MONTEREY &8212; Crawfish, Crayfish or Crawdads, no matter what you call them, the season for catching and eating them is near.

Former Natchez resident Clifford Tillman is the owner of Cajun Crawdads, a crawfish farming operation in Monterey and a crawfish sales operation in Horn Lake, just south of Memphis.

Though the season for Central and North Louisiana and Mississippi doesn&8217;t start until February, Tillman said he expects this year&8217;s crop to be better than last year.

&8220;It&8217;s not going to be a bumper crop season but it&8217;s not going to be a bad season either,&8221; Tillman said.

Sunday, Cajun Crawdads farmer James Aaron checked test traps at the crawfish farm in Monterey.

Tillman said Aaron reported having about two pounds of crawfish in each of the eight traps he set out.

&8220;Which is really good for this time of year,&8221; Tillman said.

Tillman said the 2007 season is looking better because of the recent rainfall received in the fall of 2006.

In the fall of 2004, Tillman said because of the heavy rainfall the 133 farmable ponds produced about 2,000-2,500 pounds per week in spring 2005 during the harvest.

In the 2005-2006 season Tillman said his ponds only produced 500 pounds per week.

Louisiana State University professor of Aquaculture Rob Romaire said during the 2004-2005 season crawfish farmers in Louisiana harvested approximately 75 million pounds.

In the 2005-2006 season, farmers harvested about half of that because of the loss of farmable acreage due to hurricane Rita and a period of drought prior to the hurricane.

&8220;In speaking with farmers, they&8217;re seeing more crawfish this year,&8221; Romaire said Sunday.

Romaire said test-trap results like Tillman&8217;s this early in the season are a very good sign for this year&8217;s harvest.