Ep. 578: Big Shrimpin'

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Buy you lafouche should how you say it?

By you let? What's it mean?

The fuk, the fuk and the buyo right here? Okay, when the the bike came down from the river, it forked off, just like the push the push pull you use when you're hunting. Yep, it funked off. So that's where it's got it got its name.

Oh a push pulls of foush. Yeah, introduce yourself. Tracy Collins, you ever been on a podcast before?

No start? My first one.

I could recall how's it feel?

I'm a little flushy?

Also joined by his son Rodny Collins. You've been on the show before round? Yeah, we we did duck hunting. I came on the famous Greg Fonts Yep. Chili's here, and then Asa who doesn't know about Asa Carter's right? Can you do me the fit? Can you listen? Asa Jackson Clark, Asa Jackson Clark. You're a professional fisherman, right, Yep, Okay.

Yep, I've done it for about ten years on and off, charter fishing down here.

How old are you? Twenty nine? About to be twenty nine? A couple of weeks? Yeah, so you're you're you're a professional fisherman. Yep? You single? No, I'm engaged.

Oh, it's going to help you out.

Uh do me.

Here's the thing that I want. I just want you to pay attention to for a second now. And then people will come to me and they'll say, you really ought to You should really read blank book? Right, you should really watch blank movie? I Am. I will say

You're going to do if you if you, if you tell me to go rate an A Carter book, I might not have, but I can listen. That's easy because I drive a lot and I like I like clay nukelemb He's interesting. So you're gonna listen to the As Carter series. Yeah, well it'll change your life, actually will. It's kind of it's not my namesake, but I mean.

I don't know. I don't know that it's not. I don't think it is. You never know. Well, you know, so Asa Carter his name, his namesake for his middle name was Forrest Carter. Who is he was a gorilla kind of a famous gorilla fighter during the Civil War. Oh cool, ye cool, like a somewhat of a tactical genius, if not a somewhat compromised character, but a famous civil war fighter.

Gotcha, Well, yeah, after what you told me about his uh kind of dichotomy of his life.

Yeah, very very complex person. I'm interested now, ye interest speech writer, regular writer, brawler confused the wild wild man. Yeah, cool, so you'll do that. I will do that, don't I won't tell you I'm not going to do that. Don't grin f me. You know what that means? Is that like smiling and yeah you're like, oh yeah, I read it.

Read it, Chili? How was your first oyster? Man?

It was incredible.

I was telling Chief here uh that I feel like I'm I'm part of one with the land and sea and I might just buy me a houseboat.

You're by you man, I'm by you man.

Yeah, I'm working on the the lingo.

I I've been nervous about the lingo, and I want to share something with you guys that I didn't want to I'm reluctant to admit. Well, last night I had to look up I got I realized all something that wasn't entirely clear on what a bye you was.

I was like, I know what it is. But I don't really know what it is. Hm hmm, So what is it?

I feel like something you would know it is?

Well, it is a slow moving stream or river in flat country with a poorly defined shoreline. So like a delta, no adelta is where adulta could be adultas where a river opens out onto a larger fo figures out on a body of water. But by you, slow moving river stream in flat country with poorly defined shorelines.

Is that what you guys thought of?

Like?

Is that what it means?

You?

By you was actually a branch of the river.

Yeah, so you know what I'm saying, the word by you, by your general r yeah bye.

Yeah, by I was thinking of a slow moving body of.

Because like I'm as down on the bayou as anybody personally slow move. But I didn't realize what that. I didn't realize being as down on the by you as I am, not even knowing what the hell that meant was making me nervous.

So never really gave you can go right here, Yeah, we are down on the bayu And.

Uh so, Terry people call you chief? What's that all about? You haven't written?

It came about when Ronnie's son was born and His mother said, Uh, mister Tracy, what would you want Anthony to call you? I said, I don't know, maybe Papa Tea or something like that. She says, how about Chief? I said, Chief?

It is?

That's where we're at. Really, yeah, I like it?

Is that what your grandkid calls you?

All of them?

Yeah, everybody calls them that.

Now they'll call me my friends, my buddies, they call me chief, and it's all good.

All right? Do you mind, key Walker? See what uh just tell us in what we were up to last night?

Well last night, I mean I haven't gone out in a few nights, you know, about a week or so. So really when you go shrimp and you gotta kind of go out and hunt, have your hunt hunt on, you know, and search and see where the shrimp are. You know, you gotta kind of look at your tides and your water clarity, you know, your weather. You just sometimes it's here, say you know, we caught some here, and you go, you're going to hunt. So last night, I mean, uh, we had a little rough weather to start.

