{"id":793655,"date":"2026-05-13T14:52:14","date_gmt":"2026-05-13T14:52:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/793655\/"},"modified":"2026-05-13T14:52:14","modified_gmt":"2026-05-13T14:52:14","slug":"warmer-texas-winters-drive-better-crawfish-harvest-longer-fishing-season-houston-public-media","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/793655\/","title":{"rendered":"Warmer Texas winters drive better crawfish harvest, longer fishing season \u2013 Houston Public Media"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul class=\"splide__list\">\n<li class=\"splide__slide\"><a href=\"https:\/\/cdn.houstonpublicmedia.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/12153942\/Image-2026-05-12T153823.909.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"Click for full size\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"><img data-splide-lazy=\"https:\/\/cdn.houstonpublicmedia.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/12153942\/Image-2026-05-12T153823.909-1000x750.jpg\" alt=\"Christian Burns empties crawfish from a trap on Wednesday, March 18, 2026. (Photo Credit: Natalie Weber \/ Houston Public Media)\"\/><\/a>\n<p>Christian Burns empties crawfish from a trap on Wednesday, March 18, 2026. (Photo Credit: Natalie Weber \/ Houston Public Media)<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li class=\"splide__slide\"><a href=\"https:\/\/cdn.houstonpublicmedia.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/12153938\/Image-2026-05-12T153833.213.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"Click for full size\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"><img data-splide-lazy=\"https:\/\/cdn.houstonpublicmedia.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/12153938\/Image-2026-05-12T153833.213-1000x750.jpg\" alt=\"Crawfish harvested by Christian Burns at the Double Bayou Crawfish Farm in Anahuac, Texas on Wednesday, March 18, 2026. (Photo Credit: Natalie Weber \/ Houston Public Media)\"\/><\/a>\n<p>Crawfish harvested by Christian Burns at the Double Bayou Crawfish Farm in Anahuac, Texas on Wednesday, March 18, 2026. (Photo Credit: Natalie Weber \/ Houston Public Media)<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li class=\"splide__slide\"><a href=\"https:\/\/cdn.houstonpublicmedia.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/12153935\/Image-2026-05-12T153837.885.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"Click for full size\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"><img data-splide-lazy=\"https:\/\/cdn.houstonpublicmedia.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/12153935\/Image-2026-05-12T153837.885-1000x750.jpg\" alt=\"Crawfish traps at the Double Bayou Crawfish Farm in Anahuac, Texas on Wednesday, March 18, 2026. (Photo Credit: Natalie Weber \/ Houston Public Media)\"\/><\/a>\n<p>Crawfish traps at the Double Bayou Crawfish Farm in Anahuac, Texas on Wednesday, March 18, 2026. (Photo Credit: Natalie Weber \/ Houston Public Media)<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><\/p>\n<p>Wearing a camouflage wetsuit, long rubber boots and baseball cap, Christian Burns steered his fishing boat into a rice field in Anahuac, about an hour east of Houston. <\/p>\n<p>Sign up for the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.houstonpublicmedia.org\/hellohouston\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Hello, Houston!<\/a> daily newsletter to get local reports like this delivered directly to your inbox.<\/p>\n<p>Burns works for his cousin, who owns a crawfish farm there. He harvests roughly 20 sacks of crawfish each day \u2014 enough to feed up to 200 people. <\/p>\n<p>Burns said the harvest in any given year really depends on the weather.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.houstonpublicmedia.org\/topics\/in-depth\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Click here for more inDepth features.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Warmer weather means we\u2019re able to catch more crawfish just because they\u2019re more active,&#8221; he said. &#8220;Once the water gets below 50 (degrees), they don\u2019t really do a whole lot of moving around and feeding.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Texas is the nation&#8217;s second-largest crawfish producer, behind Louisiana. Despite a slow start to the crawfish season this year, due to a late freeze, Texas farmers brought in a plentiful harvest as the state had its <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ncei.noaa.gov\/access\/monitoring\/monthly-report\/national\/202602#season-highlights\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">warmest winter on record<\/a> since 1895.<\/p>\n<p>As Burns fished, he dumped the mudbugs into a tray on his boat. After filling the tray, he scraped the red crustaceans into large mesh sacks. While some of the crawfish will go to a restaurant on the farm, the rest will be sold and cooked at seafood boils and businesses across Texas.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The catch has all been good \u2013 we have really good-sized crawfish right now,&#8221; Burns said. <\/p>\n<ul class=\"splide__list\">\n<li class=\"splide__slide\"><a href=\"https:\/\/cdn.houstonpublicmedia.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/12153952\/Image-2026-05-12T153807.264.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"Click for full size\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"><img data-splide-lazy=\"https:\/\/cdn.houstonpublicmedia.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/12153952\/Image-2026-05-12T153807.264-1000x750.jpg\" alt=\"Dominic Mandola, owner of the Ragin\u2019 Cajun in Houston, poses for a photo in his restaurant on Tuesday, April 14, 2026. (Photo Credit: Natalie Weber \/ Houston Public Media)\"\/><\/a>\n<p>Dominic Mandola, owner of the Ragin\u2019 Cajun in Houston, poses for a photo in his restaurant on Tuesday, April 14, 2026. (Photo Credit: Natalie Weber \/ Houston Public Media)<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li class=\"splide__slide\"><a href=\"https:\/\/cdn.houstonpublicmedia.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/12153955\/Image-2026-05-12T153800.954.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"Click for full size\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"><img data-splide-lazy=\"https:\/\/cdn.houstonpublicmedia.