Speaker 1: Welcome to Backwoods University, a place where we focus on wildlife,
Speaker 1: wild places and the people who dedicate their lives to
Speaker 1: conserving both. Big shout out to onex Hunt for their
Speaker 1: support of this podcast. I'm your host, Lake Pickle. Last
Speaker 1: week we dug into the topic of crayfish, crawfish and crawdads.
Speaker 1: I purposely inserted the crawdad terminology in there because some
Speaker 1: of y'all let me know loud and clear last time
Speaker 1: that I left that name out the first time around. Anyway,
Speaker 1: we found out a good bit. But like I said,
Speaker 1: and like we saw, there's a whole lot more to
Speaker 1: learn about these tiny critters. Heck, we didn't even talk
Speaker 1: about the crawfish that end up in a crawfish bowl.
Speaker 1: But fret not, my friends, because that's what this week's
Speaker 1: episode is all about. So get ready because we're in
Speaker 1: for another round of stories and facts that are both
Speaker 1: interesting and unexpected. Let's get into it.
Speaker 2: Oh and you'll like this.
Speaker 3: Sorry, I'm all in. I listened to your podcast about
Speaker 3: the pogy boats, okay and all that. Yeah, you can
Speaker 3: cut this out of the whole podcast if you need
Speaker 3: too or whatever, but yeah, I'll listen to your podcast
Speaker 3: about the pogy boats, and for a while I had
Speaker 3: been driving out on Louisiana and getting pogies to bake
Speaker 3: crawfish crawfish traps with.
Speaker 1: Let me give you a little bit of context. I
Speaker 1: know it may sound confusing from the jump, you know,
Speaker 1: like I said, we're talking about crawfish again, but this
Speaker 1: guy's talking about pogi's. What's going on here? Well, the
Speaker 1: man that you're hearing is a friend of mine by
Speaker 1: the name of Jason Roberts, a fellow Mississippian, a heck
Speaker 1: of a wildlife artist and a crawfish farmer who owns
Speaker 1: and operates Mississippi Crawfish Company. I head up Jason about
Speaker 1: an interview to get the crawfish farming side of this story,
Speaker 1: which will dive into fully. But when he threw in
Speaker 1: this a little bit about pogi's, well it got my attention.
Speaker 3: And let me tell you, like, pogis work extremely well
Speaker 3: for crawfish bait. When you bait these crawfish traps early
Speaker 3: in the season, when the water temperature is cold, you're
Speaker 3: using you typically want to use fish right just because
Speaker 3: it just gives off this like especially pogies, they give
Speaker 3: off this like oily just you know, Yeah, they're more potent,
Speaker 3: so it attracts the crawfish in there when they're like
Speaker 3: less active. As the water temperature starts warming up, you
Speaker 3: use this, you switch over to either a combination or
Speaker 3: eventually switch over entirely to this pellet bait. And it's
Speaker 3: like this tube. You know, it's almost like a little
Speaker 3: thicker than a hot dog, I guess, but about that
Speaker 3: length of like this you know, artificial bait, and it's
Speaker 3: just like compacted just grain and other kind of fish
Speaker 3: and animal parts in there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, sounds kind of like the catfish food kind of.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like that, or like if you're familiar with
Speaker 3: like range cubes, they yeah, at'll yeah, it's like that,
Speaker 3: but bigger. But there's just like some little bit of
Speaker 3: you know, fish, fish or whatever in there, just to
Speaker 3: give it a little bit of stink. But that's a
Speaker 3: lot easier to work with because it just doesn't stink
Speaker 3: like fish when it starts to get hot and all. Anyway,
Speaker 3: getting back to it, I was going to tell you
Speaker 3: about the pogies. I've been using pogies for the past
Speaker 3: several years. Early in the season, well, I listened to
Speaker 3: your podcast. I'm like, man, these pogies is this is
Speaker 3: like becoming a controversial thing, Like do I need to
Speaker 3: like seek out another bait fish? And of course I've
Speaker 3: used you know, just old crappy you know uses like
Speaker 3: that from going crappy fishing and just save all stuff,
Speaker 3: put it in the freezer. That works really really well,
Speaker 3: even old catfish. For some reason, catfish doesn't work. Nothing
Speaker 3: works as good as pogies. But long story short, I've
Speaker 3: kind of gotten into frogging, yeah, with my kids, and
Speaker 3: I decided to take one of my girls and a
Speaker 3: buddy and his kid. We went frogging up in this
Speaker 3: lake in the Delta last year. And when we first
Speaker 3: got going, man, it was like carp i was jumping
Speaker 3: invasive carp jumping all over the place. We had one
Speaker 3: jumping the boat, and it was like a giant, like
Speaker 3: thirty pound, you know, jumps in there, hits the guys
Speaker 3: like trollo motor or something and just starts spewing blood.
Speaker 2: It's just a mess.
