On Thursday, News 10 told you about people getting crawfish from ditches due to flood waters. 

Now, the Acadia Parish Sherriff’s Office had to issue a warning to people doing that, saying they will be writing tickets.

Sheriff K.P. Gibson says it’s a matter of public safety, “A vehicle stopped on the roadway while it’s raining or just after it rained while the road’s very slick somebody loses control, we have an accident, we have somebody that could get injured, killed or so forth.”

That’s not the only issue they’ve faced with people looking for rogue crawfish coming out of the flooded crawfish ponds.

“The other problem we’re coming to is that some people are actually going into the farmer’s property. Crossing the ditch going on to their property. Not fishing in their pond, but fishing from their side, or blocking their roadway. And then they’ll turn around and curse at them, tell them ‘oh don’t worry about me’ and words I can’t use on TV,” Gibson says.

He also says that throughout the day, deputies issued tickets for people parked along roads crawfishing.

The Sheriff adds they will continue to do so until the problem stops, “[What] we want is compliance. If you’re going to fish in the ditch, I can’t stop you from doing it, but you can’t park your cars on the roadway or put anything that’s in an unsafe condition.”

Gibson says that even though the crawfish are coming from private property, once they move on to public property, it’s not considered stealing in the eyes of the law. However, he hopes people will think of the farmers as the crawfish is their livelihood.
 

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