Two months after Nine41 Eatery & Bar opened in Incline Village last winter, Chef Justin Kaplan decided he wanted to see crayfish harvesting firsthand. He called up the Tahoe Lobster Company, the first commercial crayfish operation to secure a permit after the Nevada Legislature legalized the industry in 2011. On a May morning, Kaplan went out on the boat with Tahoe Lobster Co. owner Fred Jackson and helped him haul in 30 pounds of crayfish.
Satisfied, Kaplan put crawfish boil and tempura crawfish on Nine41’s menu. The items repeatedly sold out over the next two months.
“It was popular,” Kaplan said. “Especially because crayfish comes from our backyard, and it’s a nice way to help the lake.”
But then Jackson’s traps kept getting stolen. In fact, so many traps were taken that he could not provide a consistent supply to Kaplan, who was forced to take crayfish off the menu and cancel a planned order of 100 pounds of crayfish for an end-of-summer crawfish boil.
The tale of Nine41 and the Tahoe Lobster Co. is indicative of the current status of Tahoe’s commercial crayfish industry, which started with so much optimism but has yet to yield the expected results — improving Lake Tahoe’s clarity while providing a boon to local fishermen and restaurants. Besides the unforeseen problem of theft, the main issue was that the State of California had lagged on passing Assembly Bill 165, which would legalize commercial crayfish harvesting on its side of the lake. This meant that crawfish fisherman could not sell to California restaurants. Or catch California crawdads. But with Gov. Jerry Brown’s signature finally on the bill as of this month, the tide may finally change for the Tahoe crayfish business.
The commercial harvesting of Tahoe crayfish — also known as crawdads, crawfish, and freshwater lobsters — was just legalized by Nevada in July 2011. The rationale was that it would not only create a thriving business, but also improve lake clarity by helping to reduce the estimated 280 million crayfish in Lake Tahoe. The freshwater crustaceans’ waste is high in potassium and nitrates, which can lead to algae growth and cloud Tahoe’s famed crystal waters. Jackson called crawdads, an invasive species introduced to the lake in the 1890s from Oregon’s Klamath River, “little fertilizing machines.” Since the disappearance of the Lahontan cutthroat trout from Tahoe in the 1880s due to overfishing and the mackinaw’s switch to dining on mysid shrimp after their introduction in the 1960s, crayfish have fewer natural predators.
Jackson, a former wildlife refugee manager for the Nevada Department of Wildlife, started his commercial crayfish operation last July. He sets his traps in 50 to 80 feet of water along the East Shore, and on average pulls up 50 to 60 pounds of crayfish a day. But since last August, Jackson has had more than 200 traps stolen. At $40 per trap, plus the missing crayfish bounty, Jackson estimates he has lost $25,000 in the last year.
“No traps means no crayfish which means no money,” he said. “It hurts. It seems like we are trying to do something good and we got thieves in the night taking this away.”
When Moonshine Ink talked to Jackson, he had just lost 32 out of 65 traps he had put out off the waters of Secret Harbor weeks before he was due to produce 500 pounds of crayfish for MontBlue Resort’s Tahoe Crawfish Music Festival on Aug. 24. Jackson has the Nevada Game Warden and a private detective agency trying to track down the culprits, but so far, no luck. In the meantime, Jackson says, “We’re getting by.”
Jackson sells the crayfish that he does pull up to Sparks-based Sierra Gold Seafood, which distributes it to restaurants. But because commercial crayfish harvesting is still illegal in California until the bill goes into effect in 2014, Jackson’s crayfish is found in only a few restaurants at Tahoe, and only on the Nevada side of the lake at locations such as Nine41 and the Hyatt Regency in Incline, and Harrah’s in South Shore.
“We have restaurants calling from Truckee, Napa, and Sacramento,” Jackson said. “As soon as California passes the bill, we’ll be all over the place.”
The Tahoe Regional Planning Agency has issued eight permits to commercial crayfish businesses, but only four are actually operating. One of those is George Ivey, owner of High Sierra Ventures, who has been biding his time until California passed Assembly Bill 165, which was first introduced last year but got tied up in committee. Reintroduced last January, the bill finally made it out of the legislature last month and was signed by Gov. Brown on Sept. 6.
“There’s not much of a market for crayfish because of the restrictions,” said Ivey, who started fishing with 70 traps last February. “We can’t sell to California, and that’s the closest, largest market.”
Until January, Ivey is content cooking up crawfish boils at events like the Lyon County Fair and Rodeo in Yerington, and the Carson Nugget’s Red, White & Blue Barbeque.
“Maybe we’ll make some money some day,” Ivey said.
Even after California opens up to the Tahoe crayfish market, there could be one more hurdle for this nascent business — familiarity. Nine41’s Kaplan said that many local chefs don’t know how to cook crayfish, which is more well known in the South, and that some customers avoid them because they are messy.
“I hope demand grows,” Kaplan said.
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