So we was able to pick up a few like that, you know, a few.

A few. Yeah, well that was a little mess. I mean sometimes you could load the boat in a little while in that concept, you know, But it wasn't too bad. I was hoping to look, I was looking for the larger ones.

You know.

Yeah, I was able to get a few.

How long have you been in the shrimp business, Well.

I was. You see, my family was always in the oyster business. But in the summertime we would rig up a couple of the oyster boats. We had three boats. We'd put two of them with shrimp rigging and we'd go out on the beach or in the bays in the back of Grand Island, and uh, that's what we did in the summertime. Just the winter time it was oysters.

Okay, So it's like it was more like opportunistic when you could.

Well, we'd shift from one season to the next, from archster season to shrimp season. So we'd we'd get out of school early, you know, and go with my grandpa and my dad and I start fishing for shrimp. You know. We'd do it every summer. Then we kind of broke away from it for a while then and then I had this arster boat here. I hadn't shrimped in a long time, so I just, uh, we went ahead and utilized it to be able to go out and do a little shrimping.

When you say you guys broke away from it, did you break away from it because of the influence of the oil industry, Well, actually, crazy different class jobs.

It was ulchstering almost a year round. Now, okay, we was with the refrigeration, we was able to fish arsters in the summer months, we had an abundance of archsteres, so it was fishing pretty much.

Uh.

It was pretty much r stream more than then going back in shrimp.

Uh.

How far back was your family go in this area?

Uh?

Four five generations. Uh, four generations for sure, fishing behind in the Grand Island area. My dad was raised in Shinyir, which is the little town right before you get onto the island. And after the big storm, the big storm wiped everything out up.

What big storm was at, I don't know.

I don't think they had a name of It was before Betsy. I want to say it was before Bets, you know, because my dad was caught in the lake during Betsy. All the water was sucked out from the storm and the boats were landing in the mud and the water just rushed back. They had dropped the anchor and all trying to before the water rushed back water

It was pretty bad.

But they didn't have no you know, phones to see the weather coming and whatnot. They just knew they was in a storm. They was coming from across the river from transporting oysters. And they said when they got to a strict of locks, they used to open the locks with some mules them. Yeah, the mules used to walk in the circuit and the turn the shaft to turn

That's that's how you want to say it.

That's it, not us. There was a relative of it, but my family and all I guess, you know, my grandfather had other brothers that lived in that area also, you know, so that they went up to Golden Metal. But I still have the property in Shinier where they used to live. What's there now but nothing that we had a camp there, but it got wiped out for I think called Katrina. Yeah, yeah, wiped out everything.

What's a shineer chief like? It's like the opposite of a by you right at land.

Bridge ser I'm not quite sure the Oakridge.

Yeah, Briandie fixed your mic. Man, if you think that's two fingers off, five fingers off off your beard and not too off your mustache?

Now higher higher up right, Yeah, okay, I didn't get the momo.

Greg's two two fingers off, three fingers off his teeth. It feels gonna be mad at you, guys. I'm sorry.

So uh so that's pretty much the arch They were fishing archsters behind back then they jump in the water, the corn orsters. They would take the ysters out the mud and put them in the big bolt and just hand hand picking. And they used to they used to have a they call it a trouma, a tromai. It's a triple net besides orstring. So when the shrimp and season would come around, they go put out a troma.

Yeah, a gill net. So it's it's sort of sorting what it catches, correct, I gotcha? Oh, so that catches like a gill net. I got YOUA And what do they call that word?

May?

Like three meshes in three meshes in frenches may. So these were oyster men. They would make more other times a year.

Fish that way, whatever whatever was in season, you know, and uh whatever they would have. Whatever they would catch, they would load up in some skiffs, which was a boat without a deck, and they'd run them up the Barantaria Waterway and go sell them. That was how they get rid of them. They'd go sell them a Barataria Waterway to and somebody would pick them up, bring it to them new walls or whatever, probably probably little feet. And they had he had pins built to keep turtles.

Diamond packed terrapins. Yeah, tell me about the trap again.

It was like a like a barrel, just cut maybe a two foot barrel to place it in the ground level with the soil where the turtles would just walk go up and fall in them because the turtles will climb ashore to go let their eggs or whatnot. Oh, they think they were coming ashore, then you they was coming to short That's what he said. These traps, you know, to catch the turtles. Man, I'm totally not following.