Speaker 3: Of course, kids are freaked out, and I'm like, sure,
Speaker 3: I like goy So that kind of we caught a
Speaker 3: few frogs, but kind of like happened early on in
Speaker 3: the night. So it just kind of set the tone
Speaker 3: for our frog in that night, you know, and everybody
Speaker 3: was like on edge, and yeah, it's like, man, somebody
Speaker 3: needs to do something about these about these carp and
Speaker 3: these invasive carp because they're just ruining the the experience here.
Speaker 3: I just want to go out and go go for
Speaker 3: fron yeah, you know. And so I thought, man, I
Speaker 3: wonder if it's a way to turn those into crawfish bait.
Speaker 3: Long story short, I started doing some research on it,
Speaker 3: and I found a place in Indianola and apparently somehow
Speaker 3: the Department of Wildlife had like I don't wan to say,
Speaker 3: pay people on how it all works to go out
Speaker 3: and catch these invasive carp and some of these Delta lakes.
Speaker 3: And this company like buys them and they you know,
Speaker 3: cut them up and back at them up, and they
Speaker 3: ship them and they ate, they sell them for food,
Speaker 3: and they even sell them for it started selling them
Speaker 3: to places in Louisiana for crawfish bait.
Speaker 2: This place is right up the road.
Speaker 3: So I'm like, man, this is just a win all around.
Speaker 3: So long story short, I've worked out I've quit using
Speaker 3: Pogi's entirely. Now I'm using this these carp I get
Speaker 3: them cut up in the little two by two inch
Speaker 3: pieces and they're perfect, just you know, pre cut dropping
Speaker 3: down the and they work every bit as good as
Speaker 3: a pogy Do you really think I would cut that out?
Speaker 2: And I use it. I'm absolutely keeping that.
Speaker 1: God is my witness. I had no idea the old
Speaker 1: pogy boat episode would work its way into another backwoods university.
Speaker 1: But here we are, and now that we had a
Speaker 1: bit of an icebreaker with meeting Jason and had a
Speaker 1: great story that involved crawfish, pogy boats, flying carp and
Speaker 1: frog gigging. In all honesty, that's gonna be a tough
Speaker 1: story to follow up. But let's get into this whole
Speaker 1: crawfish farming endeavor. When did you get into crawfish farming?
Speaker 3: Farming crawfish? I started doing that in twenty twenty two.
Speaker 3: That's when I actually bought some old catfish ponds in
Speaker 3: bal Zona. That's where we're doing this crawfish farming thing.
Speaker 1: Now you answered like, there's more to the story there,
Speaker 1: Well there is, okay, yeah, Well, I mean I think,
Speaker 1: like I told you before, well maybe I didn't, but
Speaker 1: you know, this whole thing started from just.
Speaker 3: Being a big duck hunter. And we just had noticed
Speaker 3: when we were draining our duck hole that there's crawfish everywhere.
Speaker 3: One spring, and I thought, man, let's get some crawfish
Speaker 3: traps and see if we can catch them and maybe
Speaker 3: just kind of throw them in our crawfish bowl along
Speaker 3: with the ones that we've purchased, sure, you know, kind
Speaker 3: of supplement. And you know, we bought some crawfish traps
Speaker 3: and started catching them out of that duck hole, I mean,
Speaker 3: started catching a lot of them. And it was at
Speaker 3: the point where it's like, man, maybe we could maybe
Speaker 3: we could sell.
Speaker 2: These, yeah, turn it into the business. Yeah yeah.
Speaker 3: And And anyway, that that property, that big duck hole
Speaker 3: was right next to the Black River that you know
Speaker 3: floods this is in you know Von missip Be. Flood's
Speaker 3: really really bad during the spring. Sometimes it'll get out
Speaker 3: and it'll stay out, you know, for a month. And
Speaker 3: so that was the problem. There after we had bought
Speaker 3: a bunch of crawfish, you know, harvesting equipment, traps and
Speaker 3: boat and that kind of thing, and and and put
Speaker 3: them out there. The river jumped out and stayed out
Speaker 3: for an entire month. One time it was like, okay, this,
Speaker 3: this can't be done.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know.
Speaker 3: And so I had had this idea that heck, these
Speaker 3: old catfish ponds up in the Delta a perfect right.
Speaker 3: You got already a you know, totally leveed off pond.
Speaker 3: You know, you got a well there as a water source.
Speaker 3: And uh, I mean most of the time, like I said,
Speaker 3: because you got all four levees, you're not going to
Speaker 3: have to deal with you know, flooding from somewhere. You know,
Speaker 3: typically it's going to cause that problem. So but yeah,
Speaker 3: it was I'd been looking around for for some old
Speaker 3: catfish ponds for a long time, which are very hard
Speaker 3: to come by, but they're not you know, grown up
Speaker 3: in trees and then WRP or CRP and whatever. And
Speaker 3: so I was actually able to find these in Balzona
Speaker 3: and in the spring. It was April i think, whenever
Speaker 3: we closed on that property of twenty twenty two, and
Speaker 3: so that's when I guess you could say I started
Speaker 3: farming them, you know, doing it actually commercially, you know,
Speaker 3: selling them. Before then, it was all just kind of
Speaker 3: a thing like after duck season was over, we'd pull out.
