Tales from the Trail: A&B Seafood

It’s that time of year, again: when the smell of Cajun spices and seafood wafts on the breeze throughout Louisiana; when boil pots are pulled from their storage sheds and given a baptismal rinse from the hose; when two, three, even half a dozen hand-washings can’t erase the spice from your fingers, the smelly beacon of pride letting everyone you encounter know that your last meal was superior. It’s crawfish season, folks. And if you’re looking for a heap of delicious crawdads, check out A&B Seafood.

Crawfishing in Terrebonne Parish is considerably different than the more controlled methods of crawfish farming in the central part of the state. Mitch Aucoin, owner of A&B Seafood and tugboat captain “by trade,” has been fishing, boiling and selling seafood since he was in high school. He described the Lower Atchafalaya crawfishing as “wild caught fishing”. “We’re not like the farmers,” he said. “The farmers can control the water, they can pop ‘em out the ground by draining the water, they got ‘em at their fingertips. We’ve gotta kinda wait ’til it comes.”