They come up the shore to lay there is I got it.

But one of the odds he's gonna come up the plank. Yeah, you just place them in different areas. But there was an abundance of turtles. So a wave of turtles. They had a good bit of turtles, not necessarily a wave. It was just in the area where you didn't have too many little sand banks in the marsh where they would go. So I guess I guess they knew where they was gonna go, where they was gonna go. Like if you're gonna go fishing, you know the fish is

Know how I was telling Jack over there about how if someone asked me to read a book and I'm not gonna read it.

I'm not gonna read no book. I'm just and I'll say I'm not going to read it.

Here's another thing I'm trying to work on in life, like a self improvement thing, is when someone's explaining something to me right and I don't understand it, I find that most people, most people will act not along right. I have tried in my adult life to become the kind of person that says, I just don't understand. That's as bad as it might make me look, instead of acting like I understand, I'll tell them I don't understand. Yeah, and I get what you're saying, but I don't.

Well, I wasn't there. I wasn't there. So I'm trying to explain it the best way I can to figure it out.

Uh, you can if you just want to mess around and catch painted turtles map turtles I'm talking about. I guess yankee turtles up where they like to come out and sun themselves. Okay, So you could make a floating pen with meshing it and put a sunning ramp like a plank that comes up over it, and they all stack up on their the sun themselves, and all you got to do is spook them, because they don't back down off the plank when you spook them, they just

No, that's good man.

We all right, you understand it.

Greg, have a good idea.

I think you really, No, you got to think the amount of time these guys spent on the coastline. They probably had a pretty good idea. Where the sea.

Turtles not sea turtles diving so like like he was saying, it's in the marsh, it's mostly mud, and they would find like a sandy bank on the marsh, which is a rarity.

So a lot of the turtles would congregate there knowing they're going.

To come up with places.

I've seen tarrapins tend to be sandy or parts of the marsh.

Didn't I show you one of the barrels we was going to fish back there or something long time ago? They still had the barrel there. I've seen one. I don't know there's been years now, but I've seen them still there. Uh.

When you grew up, you were raised by people who hand picked oysters.

I still didn't grow up yet.

How did that talk about how you called oysters when you were doing oysters straight to the dredge? Oh but yeah, what was that transition like from from guys going in and hand selecting, Well, we more mass harvest.

Well that was before my time. So when when I started working, we was pulling in the dredge, the chain and the dredge pulling it up and landing on the deck.

Yep. But how is that, like are the oysters so thick on the beds that you're just scraping the top of the bed off.

Well, you saw when we when we was loading the oysters. Yeah, well we will go pick that up. It might take us a day, two days to finally load up. When we load them up and we haul them here to transplant them, we have our bed marked off and it's solid like a like a parking lot. It's real. So we just we're going to pile them up. We could pile them up maybe a six inches thick.

Back up and explain this process. Okay, so that you're moving oysters, explain.

Well, you got the state reefs and you got your private leafs. Okay, so your private leases you can have them cleaned up where there's nothing there, and so you want to restock it. Okay, so you're going to go to the state grounds and sometimes when it opens up, Yes, it's full. You could keep pulling them in as fast as you can.

And it's regulated. The state grounds is the regulating spot. Correct, And it's full of juvenile oysters?

Correct?

And how do you pick those out?

And it could be from a juvenile to or market ready oyster. Okay, we just load everything up and we bring them and what is what is that? What permit do you need for that? Oh? You just need to have a right now, you need to have a seed permit. But seed they called a seed seed permit, but back then you didn't have to have one.

Okay, And you're you're hand grabbing these no no, no, with the dredge, so you're dredging off the state round. Yeah, okay.

Since I've been in the arster business, I've never had to hand picked. That's when the my great grandfather and my grandfather, they were handpicking. Now we moved up to the larger boats, and now we're going to state grounds and picking up the seed oyster and bringing them to our private grounds and washing them over. So we might do that for two months and just fill up a few acres of grounds. But why move them to refish

Just to load up the boat. How much does the sack.

Back? Then? Shit, I got paid as little as eight dollars.

How many pounds?

One hundred, one hundred pounds or less? You know?

Okay, so you you have a place, You have a private place. He's a private property that is suitable for oysters.

Correct.

You go to a remote area far away and you dredge up juvenile. You just dredge up oysters, and then you're allowed to take those to your spot and distribute them correct and then give them how much.