Speaker 2: The crawfish traps.
Speaker 3: In February, it'd start catching crawfish all spring long. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and I say we, I mean it was it was
Speaker 3: me and my dad, you know, and it eventually kind
Speaker 3: of ended up being mostly me going out there.
Speaker 2: I mean, he'd come with me every now and then.
Speaker 3: I'd bring friends and that kind of thing, you know,
Speaker 3: every now and then, and of course they would get
Speaker 3: a taste of it and be like this is this,
Speaker 3: you can have this.
Speaker 1: And they didn't want to come back.
Speaker 3: Just let me know when you bring the crawfish back,
Speaker 3: and I'll be there for the crawfish bul Because it's
Speaker 3: just so labor intensive.
Speaker 1: How much would you catch, like in the spring before
Speaker 1: you had the ponds before you how much would you
Speaker 1: catch when you're just recreationally doing it?
Speaker 3: You know, It just all the ends on how many
Speaker 3: traps we had out gotcha, no catching anywhere from a
Speaker 3: pound to three pounds per trap. So I mean at
Speaker 3: a commercial like a rate. I mean, like if you
Speaker 3: had a crawfish farm, that's what you would expect to
Speaker 3: catch during the peak of the season.
Speaker 2: Really. Yeah, So that's.
Speaker 3: Kind of what made me think, Okay, you know, I
Speaker 3: always thought that crawfish farming is just something they do
Speaker 3: in Louisiana.
Speaker 2: We can't.
Speaker 3: We can't do it here. You know, it just can't
Speaker 3: be done here for whatever reason. I didn't know enough
Speaker 3: about it as to the reasons why it couldn't be
Speaker 3: done here. But all that to say that's not true.
Speaker 3: It can be done here, currently doing it, but it. Yeah,
Speaker 3: that that kind of made me think, Oh, you can
Speaker 3: catch this much crawfish up here, and the qualities every
Speaker 3: bit is good. I mean, you know, why aren't we
Speaker 3: doing this?
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, I'd say that's a bit of an
Speaker 1: unorthodox start to a crawfish farm, but I like it.
Speaker 1: I'm also intrigued at the notion that Jason, much like
Speaker 1: all the rest of us, acknowledged that there's just a
Speaker 1: whole heck of a lot that we don't know about crawfish,
Speaker 1: such as him thinking that Louisiana was the only place
Speaker 1: that you could farm crawfish. I'm interested now in what
Speaker 1: kind of species he was catching, because, if you remember
Speaker 1: last week, the two crawfish that we talked about the
Speaker 1: most were warpaint mudbugs and Jackson prairie crayfish, none of
Speaker 1: which would you often see in a bowl. So what
Speaker 1: species are we After thinking about species of crawfish. Now,
Speaker 1: because of my conversation with Calvin, my ignorance to it.
Speaker 1: I didn't even know there were different species. I just
Speaker 1: thought there was crawfish, you know. So when you were
Speaker 1: first catching these crawfish just for the sake of we
Speaker 1: can make a bowl out of this, like, did you
Speaker 1: know what you were catching? When the first time he.
Speaker 2: Tried to boil it? Did it turn out?
Speaker 3: Well?
Speaker 2: Like, how did that go? Yeah?
Speaker 3: So we did know what we were catching. And only
Speaker 3: because LSU has this Crawfish Production Manual that you can
Speaker 3: just google and pull it up, and it's this whole
Speaker 3: just I don't know how many page thing of like
Speaker 3: if you were gonna want to farm crawfish, it's the
Speaker 3: whole guidebook of how to do it, you know, and
Speaker 3: it gives you the two main species of crawfish that
Speaker 3: you are commercially you know, farmed and caught while in
Speaker 3: the wild, you know, child flaid, basin and wherever else.
Speaker 1: The LSU ag Centers Louisiana Crawfish Production Manual, page one
Speaker 1: list the two species of commercial importance and Louisiana crawfish
Speaker 1: ponds as the red Swamp crawfish and the white River crawfish.
Speaker 3: And so once we started catching these crawfish, I immediately
Speaker 3: kind of did some research and found that Yeah, and
Speaker 3: it just I mean, I'd like dove all in to
Speaker 3: find out and learn everything about yeah, crawfish and their
Speaker 3: behavior and crawfish farm and all that. So yeah, I
Speaker 3: quickly learned what we were catching and what we wanted
Speaker 3: and what we didn't want. But then I was occasionally
Speaker 3: catching one species of crawfish that I wasn't sure what
Speaker 3: it was for a long time.
Speaker 2: Finally figured it out.
Speaker 3: What wasn't I think maybe a common name in Louisiana
Speaker 3: All times they call them a coffin cutter crawfish.