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/12153955\/Image-2026-05-12T153800.954-1000x750.jpg\" alt=\"Dominic Mandola, owner of the Ragin\u2019 Cajun in Houston, demonstrates how crawfish are cooked at his restaurant on Tuesday, April 14, 2026. (Photo Credit: Natalie Weber \/ Houston Public Media)\"\/><\/a>\n<p>Dominic Mandola, owner of the Ragin\u2019 Cajun in Houston, demonstrates how crawfish are cooked at his restaurant on Tuesday, April 14, 2026. (Photo Credit: Natalie Weber \/ Houston Public Media)<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li class=\"splide__slide\"><a href=\"https:\/\/cdn.houstonpublicmedia.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/12153948\/Image-2026-05-12T153813.666.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"Click for full size\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"><img data-splide-lazy=\"https:\/\/cdn.houstonpublicmedia.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/12153948\/Image-2026-05-12T153813.666-1000x750.jpg\" alt=\"Dominic Mandola, owner of the Ragin\u2019 Cajun in Houston, poses for a photo outside his restaurant on Tuesday, April 14, 2026. (Photo Credit: Natalie Weber \/ Houston Public Media)\"\/><\/a>\n<p>Dominic Mandola, owner of the Ragin\u2019 Cajun in Houston, poses for a photo outside his restaurant on Tuesday, April 14, 2026. (Photo Credit: Natalie Weber \/ Houston Public Media)<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li class=\"splide__slide\"><a href=\"https:\/\/cdn.houstonpublicmedia.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/12153945\/Image-2026-05-12T153818.291.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"Click for full size\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"><img data-splide-lazy=\"https:\/\/cdn.houstonpublicmedia.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/12153945\/Image-2026-05-12T153818.291-1000x750.jpg\" alt=\"The Ragin' Cajun restaurant in Houston on Tuesday, April 14, 2026. (Photo Credit: Natalie Weber \/ Houston Public Media)\"\/><\/a>\n<p>The Ragin&#8217; Cajun restaurant in Houston on Tuesday, April 14, 2026. (Photo Credit: Natalie Weber \/ Houston Public Media)<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Dominic Mandola, the owner of the Ragin&#8217; Cajun restaurant in Houston, agrees.<\/p>\n<p>He said crawfish season has been plentiful this year, in part due to the warmer weather. When there&#8217;s a freeze, he said that slows down the harvest.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;There\u2019s been some times where we\u2019ve ran out of crawfish on Fat Tuesday throughout the last 50 years because of the freeze,&#8221; Mandola said.<\/p>\n<p>But while milder winters can help kickstart crawfish season, hotter summers can hurt the harvest. That&#8217;s what happened two years ago, after triple-digit temperatures in the summer and a drought <a href=\"https:\/\/www.houstonpublicmedia.org\/articles\/news\/energy-environment\/2024\/01\/22\/475090\/crawfish-production-down-2024-higher-prices-texas-houston\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">killed off crawfish<\/a> before the winter fishing season. Still, Mandola said that kind of drought is rare.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;When we had the drought, nobody had seen that in 40 years,&#8221; Mandola said.<\/p>\n<p>Warmer winters are <a href=\"https:\/\/www.houstonpublicmedia.org\/articles\/news\/weather\/2026\/02\/03\/542470\/houston-weather-winter-flowers-bloom-climate-change\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">becoming more common<\/a> in Texas, according to assistant state climatologist B.J. Baule. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Texas winter temperatures have generally been warming up over time, over the last several decades, particularly since about the 1980s,&#8221; Baule said.<\/p>\n<p>Nikki Fitzgerald, a coastal and marine county resources agent with Texas A&amp;M AgriLife, said as Texas winters have gotten warmer, she has seen a shift in when crawfish season begins.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;In the early \u201890s, crawfish season typically would start at the beginning of March,&#8221; she said. &#8220;And as people have really started enjoying crawfish, you know, the warmer seasons have actually encouraged the fishermen to get out quicker.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Now, she said, some fishermen are beginning the season as early as January, or even December.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The crawfish are a little bit smaller, but, you know, they are still catching because with the warmer waters, the crawfish are coming out of their burrows a little bit earlier,&#8221; Fitzgerald said.<\/p>\n<p>Burns, from the crawfish farm in Anahuac, is among the fishermen beginning their harvest in December. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;There was only like a three-month period this year where we didn\u2019t do any fishing,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>And, Burns added, the farm is growing.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We\u2019re getting really close to being able to figure out how to fish them year round,&#8221; he said. &#8220;So I\u2019m looking forward to that.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Christian Burns empties crawfish from a trap on Wednesday, March 18, 2026. (Photo Credit: Natalie Weber \/ Houston&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":793656,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5130],"tags":[64,235406,323911,746,990,4345,36006,25149,425,50,358,118289,323912,24013,3187,313],"class_list":["post-793655","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston","tag-business","tag-crawfish","tag-crawfish-season-2026","tag-environment","tag-food","tag-houston","tag-houston-restaurants","tag-indepth","tag-local","tag-news","tag-texas","tag-texas-am-agrilife-extension","tag-texas-crawfish","tag-texas-weather","tag-tx","tag-weather"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116567837858714090","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/793655","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=793655"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/793655\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/793656"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=793655"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=793655"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=793655"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}