Time depending on the size within from like September to April. Some of them will grow an inch and a half with the salinity change. You might be taking an oyster from a brackish water and putting them in a heavy salinity area. Uh huh. And you got to fish them before the summer toimp because the salinity, like we spoke yesterday, may come in heavy and kill them. So we bringing them to this area to for them to grow fast

Got it, And we had a great area for a good taste and archster. That's the thing that I never understood about oysters. Is it oysters blue muscles? Yeah, that they're like these like circumpolar species. It's the same thing, correct, So when you see oysters like this name, that name, it's just different waters. Yeah, it's not like a different kind of oysters, the same oyster.

I could take an East Cools yster and bring it right here to Grand Island and leave it for a month, not even that long. You know what, It's gonna taste like a Grand Island arster. It's not an East cools uster. Yeah, so we would take these oysters, especially the closer you could get to the fresh water line that orchters are thriving. You take those ysters and put in a heavy solemnity area. Yep, man, they're just gonna explode and gruel and be happy. Man.

But they're vulnerable to death. Oh yeah, But we.

Usually know all the timing that we're going to fish them out before to get to that point.

And then when you go back. So you bring these seed oysters in and you plan them and then you harvest them with a dredge, right, and you're bringing them up Like Ronnie. When we were in your boat last night, Ronnie was talking about being a little kid and being in the wheelhouse of that boat and we're looking out on the deck where you were pulling shrimp nets what do you call those skimmers?

Skims?

And he would talk about looking out that window and not being able to he'd go just fall asleep and wake up and couldn't see you, and he'd have to try to climb over that mountain oysters to come down and find where you were at out on the deck of that boat.

Because he'd be driving in that front. They had that front steering wheel, and that's where he'd run when he'd be running the dredges.

And you just wake up and there it was. I wake up and there was being polo issters. And then are you needing to are you then taking all the ones that are still too small and pitching them or by that point is everybody harvestable? Right now?

We at the transplanting era, we're taking everything and then when we're gonna go back to refishing for sale, then we will grade them. Okay, the little ones, we could bring them to a different area to continue.

They're growing. Oh, so you'll put them in another spot.

Correct, it's forming, you know, you could form, you could kind of mark out with poles. You know what you have where?

Yep?

And then you.

Yeah, and what's that? What's that industry like now? For this area?

It's uh, the the orsters just don't really take all that great in the wild. But with Storm Ida, it turned everything around. It made the arster, the crabs, the shrimp more abundant. Now it's starting to play back out. How is that? Well, you see, an archster takes three years the harvests. So after the storm, the storm stirred everything up. But anything that is in an Orchester growing area, anything that would have been like a little shell or anything that an oorster would want to stick to that

Oh I got you. So it slowed things down and then the price is shot up. Like immediately after.

After the storm there was no oysters. So anybody had a sack of orster, you could get like seventy five bucks right when you're down back to the thirties.

Yeah, and when it started to creep up, it was good. And then you hit saturation. It's too much oyster.

Yeah yeah. Now shrimp also and crabs, Like people couldn't shrimp. The bullsom messed up. People couldn't go crabbing for a year or so, you know. So everything was able to to just flourish. And when the people started going back out, man they would catch and shrimp. They were catching crabs. The baby arsters were there, they just weren't markt saw market saw as yet got it. So now they're market saws.

Yep, can you can you explain a little bit that process you were telling me about that you would lease oyster ground.

From the state. Yeah, oh it's from the stately state least correct, I got it? Yeah, but uh yeah, just like if you lease a piece of property anywhere, you know you can pay your lease every year, and you know, you just got to know what you have on your bottom, you know, how.

Much would you lease like like, for instance, like there's an old saying like in the ranch world, like you have an acre of ground for every head of cat all you have?

It was like three bucks an acre. You know, it wasn't that bad three bucks an acre a year.

But how much could you like put like how many oysters could you put in like an acres?

Oh you could have. I've seen myself work a month and a half, two months on an acre of a acre of ground that had an abundance of orish. But didn't you have hundreds of acres? Though I had a like eighteen hundred. My father and grandfather don't accumulated. Well, how the hell, you worked that much ache. Well not all of it was producing areas.

Oh yess, so you got a lot of ground.

A lot of ground was like mud or currants were bad, or too much fresh water.

You know.