Speaker 1: Coffin cutter, devil crayfish, painted devil, thornytail, painted hand jewel, mudbug.
Speaker 1: I don't know. It almost sounds like the scientist in
Speaker 1: charge of naming crawfish was fond of death metal music.
Speaker 2: But who knows.
Speaker 3: Anyway, that's not your red swamp crawfish or white river
Speaker 3: crawfish that you're catching that you're or buying to go
Speaker 3: have a crawfish bowl. Okay, Yeah, but they're very colorful.
Speaker 3: They're kind of colored like a blue crab. Yeah, and uh,
Speaker 3: real pretty crawfish, and they get really big. And I
Speaker 3: started catching those every now and then, like early in
Speaker 3: the season, like they're in February, early parts of March,
Speaker 3: when the water temperature was still kind of cool. For
Speaker 3: some reason, I guess, whenever it the water temp heetes up,
Speaker 3: I quit catching them.
Speaker 2: But I didn't know what they were.
Speaker 3: What they were, I mean, huge claws on these things,
Speaker 3: but not a whole lot of tail meat considering how
Speaker 3: big the body is, so they weren't the best for cooking.
Speaker 3: And you know, but yeah, I didn't know what I
Speaker 3: was catching there for a while. I was just throwing
Speaker 3: them out. I thought, you know, yeah, real interesting. I
Speaker 3: realized that there's definitely not just the Red Swamp crawfish
Speaker 3: or the White River there. There's more out there. So
Speaker 3: I told you before I had bought these two ponds
Speaker 3: to start farming crawfish over in the Delta. Yeah, since then,
Speaker 3: we've added on some more. We got another property with
Speaker 3: about seven ponds. These ponds kind of flooded naturally just
Speaker 3: from the way they had been kind of sitting there
Speaker 3: for a while and got a bad beaver problem. Beavers
Speaker 3: had burrowed through one of the levees. That was kind
Speaker 3: of letting some creek water dump into one of the ponds,
Speaker 3: and they were flooded naturally, you know, I guess yearly,
Speaker 3: but only to a small extent, but enough to like
Speaker 3: have this population of crawfish in there. Of course, when
Speaker 3: I made the decision to start farming them and selling them,
Speaker 3: you're kind of required to learn all about them, sure,
Speaker 3: I mean, I need to know all there is to know,
Speaker 3: which is good because just naturally just kind of obsessed
Speaker 3: with learning as much as I can about crawfish. It's
Speaker 3: a weird thing, I know, but it's not that I
Speaker 3: can't help. I don't know why, but they just fascinated me.
Speaker 3: They like you said, I mean, there's so much to learn,
Speaker 3: and they're.
Speaker 2: An interesting little critter.
Speaker 3: But what we've realized this year with our season, with
Speaker 3: some new ponds that we've got and whatnot, we were
Speaker 3: catching the heck out of blue crawfish. I mean went
Speaker 3: for a stretch of I don't know, it was probably
Speaker 3: a month long where almost every time we'd run traps,
Speaker 3: we'd catch at least one or two or even a
Speaker 3: few blue crawfish. And that was so neat matter of fact,
Speaker 3: one day, they ran a pond and about a quarter
Speaker 3: of the sack had crawfish in there that were either
Speaker 3: completely blue or they had just variations.
Speaker 2: Of like the blue claws or blue back.
Speaker 3: And then the rest of them was red and they
Speaker 3: were like just the craziest paint job on these crawfish. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you know that kind of led me down, like causes that, Yeah,
Speaker 3: why is that? And I mean the best that I
Speaker 3: can I was able to find was I mean, Google
Speaker 3: will tell you. It's like it's has something to do
Speaker 3: with what they're eating, and it's a genetic thing obviously,
Speaker 3: It's like a genetic thing that just I guess expresses
Speaker 3: itself under good habitat conditions, which told me I'm like.
Speaker 2: Okay, well that's great. Yeah, we're doing good, yeah, doing
Speaker 2: something right. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, But I never had that when we were catching
Speaker 3: crawfish and doing this thing over at the property on
Speaker 3: the Big Black River and never saw a blue and
Speaker 3: never saw a whole lot of diversity over there besides
Speaker 3: that lonesome grave digger often cutter crawfish.
Speaker 2: That was the only thing.
Speaker 3: But since kind of I've moved the thing over to
Speaker 3: the delta, it's been a lot more variation.
Speaker 2: I guess we'll get the blue crawfish.
Speaker 3: There's other species, it's I guess, like with everything else
Speaker 3: in the Delta, you know, it's just kind of a
Speaker 3: it's a unique spot, yeah, and then just the different
Speaker 3: stuff going on over there.
Speaker 2: Sure, but it's so fascinating.
Speaker 1: Fascinating stuff. Indeed, from catching crawfish that he wasn't sure
Speaker 1: of the species to coloration that indicates good habitat, sounds
Speaker 1: to me like he has a good thing going. And
Speaker 1: for real, I saw.
