February 26, 2014 — As Tommy's Fish House heads into what is historically one of the biggest weekends of the crawfish season, the Prairieville business expects to have between 30 and 50 sacks of crawfish to sell—or about 100 fewer than it had this time last year, says general manager Henry Knieper.
While only 10 of this weekend's sacks will be live crawfish—as opposed to roughly half of the supply this weekend a year ago—some vendors in the Capital Region are having to forgo live crawfish altogether.
"We're not currently selling live," says Julie Sparks at Berthelot Crawfish Co. in Brusly. "We're doing cooked food only because of limited supply."
But limited supply hasn't necessarily meant lower quantity as much as lower quality, Knieper says, which experts attribute to the prolonged winter.
"I could get a lot more crawfish if I wanted to, but they're a lot smaller," he says. "What I'm working with is only restaurant-grade crawfish, so it makes it harder to get the crawfish."
Read the full story at Greater Baton Rouge Business Report