We also have these diversions that they're putting and there's they're pumping this fresh water into the marsh hoping to create create new ground. But uh so those areas were no more good reason being the fresh water and there was man made They could flush fresh water when they wanted to, but like the rainy seasons, the water would come up. They wasn't running the fresh water, so orsters would take again. But here we go next. It takes three years to make uh market orster. So here we

No, I'm talking like you get too big of a change straight from fresh.

Yeah, too much fresh water would kill these oysters.

So so that eventually made the business untenable.

For some areas. Yeah, you just have to rely on a different area.

Yep.

Yeah, but you eventually got where you were done with oysters pretty much. I went after Katrina went into the oil field business, you know, and uh did well there and uh ended up getting back out of it.

And uh.

My little brother had the orster leases and everything, and he had been working everything during the that era, but uh then he gave it all up too much problem with thieving and not enough oysters and this and that, not knowing that Ida would have replenished the leases.

You know, Oh, I got it. Yeah, how much like you've been at this so long vision oysteram correct shrimp and and all that, and you you broke the chain. Sorry, Ronnie, but you broke the chain.

Yep.

What like in your guys recollection of growing up, of spending time here in the deep family history down here, how would you begin to express the cultural change that happened with oil?

Well, I'm glad he didn't get into the orster business, you know what I'm saying, right, Yeah, you know, I mean, it's a good culture, but it's just not it's just not there anymore, you know, I don't he wouldn't have really made it because just with mud and nature. Just the orsters were not producing and you just wasn't having a reproduct, real good reproduction anymore.

Are those leases something you can sit on, so you don't you know, you can just maintain the lease, not harvest.

Wait for as long as you pay your lease. As long as you pay it, that's all they were about it.

They don't care if you're fishing it or not.

That's right, okay, because they can't tell you, oh, you got to fish this area. Well there's mud, there's no oysters. What you want to do with it. But sometimes you maintain areas to keep the other people. You want to put borders on yourself. But we had a lot of problems with uh, with thieving going on.

Yeah, that's that's the thing I wanted to I wanted you guys to explain it's oyster poaching.

Well, if if like when we seeding and we piling these oysters up, so you're going through all the work, a little boat could come there and in fifteen minut just hurry up and make a few dredges and load their boat up and go somewhere else and cultivate and call them you.

Know, and they're lean them up and they're doing it at night A lot. These little boats are coming at night.

You was doing it?

What kind of dudes are doing it?

Boats in these little small Carolina skiffs were just kind of sliding.

People that really don't have anything to lose.

You know.

But these guys will actually come like you have a least area and it's worth someone's effort to come into your least area.

And harvest. Yeah, in fifteen minutes, if they make a couple of dredges and they make let's say ten sacks, So ten sacks when the price is really hard. It was getting anywhere from fifty to seventy bucks. They make their night in I gotcha in fifteen men.

So they're just doing like like real quick, hitting small chunks of small chunks of income, but like high high money per hour of effort.

Yeah, ten sacks at fifty all at fifty at all, that's five hundred bucks, I see.

Yeah, when you already had all the overhead to go out there and get them and bring them.

And so it's more it's like a quick money thing. Quick.

It's not a three year play. And who they worried about?

No body? I got it, you know what?

I mean, yeah, if they get caught, sometimes they just get a slap on the wrist.

You know.

Mm hmm.

When you you were saying that you uh, when you when you sold your leases, like leases can move from one individual to another. Correct, And you were saying you kind of wish you would held on to like a little bit, or tried to hold onto a little bit. Correct, because now you you you want back in the game. Uh, not really, oh, but you just kind of I really enjoyed it, I really, you know. I mean I've a subleased some leases. Now you know, when I'm able to get back out there, you know, oh, I got you

To go back home.

Is it more work than catch a shrimp?

Uh? In some ways, yes, it's more physical.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And every archster just like the shrimps. You know, sometimes you gotta pick all your big shrimp out, you know where every archster has to pass through your hand and you're gonna grade it. You know, you gotta all those mountains oysters, Well, those don't have to pass through your hand until you refish them.

Ye.

When you're gonna go refishing, you put it on your table and then you.

Gotta sort them all, shorting them.

Yeah, sometimes they have a dead one on a live one. You gotta knock the dead one off. You gotta clean it up and put it in your pow. Then you gotta sack them up. So then you gotta stack them. Then you gotta load them on the conveyor. Then you gotta put them in the truck. Then you gotta take them out of the truck. You handle these arsters eight ten times, you know. So it's it's a lot of

You know.