Speaker 2: A picture of this blue crawfish. It's on the YouTube
Speaker 2: version of this.
Speaker 1: Episode if you haven't seen it, and it's wild looking.
Speaker 1: Doesn't even look real, to be honest. It's also not
Speaker 1: surprising to me that the Mississippi Delta was a good
Speaker 1: place for the natural floodplain and the fertile soul that
Speaker 1: seems to make everything else there grow big. It's likely
Speaker 1: a good spot for crawfish too. I want to know
Speaker 1: what the process was. How did you get this farm
Speaker 1: up and going?
Speaker 3: I just knew from just like the cycle of how
Speaker 3: crawfish work. You know that, like almost anywhere in Mississippi
Speaker 3: where you've got a duckhole or something that's just like
Speaker 3: seasonally flooded, either when it's naturally or through you know,
Speaker 3: somebody pumping it with a well, you know, to flood
Speaker 3: for ducks or whatever, and that water's taken away at
Speaker 3: some point in the season and you've got a little
Speaker 3: dry spell there to get rid of or just naturally
Speaker 3: to prevent the population of predatory.
Speaker 2: Fish in there.
Speaker 3: You're gonna have a situation where the crawfish is at
Speaker 3: the top of the food chain, so you're gonna have
Speaker 3: there's any crawfish in there at all. Over time, that
Speaker 3: population is just gonna take off and explode.
Speaker 2: Interesting, and so that.
Speaker 3: That's kind of why I thought, well, these old catfish
Speaker 3: ponds in the Delta are perfect because the catfish are
Speaker 3: taken out of there, right and a lot of these
Speaker 3: ponds are flooded for duck hunting, and they're probably already
Speaker 3: full of crawfish. And sure enough, when I found this
Speaker 3: property with these two ponds absolutely full of crawfish already
Speaker 3: interesting and so I didn't even have to stock the ponds.
Speaker 3: No kidding, no, kid, Well that worked out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, because that's gonna be my That was a
Speaker 1: question I had. I was like, do you bring crawfish
Speaker 1: in and hope that they keep to reproduced or like.
Speaker 1: But you didn't have to know.
Speaker 3: And that's what's so great about it is they do
Speaker 3: their own thing. They take care of themselves like they are.
Speaker 3: They're easy as far as I mean, unlike you know,
Speaker 3: other aquaculture like catfish. You have to feed them. Yeah,
Speaker 3: that's labor intensive.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: The real work comes in with harvesting them, sure, you know,
Speaker 3: and that is labor intensive and lasts for several months
Speaker 3: or a few months. But the rest of the year,
Speaker 3: I mean, you're hanging out letting them do their thing.
Speaker 3: And you know, I'm a big duck hunter, so I'm
Speaker 3: duck hunting the pines during during the winter, you know.
Speaker 2: So it kind of works out.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, that's a gift that keeps on giving.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I mean to me, when I started, yeah,
Speaker 3: like you trying to figure out this whole thing and
Speaker 3: thinking about it.
Speaker 2: You know, these old pines and Delta.
Speaker 3: You know, man, you already got crawfish in them, they
Speaker 3: got a well, you got all this stuff, and you know,
Speaker 3: Delta is known for having a bunch of ducks. I mean, like, okay,
Speaker 3: for me, I'm like, let's get into crawfish.
Speaker 1: Farm when when ye yeah, yeah, so that's that's kind
Speaker 1: of how it all started.
Speaker 3: I was like, let's, you know, buy a piece of
Speaker 3: property and you know, duck hunt it during the winter
Speaker 3: and harvest crawfish off there during the spring, and uh,
Speaker 3: that kind of keeps it to where you know, I'm
Speaker 3: kind of doing something I always want to do, you know,
Speaker 3: on my own, and hopefully I can generate a little
Speaker 3: bit of income.
Speaker 1: So do you think I mean, obviously you're saying like
Speaker 1: the harvest part of it, which I want to ask
Speaker 1: you about.
Speaker 2: More detailed later, but.
Speaker 1: A lot of these like cause in Balzona and other
Speaker 1: parts of Delta where there's these old catfish ponds, people
Speaker 1: could be very easily harvesting crawfish out of those just
Speaker 1: because of how it naturally is if they did a
Speaker 1: few different things.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they really don't have to do anything different. It's
Speaker 3: all about water. So they're just a flooding it seasonally
Speaker 3: just for ducks. It's already full of crawfish. They just
Speaker 3: need to get some traps.
Speaker 1: Hold the phone. Are you telling me that virtually every
Speaker 1: managed duck hunting spot in the Mississippi Delta is full
Speaker 1: of crawfish. What are we missing out on here?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's fairly easy because, like I said, it's a
Speaker 3: byproduct of what people are already doing in the delta.
