Opinion: California should follow Nevada’s lead on crayfish
By Stuart Leavenworth, Sacramento Bee
They go by several different names: Crayfish, crawfish, crawdads, yabbies, mudbugs.
Whatever you call them, there are about 220 million of these crustaceans bathing in Lake Tahoe, where they apparently are adding to the algae growth that clouds North America’s largest alpine lake.
Some scientists want to reduce these numbers, and for that there is an easy solution. If California and Nevada were to transplant some Cajuns to Tahoe, the crayfish population would be diminished in a few months.
Instead, as Carlos Alcalá reported in The Bee, Nevada has just issued its first permit for commercial harvesting of crayfish in that state’s waters of Lake Tahoe. The company granted the permit, Tahoe Lobster Co., hopes to supply restaurants looking for a local source of what French gourmands call écrevisse.
So should California follow Nevada’s lead and permit commercial harvesting of Tahoe crayfish? I say: Laissez les bon temps rouler.
The California Crawfish Company, located in Chico, CA and Calusa, CA commercially harvests crawfish and supplies to resturants and clients nation wide.
I say, Laissez les bon temps rouler (let the good times roll). There’s nothing better than a Cajun Crawfish Boil using Zatarains Crab Boil. I’ll eat cajun boiled crawfish over lobster any day. We put corn on the cob, sausage, hot dogs, whole garlic, onions and lemons in the crab boil and that is some good eating. We put newspaper on the picnic table and pour out the crawfish, corn, etc. and chow down. In Louisiana we have a saying, “crawfish have it made, they get their heads sucked and their tails pinched.” That refers to the way you eat crawfish. Chinese crawfish is taboo in Louisiana. Let’s harvest them Tahoe crawfish!