- Crawfish are a legendary freshwater crustacean,
typically harvested in Louisiana.
About 40 years ago, rice farmers like Mike Fruge
stumbled onto the fact that the two-year growing cycle
of crawfish synced up perfectly
with the two-year growing cycle of their rice crop.
Now, many of Louisiana rice fields are seeded
with baby crawfish every other year,
which has created an entirely new source
of food and income for farmers in the Bayou.
Today I'm in Branch, Louisiana at Fruge Aquafarms
to figure out how Cajun Crawfish produces
over a million pounds of crawfish every year.
Hi, welcome to Dan Does.
So what stage are we in right now?
- You're in the early summer and we're
in the canopy stage of the rice crop.
We've got cooler water down at the bottom,
and we've got a canopy on top to protect the crawfish,
and now we can introduce crawfish to this field.
If you just came out in this field,
when we first planted it and just dumped crawfish out here
with no cover, the birds would get them all
in a matter of hours.
- Right. - Or the heat would get them.
- So it's more like the rice, as a crop,
just provides the perfect habitat for the crawfish,
and that's kinda how they came together?
- Yeah.
- In a few months, the rice will grow out
of the canopy stage and be ready for harvest.
From there, the fields are flooded to about two feet
of water to get ready for crawfish harvesting.
Once the crawfish are harvested,
the fields are drained all the way down
and another round of rice is planted
and the cycle continues.
This is the boat that we are gonna take out
to harvest crawfish.
What is this device here?
- All right, so this is a push boat.
So we used to have a fleet of mechanical boats.
It took way more energy to repair the fields.
Those mechanical boats dig a rut.
Wherever they go, there's a rut.
Even though it takes more labor to harvest,
it's a more efficient in the long run
because you're not having to go back and repair the fields.
So we went back to walking.
It's a greener version of crawfish farming.
So what we have here is a bag of our artificial bait.
So it's basically little biscuits,
you know, we put one or two of these per trap.
- Okay, we'll grab a trap, sort it,
and then refill the trap with the bait?
- Correct.
- So why do we need the gloves?
- Because the crawfish are--
- They're nippy?
- They're nippy.
- [Dan] Sorry, I shoulda helped ya.
- Yup, you're fine.
This is called a pyramid trap.
Doesn't look like much,
but this is high-tech crawfish farming.
Me and my brother, and a few people around here,
sort of invented this top, believe it or not.
The way that trap works is you have these flumes
and the crawfish crawl in, they go to the bait
and, theoretically, they can't crawl out.
See, my boat's getting away from me.
- Okay, so it's a dance.
- It's a dance.
Well, the guys that do this every day,
they know exactly how to hold this boat
and they got it down pat.
I suck at it because I don't do it every day.
- You're an office cat, now?
- I'm an office cat, exactly.
- Harder than a shopping cart, I would say.
- Yeah, harder than a shopping cart.
- So I'm actually kind of nervous.
So I'm gonna pull this thing out--
- Yep, just pull that trap.
- And then flip it?
- And flip it.
- [Dan] Holy, what the shit? Jesus!
- [Mike] You got a load right there.
That's crawfishin'.
- Then, bait. - Okay, you're gonna
just take that bait, put it back in it.
Take both pieces, here you go.
- 'Cause this is a hotspot, right?
- [Mike] Yeah.
- [Dan] So then I push them in.
So that was a good load then, right?
- Yup, that was a good one.
As you're pushing along, you can swipe them
and that saves you
a little time. - Oh, gotcha, swipe
as you're pushing.
Holy Christ bugs.
Oh yeah, I can really feel it nipping on my gloves.
- You gotta hold onto your boat, it's gonna float away.
No hands. He's doing it all by himself!
- [Dan] Why not cover this floor in traps?
- We have learned that you catch most of the crawfish
right next to a levy.
- Okay. It's actually quite pleasant here out on the boat.
(playful music)
Mike, I feel like I'm doing honest work here.
- [Mike] You are.
This is about as honest as it gets right here.
- [Dan] Lost the boat. I've lost the f****** bait, oh no.
- [Mike] (laughs) It's gone, don't worry about it.
- Everything's just flying away from me here.
(yelps)
I wasn't scared.
They're very sustainable, right?
Because there would be nothing growing here, if not them.
- That's correct.
- You're kind of creating protein from nothing.
- Yeah, we're converting rice into protein.
- And we're all keto, so, you know.
- Yeah, there you go.
All right, so once you got a full bag,
you close the little door and you pull each section
of the top.
- [Dan] Okay, so this is when it starts being so heavy.
- [Mike] So we're gonna to tie that bag off
and we're gonna lay it down in the bottom of the boat.
- All right, so now we wrap it in this burlap sack here?
- [Mike] Yep.
- So from here, someone's gonna come by with an ATV,
bring these back, and then we'll sort them.
- Correct. - And we'll cook off
a few of them.
- [Mike] That's correct.
- Thanks guys.
From here, the crawfish are brought back
to the processing facility where they're washed,
graded by size and then packaged to go out to customers.
All right, Mike, we're back.
We're in the processing line now.
- Yeah, we're in the processing line.
- Who's this man here?
- This is Ed Guidry, Director of Operations over here.
Ed runs the whole plant, actually runs the whole farm,
him and another guy.
- Just like this?
- [Mike] Yep.
- [Dan] And then spread it?
- [Ed] Yes, just just spread it over the top.
Just like that, just like that.
- Wow, this is so cool. - Yeah, shake them off.
- Gets clear of little bugs-- - Right.
- And little debris? - Correct.
And the mud.
- [Dan] How fast do you wanna do it?
- Oh, you can do it faster than that.
(Dan laughs)
You wanna keep the belt full.
- [Dan] Okay.
- So this machine is not moving very fast,
but it's moving a little bit faster than you, right?
(Ed laughs)
When you harvest the crawfish out the field,
everything gets in the trap, small or large.
That's what that next machine does
is separate those by size.
- All right, let's cruise on.
You said there's essentially three different sizes?
- That's three different sizes right here.
- [Dan] This is going back for seed?
- [Ed] Correct. That's medium to large and that's the large.
- So the way that the grader works
is there's a series of tubes along this line
and they slowly spread out as they get to the end there,
getting wider and wider.
So here, only the little guys are let in
and these ones are gonna go back
to seed to set up for next year's crop.
And then the middle and the larger, here,
these are the ones that are going out to the customers.
This is one of the final stages.
He's sorting by eye to make sure, what,
there's no dead ones,
no weird stuff-- - No dead ones, no fish,
no turtles, the snails are a bad problem this time a year.
- We're scanning here to look for ones
that are banged up and ones that are dead,
and when they're dead, you toss them in the reject bin.
- [Ed] You don't look down, you look up.
You look up before they get here so you can spot them out
before they get it.
Once they fall on the belt-- - You're dead.
- It's kinda hard to see them. - Dead!
- You see how that, and it's not movin',
there you go, just like that.
That's what you wanna look for.
And you got a cracked one right here, that one right there.
See the tail broke off.
After you do it for 35 years,
you get to knowing what to look for.
- There's so many crawfish.
So what's going on on this last step?
- They're actually rolling up the belt,
falling in the sacker, and it weighs out
about 30 pounds at a time.
When it gets 30 pounds, it'll shut off and spin,
and a man will catch it.
They'll take them from here and they're gonna load them
straight on the truck.
- [Dan] How'd I do?
- [Ed] Good.
- [Dan] Hired?
- Oh yeah, I think so.
(all laugh)
- These are the little guys that are going back
into the rice crops-- - Correct.
- [Dan] To get ready for next year.
- [Mike] For next year.
- [Dan] Oh, hell yeah, all right,
so we'll go see him dump off.
- [Mike] We're gonna go watch him dump them out, yes.
We spent all that time catching them,
like we did this morning, then we go sort them out
and we move them to another place.
Someday, I guess we'll figure out an easier way
to do it, but right now, it's just a lot of hard work.
- [Dan] All right.
This far enough?
- [Mike] Yeah, that's good.
- [Dan] Now that the cycle is complete,
it's finally time to see how some Louisiana locals
cook up and peel the crawfish.
- Dan, this is Mark, my brother, Mark Fruge.
- Hey Dan, nice to meet you.
- How are you, Mark? - Mark's the farmer,
I'm the salesman.
He does all the work, I sell everything. (laughs)
- He likes the PR work. (laughs)
- Yeah, I'm the PR guy.
- [Dan] We're gonna boil up some crawfish?
- Yeah, we're gonna boil up some crawfish.
We got a little custom boiler right behind you.
- Oh, you guys make this, too? - So this is some
of our private label seasoning.
- Don't ask me what's in the recipe, I've forgotten.
It's been so long ago.
(boiler rumbles)
- [Dan] How long now, about five, 10 minutes?
- 'Bout five minutes, 10 minutes.
- [Dan] Are you ready to dump?
- [Mark] Yeah.
- [Dan] All right.
(crawfish clatter)
Do you put it all?
- [Mark] Yes.
- [Dan] You trying kill me?
- [Mike] Give him some corn.
- [Dan] (laughs) Oh, I get a corn?
- [Mark] There you go.
- Wow. - Perfect.
- So the first thing you wanna do is find the biggest one
in your platter.
Basically you put your thumb under the tail.
You're gonna push in a little bit,
(crawfish cracks) twist,
- That's hot.
- And pull it out.
You squeeze the bottom of the tail and you wiggle it out.
- I've already butchered it, right?
- No, no, you're good.
- [Dan] I'll get there. (laughs)
- [Mark] There you go.
- You starting ripping already?
- [Mike] Yeah, I'm just pulling them out.
I'm just letting Mark demonstrate while I eat.
- It's like the best part of lobster and shrimp.
- Pretty much. - Exactly.
- Wow, mhmm.
And now we just sit in silence and--
- So now you drink a beer or you drink water or whatever--
- You talk a lot. - You talk a lot.
- If you have a big family here.
- You said, when you guys first started,
crawfish were just like a thing
that someone would occasionally have, right?
- Darn right.
- And now it's--
- Now it's a job and industry. - And now it's industry.
Thank you guys again for having me out here.
- You're very welcome. We really enjoyed having you guys.