Speaker 3: Even if it's not an old catfish pond, if it's
Speaker 3: just like an empoundment of any kind that's just flooded
Speaker 3: seasonally for ducks. Now, what the crawfish are eating is
Speaker 3: all the little invertebrates and everything that are in there,
Speaker 3: those little snails and water bugs and worms. If you
Speaker 3: ever run a little dip net or something or even
Speaker 3: scoop at the bottom of your duck hole, it's just
Speaker 3: at the early part of the season. Yeah, it's usually
Speaker 3: full of those little squirmy little critters, all kinds of stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and the ducks eat that stuff as well. But those
Speaker 3: things are feeding on the vegetation that grows in those
Speaker 3: ponds or those impoundments during the off season. Right during
Speaker 3: the summer months, you'll grow millet or just moist soil,
Speaker 3: you know, and that vegetation grows up, and then when
Speaker 3: it's reflooded and then starts to fall over and decay
Speaker 3: in the water, those little water bugs and invertebrates eat
Speaker 3: that detritis. I think is what they call it, that
Speaker 3: decaying plant matter, and then the crawfish feed on that,
Speaker 3: and then the crawfish will feed on like the decaying
Speaker 3: plant matter and stuff is kind of like another food source,
Speaker 3: but they're primarily eating, you know, those little in vertebrates
Speaker 3: in there. And found that my this is my opinion,
Speaker 3: I guess my belief on this that these these old
Speaker 3: catfish pond crawfish and the delta just they're bigger and
Speaker 3: they're cleaner because they are just in this environment where
Speaker 3: that that delta soul, you know, it just it's so fertile,
Speaker 3: just the same way that it grows plants and everything else,
Speaker 3: the crops so well, it grows this natural vegetation just
Speaker 3: so well in there, and the soil's just like full
Speaker 3: of those invertebrates and full of food. And so the
Speaker 3: crawfish are constantly growing and molting and that's what keeps
Speaker 3: them big and clean.
Speaker 2: And so the I.
Speaker 3: Try to tell everybody, I like, the crawfish that are
Speaker 3: coming out of these pond old catfish ponds are just
Speaker 3: the best of the best because they're just they're these
Speaker 3: ponds are smaller, you know, so you've got a smaller
Speaker 3: area that's easier to maintain the water quality and all
Speaker 3: that stuff versus a big rice field. Sure, you know,
Speaker 3: and so like I said, you kind of get a
Speaker 3: better product, you get you know, these crawfish are super healthy.
Speaker 3: Obviously with the blue crawfish thing, maybe that has something
Speaker 3: to do with it. Yeah, it's that you know, gene expression.
Speaker 3: When they're real under healthy conditions and they're eating a
Speaker 3: certain I want to say it said they were eating
Speaker 3: a certain type of algae or something that was growing
Speaker 3: in there. But all this happens when it's you know,
Speaker 3: under good you know, habitat conditions. But yeah, these Delta ponds, man,
Speaker 3: even like the duckholes, I mean, they grow just fantastic crawfish.
Speaker 1: Okay, so the Delta grows big and healthy crawlfish, which,
Speaker 1: like I said before, is not a surprising fact. The
Speaker 1: Mississippi Delta and its alluvial floodplain has historically always been
Speaker 1: excellent habitat for crawfish. It was one of the largest
Speaker 1: expanses of seasonally flooded bottom land forest in all of
Speaker 1: North America, which is close to ideal for crayfish crawfish habitat.
Speaker 1: It's just that over the past several years, the specific
Speaker 1: habitat structure has shifted from wild swamp and wild forest
Speaker 1: to managed agricultural landscapes and wetlands. And when landowners, farmers,
Speaker 1: duck club members, leaseholders, etc. Seasonally flood these landscapes for
Speaker 1: agriculture or duck hunting purposes, whether they mean to or not,
Speaker 1: they're turning those places back into a habitat that is
Speaker 1: more than suitable for a crawfish. Pretty cool, huh. But
Speaker 1: in terms of farming these crawfish, I know Jason said
Speaker 1: that getting a healthy number of them is easy, But
Speaker 1: something tells me that these crawfish aren't just going to
Speaker 1: jump into a purple crawfish shack and ask to be
Speaker 1: bowled on their own. So I'm curious of what that
Speaker 1: process is.
Speaker 3: Okay, we do it different ways. Primarily we use these
Speaker 3: things called pushboats.
