz, says "it is sufficient to have two or three poles the length of a walking stick, to which is attached a piece of twine, and a piece of raw meat at the end of the twine. These lines are thrown into the water and drove out every fifteen minutes, and they never fail to be loaded with ten or twelve, or even fifteen fine big crawfish."

Crawfish nets came into vogue in the Atchafalaya Basin in the 1930s, and from them the industry moved to crawfish traps which have been in use since the 1950s or before.

In 1996, fishermen in St. Martin Parish alone harvested 8 million pounds of crawfish from the Basin and another 14 million from ponds. Across Acadiana the crawfish harvest was 96 million pounds worth $56 million.

Crawfish by the numbers: