LSU students cut classes to catch crawfish

College students cut class to catch crawfish
(Gallery by Todd Masson, | The Times-Picayune)
Email the author | Follow on Twitter
on April 26, 2013 at 10:22 AM, updated April 26, 2013 at 5:34 PM

Only in Louisiana could two women earn a living writing children's books about cockroaches. Joanne Mehrtens and Pat Roig have done precisely that with their entertaining series about two palmetto bugs that spend time riding the streetcar, visiting the Superdome and living in a beignet bag.

Similarly, only in Louisiana would a group of young twentysomethings, sick with spring fever, cut class at LSU to pull glorified cockroaches out of drainage ditches.

In other states, like, for instance, Wisconsin, warm temperatures draw the kids out of the dorms to do wild-and-crazy things like throwing a Frisbee in the Quad. Maybe if they're feeling especially adventurous, they'll sneak into an unfortunate farmer's field, under the covering cloak of darkness, and tip over a few cows.

But down here in the Bayou State, when the sun gets high and the azaleas bloom, our collegians' thoughts turn to glorified entomology. Between the lessons on infinitesimal calculus and Nietzsche's "life-affirmation" philosophy, their minds drift to muddy slop and the bugs that live in it.

School will always be there, but crawfish season is fleeting. That's why Roger Freibert and his buddies -- Austin Slavens, Brandt Becnel and Tucker Roussel -- piled in a couple trucks Thursday afternoon, put Tiger Stadium in their rearview mirror and didn't stop until they were just past the bustling metropolis of Lockport.

Their destination was a ditch. They had probably passed hundreds of others on the drive over, but this one had delivered the previous weekend for Freibert and his father.

"I called my dad one night after I got done with classes, and he was like, 'You want to go crawfishing this weekend?' And I was like, 'Sure. Where are we going?' Usually we just go to the (Bonnet Carre) spillway, and that's hit or miss for us," Freibert said. "He said, 'I was on Google Earth at work, and I found this little ditch that looks good.'"

They made a Saturday-morning drive over, and after seven or eight runs of their nets, they had a full sack, which is plenty enough to feed their family. That made the adventure an overwhelming success, Freibert said.

"We like to get at least 20 pounds -- just enough to eat," he said. "The most we ever got was 2 1/2 sacks in the spillway after they opened up the locks a few years back, but we strive for a sack."

Self-caught crawfish have to be earned. The crustaceans live in the slop of roadside ditches and backwaters, feasting on detritus and carrion when the warm spring sun gets their metabolism rolling and makes them hungry. Their world is also the perfect habitat for poisonous cottonmouths and sharp-toothed alligators, like the 3-footer that kept a close eye on the boys Thursday.

Catching the bugs means getting wet and caked with mud while sweating in knee boots and blue jeans. It's an old-school South Louisiana workout, easing down steep ditch banks, curling up heavy nets and then climbing up the same banks, some of which are bluff steep.

View full sizeRoger Freibert's goal on every crawfishing trip is to catch enough to feed his family, at least 20 pounds. A full sack is considered a solid success. (Photo by Todd Masson, | The Times-Picayune)

Freibert was pleased with their success, and so were his buddies.

"This is a blast," Roussel said. It was his first crawfishing trip, but probably wouldn't be his last.

It's definitely easier to buy a sack from the local seafood market, and this late in the season, prices have gotten more reasonable, but Freibert would much rather catch his own. He knows they're fresh; he knows they're all alive, and the experience, for him, is a rite of spring.

"I just like being outside this time of year, and the excitement of seeing how many are going to be in the net when you pick it up," he said. "And then, of course, you get to look forward to eating them after."


College students cut class to catch crawfish There's no better time than right now to catch crawfish in South Louisiana, and that means this group of LSU students is having a hard time focusing on school work.
Freibert and his father have had success pulling bugs from the Bonnet Carre spillway and the South Farm of Sherburne WMA as well as ditches along Highway 90 and near the Luling bridge.

But this year's hotspot is near Lockport, which, fortunately, is an hour and a half from Baton Rouge.

If it were any closer, the boys might never go to class.