Speaker 1: I've seen those. Yeah, Okay, it seems like a little
Speaker 1: videos of them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, illuminum maybe six foot boats. Got a sortin tray
Speaker 3: on there, or sorting table. We arrange the traps just
Speaker 3: in rows down These ponds are typically on a rectangle
Speaker 3: rectangular shape and just to where you're just walking down
Speaker 3: a row and you're going back and forth down the
Speaker 3: rows and typically setting out traps just depending on the
Speaker 3: pond and the population density in the pond, how many
Speaker 3: traps you want to put in there, Typically around twelve
Speaker 3: to fifteen traps per acre. I think my ponds are
Speaker 3: about six six to seven acres each, so we have
Speaker 3: about one hundred traps or so in each pie, and
Speaker 3: they're laid out in about six or seven rows, you know,
Speaker 3: about thirteen traps long. And you go down, you just
Speaker 3: come back and yeah, yeah, I mean it requires you know,
Speaker 3: waiters and walking through the water. Like I said, it's
Speaker 3: very labor intensive. Yeah, and you get late in the season,
Speaker 3: it starts getting hot, so it adds a whole nother
Speaker 3: level of you know, just intensity to it all. But
Speaker 3: I find it pretty peaceful. I love doing it, you know,
Speaker 3: I'm not in a hurry. Yeah, I love doing it
Speaker 3: with the pushboat. But we also, you know, we've got it,
Speaker 3: you know, like they do in Louisiana. I've got a
Speaker 3: hydraulic wheel boat, which is basically like a big aluminum
Speaker 3: boat propelled by a hydraulic wheel, big steel wheel, hydraulic motor.
Speaker 3: It's an amphibious boat, so you can climb levees with it.
Speaker 3: You know, you can go in any depth of water.
Speaker 3: You know, it works really good. I found that that
Speaker 3: doesn't work quite as well as the pushboats, just because
Speaker 3: they've got a wide turning radius and in these smaller ponds,
Speaker 3: you get to the end of the row and you
Speaker 3: need to do this like three point turn to turn around,
Speaker 3: which is fine in your truck, but you know, when
Speaker 3: you're doing a hydraulic wheel boat, you're having to like
Speaker 3: a lift up and then turn the wheel, and it's
Speaker 3: just kind of yeah, it's kind of better suited for
Speaker 3: you know, big rice field or that kind of how
Speaker 3: they typically do it in Louisiana. And another thing we've
Speaker 3: got is just a regular old John boat with a
Speaker 3: with a Go Devil motor on it. And luckily for me,
Speaker 3: Go Devil actually makes a version of that long tail motor.
Speaker 3: They call it the Crawfish model. It's a shorter shaft
Speaker 3: model and it's got a clutch on it, so it's
Speaker 3: not like the typical like you crank it up and
Speaker 3: the prop spending the whole time. You can let off
Speaker 3: the throttle, you know, and stop it. And so that's
Speaker 3: another way to do it. That's you know, it's it's
Speaker 3: a little easier, but of course, you know, you run
Speaker 3: into the same issue of these small ponds getting from
Speaker 3: how to get from pond to pond to pond, you know,
Speaker 3: because it can't climb a levee. So that's something we're
Speaker 3: still working on as we're expanding, Like, how, what's the
Speaker 3: best way to harvest these things?
Speaker 2: Is that just to have a whole bunch.
Speaker 3: Of pushboats or yeah, you know, or I think right
Speaker 3: now we're just kind of using a variety of everything
Speaker 3: on the pond. Sure, sure, sure, yeah. So these traps,
Speaker 3: they're they're called pyramid traps. Yeah, and you know, it's
Speaker 3: got an open hole to the tops like a plastic collar,
Speaker 3: and then the rest of it's this wire mesh with
Speaker 3: little funnels in there, and the crawfish go in there.
Speaker 3: To empty the trap, you just grab the top and
Speaker 3: you just dump it out onto the sorting table and
Speaker 3: then put it back in the water, and then you
Speaker 3: just drop your bait into that into the top of
Speaker 3: the trap, just falls down in there.
Speaker 1: It sounds almost like like what you're doing and it's not,
Speaker 1: I mean, not like I was expecting it to be
Speaker 1: something bad at all, but it's I didn't expect it.
Speaker 1: It sounds like almost self sustaining between the between the
Speaker 1: and I mean as far as like what you're wanting
Speaker 1: out of duck hunting and what you're wanting out of
Speaker 1: the crawfish, it sounds like they just kind of cohabitate
Speaker 1: with one another.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, Yeah, absolutely, I mean what's interesting. Yeah, what you're
Speaker 3: doing there to manage those places for for ducks is
Speaker 3: benefiting the crawfish too. You're doing it. Like I said,
Speaker 3: there's there's almost a complete overlap there. No, not entirely,
Speaker 3: but there is. It's a lot of overlap there that
Speaker 3: is fascinating.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: I hope that the whole crawfish farming thing, especially the
Speaker 3: way we're doing, is it's a win all around.
Speaker 2: Yeah, of course, I don't think.
Speaker 3: I don't know if everything is, if anything out there
Speaker 3: is a win all awroyd all around, but it's it's
Speaker 3: a win on a lot of levels.
Speaker 2: It's as far as.
Speaker 3: Kind of doing something with these ponds that are already
Speaker 3: there and infrastructure is already like I said, a lot
Speaker 3: of these you know, duckholes or old ponds are already
Speaker 3: flooded for ducks. Anyway, the crawfish are there, just a
Speaker 3: matter of harvesting them out of there and hopefully generating
Speaker 3: a little bit of commerce. I guess there a business
Speaker 3: up there in the area, and you know, providing you
Speaker 3: know a Mississippi you know raised product too. Yeah, that's
Speaker 3: that's that's it's a resource. That's that's there naturally, you know.
