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1980s, started by Jason’s father, Paul Gaspard, who had fished crawfish since childhood. Back then, there just weren’t a lot of crawfish to buy in Marksville, Louisiana, where they lived, and Jason’s father and uncles would fish around the nearby bayous. “Farm-raised crawfish wasn’t a big thing yet,” said Jason. When the more traditional fishing spots had a bad year, his father saw an opening in the market and got to work. “That gave him his ‘in,’ and he got in his little pickup truck and just started opening up accounts. The business grew from there.” Paul started selling crawfish, wholesaling it. As the years grew, he started buying crawfish from everywhere because you never know when they’re going to be good, when they’re going to be bad, when they’re going to be small, when they’re not going to be plentiful. Jason started working for his dad around 1997, and the father-son duo continued growing the company. Gaspard Seafood has been partnered with Rouses Markets for about 20 years now, bringing their Louisiana crawfish to the local community. Jason’s father died two years ago. Today, Jason runs the company, which is now based out of Crowley, Louisiana. “Every sack we get in used to pass through my dad’s eyes or hands. Every sack goes through my hands now,” he said. Today, Gaspard Seafood buys crawfish from the rice farmers who grow crawfish, and from the fishermen that fish in the Atcha falaya around Belle River and Pierre Part, Louisiana. The small ones go to a peeling plant in Breaux Bridge, and the good stuff go e s

GASPARD R egardless of whether it’s a slow season or one that’s wide open, in the crawfish business, it’s all about size. “Everybody likes the nice ones, man,” said Jason Gaspard, the owner of Gaspard Seafood. To be successful in the crawfish business, you have to be good not only at sizing up a sack of crawfish, but doing so very, very quickly. “We’re looking at hundreds and hundreds of sacks a day, depending on the time of year. You have to look at that sack and, in a matter of seconds, determine if it’s going to have good crawfish.” When the crawfish professionals are checking out a fisherman’s haul, they’re looking at a few key things. “Every sack is going to be a mix; you’ll have some small, some big, some medium,” Gaspard told me. “You just don’t want a sack where it’s a lot of little ones.” Then there’s the smell test. “We’ve been doing this for so long. We know our fishermen and farmers — these aren’t fly-by-night people. We have great relation ships with them, and they’re giving us fresh product, but you’re dealing with live product, and things happen.” Families are the backbone of the crawfish industry, and Gaspard Seafood is no exception. The company was born in the l a t e

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