From lake to table: Turning Minnesota's invasive crayfish into a local delicacy
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If you can't beat 'em, eat 'em!
That's the rallying cry behind a small business in northern Minnesota that harvests rusty crayfish — an invasive species that has infested at least 300 lakes across the state — and sells them, live, to people and restaurants.
The crayfish, which can grow up to six inches long, are native to the Ohio River valley. They were likely brought to Minnesota as fishing bait. The crustaceans destroy huge amounts of aquatic plant life in lakes, including culturally important wild rice beds.
And once established in a lake or river, rusty crayfish reproduce rapidly. There’s no known way to get rid of them.
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But their populations can be managed. It’s a labor-intensive process, but some people in northern Minnesota are setting traps and baiting them with bits of hot dogs and other attractants to catch the crayfish, to both keep lakes healthy and feed people — if Minnesotans are willing to eat them.
Ground zero for the effort is Caribou Lake, ringed by pine trees and rocky cliffs outside Lutsen along the North Shore of Lake Superior.
On a warm August evening, Yusef Orest steered his small, flat-bottomed boat across the lake’s still surface. In a small bay, he pulled up a line of minnow traps from the lake bottom.
"Ooh, this is a pretty full basket,” he exclaimed as he pulled up the first trap. “This is probably a solid pound of crayfish right here. That's a meal for someone.”
He dumps them in a big blue bucket and pulls up the next several traps. They're all full of crayfish, some 4 to 5 inches long. The bottom of the bucket seems to move as the crayfish skitter about on top of one another.
Then he rebaits the traps with a mixture of frozen minnows and cat food and drops the traps back in the water. From just 20 traps, he collects about 14 pounds of crayfish.
"It's really not rocket science or overly complicated. It's a lot of work, but it's also a lot of fun,” Orest said, gazing at the sunset across the lake. "This isn't a bad office.”
This is a side hustle for Orest, whose day job is in renewable energy. He started the business, called Crawdaddies, about seven years ago. He’s been "obsessed" with crayfish since he was a kid, he said. He's always loved to catch them.
He placed over 100 traps in the lake in May and harvests every two to three days through the end of September. Last year, he pulled about 1,400 pounds of crayfish from the lake. This year, he’s already well over 2,000.
Orest’s work took on extra meaning when he learned the crayfish he was catching are invasive. He received grants from the Cook County Soil and Water Conservation District and other organizations to help purchase equipment.
Amanda Weberg, Aquatic Invasive Species Supervisor for the group — who dresses up in a bright red crayfish costume for community events — describes rusty crayfish as “little lawn mowers.”
“They just mow the vegetation,” she explained. “If you have a wild rice lake, there's not going to be any more wild rice.”
Those aquatic plants provide all kinds of benefits to lakes. They provide fish habitat, oxygenate and filter the water and prevent erosion.
Orest calls the work a “labor of love,” as he certainly isn’t getting rich doing it. He doesn’t even earn a profit. But Orest has managed to break even the past two seasons and hire someone part-time to help him harvest.
"I have to be pretty blunt. This is a marginal business,” he said. “Harvesting invasive species doesn't pay well.”
Orest has little trouble catching crayfish. But he has more trouble selling it in Minnesota, where crayfish isn’t as ingrained in local culture and cuisine as it is in the South.
He hosts a community crayfish boil every year and sells at farmer’s markets and online.
Earlier this summer, he got a call from a Twin Cities couple who had planned a crayfish boil for their wedding. But the crayfish didn’t arrive in time. So they called Orest, who met them in Hinckley with the fresh cargo.
“They said, ‘You saved our wedding!’” he said.
Orest has one restaurant client: Bûcheron, a French American restaurant in Minneapolis. Last year, it won a prestigious James Beard Award for best new restaurant in the country.
"He just makes it really easy for the chefs to use it,” chef and co-owner Adam Ritter said of Orest, who cleans and drains the crayfish and ships them overnight in a box with ice packs. “They’re as fresh as you can get them,” said Ritter.
He uses the tail meat as a garnish on a green gazpacho soup. He saves the bodies and shells to make a sauce for a crispy chicken dish. Chicken and crayfish are a classic combination in French cuisine, Ritter explained. He adds a Scandinavian twist by adding Swedish meatballs to the meal.
“It was one of our biggest hits last winter,” Ritter said. The rich crayfish sauce complements the leaner chicken. He describes crayfish as a “milder lobster,” with a sweeter taste.
Ritter visited Orest this summer to see his operation in person. That’s when he learned the crayfish he serves is an invasive species. He said now he wants to develop more recipes using it.
In the meantime, the association of property owners on Caribou Lake has stepped up. For the past two years, the group has paid Orest to trap crayfish. They also have a roster of volunteers who manage about 200 traps of their own.
Caribou Lake Association President Tom Rider describes the crayfish invasion as a “slow-moving freight train.” He said they’re pulling tens of thousands of crayfish out of the lake, and the number they’re removing from the water is skyrocketing every year.
“We're certainly seeing their footprint increase and their densities increase exponentially,” Rider said.
The organization spends about $15,000 annually on its crayfish eradication efforts. “We feel pretty confident that the harvesting is productive,” said Rider. “I am concerned about the sustainability of the effort long term. Because it’s a lot of work.”
On Lake Vermillion, a huge lake near Ely, Tim Fischer has trapped rusty crayfish for more than two decades as part of his business, Northern Foragers, through which he sells crayfish, mushrooms and other wild edibles.
When he first started, he said the crayfish were thick in the lake. Now they’re much harder to catch. He said he gets calls from home owners thanking him for his work, “because they feel like it’s made a difference.”
University of Minnesota researchers recently published a free guide to catching rusty crayfish after conducting a study that confirmed what Fischer and Orest have found: that using baited minnow traps is a simple yet labor-intensive method to manage the invasive species and help protect wild rice beds.
“People are really worried about invasive species, and here’s one way that people can take action themselves,” said Valerie Brady, a researcher at the University of Minnesota's Natural Resources Research Institute.
But Brady said they have not done research to determine just how effective the trapping is at reducing crayfish populations.
Scientists are also still working to understand how long rusty crayfish invasions can last. Brady said after spreading rapidly, populations have crashed in some lakes in Wisconsin, and in the St. Louis River estuary outside Duluth. Researchers believe a natural parasitic fungus may be keeping them in check.
"It may be that the rusty crayfish thing will sort of take care of itself. We don't know. It's a really interesting open question right now,” said Brady.
In the meantime, the best weapon is to trap them and eat them.
“It just takes a $15 minnow trap and a little bit of bait,” said Orest. “Tie it to a line, throw it in the water, come back a day later, and you have a low-cost meal.”