Speaker 3: So let's like put it to use, let's do something
Speaker 3: with it, you know. And it's it's not like it's inferior,
Speaker 3: but like I said earlier, I think it's almost superior
Speaker 3: what else is out there.
Speaker 2: It's every bit is good. They're fantastic.
Speaker 1: I'm telling y'all. At no point in my life have
Speaker 1: I ever been a bigger fan of crawfish than I
Speaker 1: am right now. I just feel like they have so
Speaker 1: much to offer, from the ecological benefits we learned about
Speaker 1: last week to the incredible natural resource that we're learning
Speaker 1: about now. I just feel like they bring so much
Speaker 1: for such a small animal. Jason went on to tell
Speaker 1: me more cool facts about his operation, such as in
Speaker 1: the early season, mainly February and March, traps may only
Speaker 1: be run once or twice a week, but by the
Speaker 1: late season May through June some of these ponds get
Speaker 1: run every day, and on the productive ponds, activity by
Speaker 1: crawfish can be so high that running the same traps
Speaker 1: twice in a row kind of a double loop, still
Speaker 1: nets roughly half the first catch. That is insane to me,
Speaker 1: and it shows just how fast crawfish can repopulate a
Speaker 1: trap when the conditions are right. I also learned that
Speaker 1: commercial ponds can range anywhere from two hundred to two
Speaker 1: thousand pounds per acre in a season. That's a wide range,
Speaker 1: and it's also a big number. However, for his own
Speaker 1: operation Mississippi Crawfish Company, Jason started aiming for three hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty pounds an acre per season just to break
Speaker 1: ethan one pond jumped from five hundred and nineteen pounds
Speaker 1: an acre to over eleven hundred pounds an acre. That's
Speaker 1: pretty impressive if you ask me. And he's doing all
Speaker 1: of this in places that he's managing. Duck hunting just
Speaker 1: too cool, so fascinating, and I don't think a lot
Speaker 1: of people will realize how cool of her critter they
Speaker 1: are man well.
Speaker 3: Not only that, but there's so much to do. Like
Speaker 3: I said, going back to these duck holes, right and
Speaker 3: everybody floods during the fall, and you go and you
Speaker 3: duck hunt them, and then duck season's over with that,
Speaker 3: people are like pulling boards and walking away and going
Speaker 3: back to either going to turkey hunting or doing other
Speaker 3: stuff during the spring, going fishing. But there's still so
Speaker 3: much that can be done there in that duck hole
Speaker 3: catching crawfish, I mean recreationally, I'm talking about, Yeah, you know,
Speaker 3: take your kids out there and go catch your own
Speaker 3: crawfish for her own crawfish bowl. I mean, it's just
Speaker 3: as you get that same sense of satisfaction is going
Speaker 3: out and shooting a deer and coming back and cooking it,
Speaker 3: and you know how it is, it just tastes better
Speaker 3: when you when you caught it or you harvested it yourself.
Speaker 3: Crawfish are no different. It's so fun. And then you've
Speaker 3: got the frog aspect to gotten my kids into at
Speaker 3: least one of my girls really into that. But there's
Speaker 3: just so much to do there and the waterfowl or
Speaker 3: benefiting for it because they've got a place that's now
Speaker 3: maybe all this food from you know, seeds has been
Speaker 3: depleted at that point, but you've got still a huge
Speaker 3: value of like all the invertebrates are in that water,
Speaker 3: that all the hens are really needing during that time,
Speaker 3: you know, to be healthy and go back and do
Speaker 3: their thing. And so it's just that's kind of one
Speaker 3: of those things I was telling you before that I'm
Speaker 3: kind of a win win win. Maybe not a win
Speaker 3: on all levels, but there's another solid one right there
Speaker 3: that I feel like is something we're hopefully doing, at
Speaker 3: least on a small scale.
Speaker 1: Well, you heard the man. Take your kids out and
Speaker 1: catch them crawfish, Go and boil them yourself, have a
Speaker 1: big old time, especially if you have access to some
Speaker 1: duck hunting property. From the sound of it, those crayfish
Speaker 1: crawdads are right for the picking in those spots. And
Speaker 1: if you don't want to do that, check out Mississippi
Speaker 1: Crawfish Company. Jason has a cool thing going over there.
Speaker 1: I want to thank all of you for listening to
Speaker 1: Backwoods University as well as Bear Grease and this country life,
Speaker 1: and I hope each and every one of you out
Speaker 1: there has had as much fun as I've had learning
Speaker 1: about these crayfish, crawdads, crawfish, call them whatever you want.
Speaker 1: If you like this podcast, share it with a friend
Speaker 1: and stick around because there's a whole lot more on
Speaker 1: the way.