I laughed at a comment made recently in a forum when a lady stated she would never eat a crawfish taken from a ditch. Growing up that is the only place we would crawfish, large ditches full of plants as the critters eat decaying plant matter. Later on when I was old enough to pilot a pirogue I could get deeper into the swamp, not a big ditch and a lot more work to get to. Roadside ditches throughout Louisiana were the best spots to crawfish on a Saturday morning. Nets made of heavy wire in a four sided tripod shape, chicken necks, or better yet ‘Smelt” were used as bait. I am not sure what ‘Smelt’ was or is but it did do just that, smelled. I understand today there is a lure or sauce that has an odor crawfish love and you can spray on raw meat to help attract them. I remember the old days, sitting in a lawn chair along a side road with buckets, a cooler of soft drinks, a bamboo pole for setting out and taking in the nets placed in the ditch. A good morning and you have several buckets full of fresh from the ditch crawfish to boil that afternoon. Boiling them is an art. Beginning with the ‘purge’, a bath of sorts in clean water in a large wash tub, then the propane boiler rig, and the Louisiana spices plus whatever vegetables you want to add, like garlic, onions, potatoes, corn, and a few lemons. Each family has its own special recipe for boiling seafood and most keep it close. Never forget the salt, the boil doesn’t go well without a lot of salt in the water. Lucky for new comers the Louisiana spice packages have a good recipe to how to boil.
My experiences growing up in Louisiana shows itself in my art. I make a lot of crawfish designs and crawfish cartoons and sell them at my Fig Street Studio shop on the web  both at Zazzle and Cafe Press .
Louisiana has plenty to offer in the way of seafood and places to fish and unique seafood caught even in a road side ditch. Read the  fable of the Cajun Mermaid, a comical crawfish story, at this link: http://www.figstreet.com/tshirts/cajunmermaid.html