We would just bring him in front of the house and sell them off off the side of the road. That was that sign you had.

Yeah, oysters, get you some get you some watch, and you'd sell them shocked your whole We.

Had a little shop that we would do some shucking. Yeah, and we'd sell them by a sack.

Ronni, did you get tangled up in that business when you were young for a little.

While in high school? After school, I'd go chuck a few sacks, you would.

Yeah.

Yeah, he's gotten that special shucker with it.

Yeah.

Man, he made that, he made that bund yeah.

Uh.

Then you when was the first time he started shrimping for money, like commercial shrimping. Oh, about three years ago. Okay, And you rigged out your oyster boat, correct. Ronnie was explaining to me how that boat would be a little bit different if it was fitted specifically for shrimp.

Yeah, I wouldn't have had those tables and everything and that big wench and stuff, you know. But like right now, I could just move my cables and my nets out the way, and I could throw my dredge off the side and continue working oysters.

You know.

Okay. Yeah, And then when you go out like that for shrimp, how long do you normally go out for it?

Maybe two nights, three nights of the max, you know.

Yeah, and you sleep on the boat in the daytime, yes, sir, because it's a nock turn it's a it's a nocturnal.

Well, sometimes you're catching the daytime, you know, so I mean sometimes you'll you gotta work with the shrimp. You know, if it's given, then you fish. If it's not given, once you see it slacks off, you might as well slack off and go get you some rest. So then you guys just anchor up wherever you're at, drop it.

You know.

I'll get up and felay some fish and peel a few shrimp and put some rice and beans on, and got a meal meal like eat like a king's huh.

And then you like, then you guys go to bed and get rolling again. Oh yeah, well yeah, and what's the like layout for me? What the shrimp How the shrimp market makes it good? You know, gets good times, bad times, good times, bad times.

Well I really don't know it all that good, but I mean it's.

I was reading we were all reading about this morning. Yeah, I was reading about what you were telling me about, right right, So like the tariffs that went in when Trump came in, well and it was your senator that was I was reading about how your.

Senator you might know more about it than me.

Now, well talking about it too, Senator Kennedy. Senator came who Ronnie was playing me a clip Senator Kennedy, who was talking about the defund the police movement. He said, next time you get in trouble, call cracket.

If you don't like cops just because they're cops, next time you're in trouble.

But when Trump he was saying that when or he's you know, reading about it. Is when Trump started to do tariffs on China, a senator from Louisiana came in and said, please add crawfish and shrimp, oh yeah, to the list, making the claim that a lot of stuff was come from aquaculture facilities in China where they were using antibiotics, antibiotics and shrimp some questionable practices injecting.

Yeah, that inject it's pretty scary.

Injecting the silicon and then and then not having the US not having proper regulation on what's coming in mislabeled seafood. Seafood coming in mislabeled origin companies that was sort of masquerade as regional companies with names that would be deceptive. They were actually imported seafood, killing the killing the industry here. And so your senator saying, man, I'd like to do more protective tariffs to protect the local the American people. Yeah.

I think if you see the name, you just assume, yeah, fish seafood.

Yeah, yeah, in Louisiana's crawfish. Who the hell was suspected?

Its overseas and a lot of people I guess they go after the cheap the cheap price. Yep, you know what I mean. But it don't help the American people, you know.

Oh, I would never think coming here that if I was buying something in the store, I was buying something from overseas, but just went I would just think I was buying local naturally, right.

You don't think about it. Yeah, so what what kind of price fluctuations you see? You told me something last night about a price from forty years ago. Yeah, man, forty years ago, not even adjusted for inflation. But forty years ago you were getting more.

Than we are today for the same sage shrimp. It was a sixty seventy shrimp. Right now we're getting like thirty five cents. Forty cents. Forty years ago, we were getting sixty five cents for that same sage shrimp. But that's what's crazy is you're talking about wild caught, wild caught, real good tasting shrimp, and and.

People not out of any kind of maliciousness. It's just like people not understanding. No, people chasing like a little bit of savings, restaurants chasing a little bit of savings and buying.

Some farm raised bullshit from overseas. Yeah. Man, it's like I think they blindfold of people. I mean, they just the people don't maybe the people that just don't hear and know any better or whatnot. I'm not quite sure. You know, it's hard to say what what's the problem there, because I've been in the supermarkets where the prices were really high and it's not going to you, no, no, man, no way, How can you give the fishermen a dollar?

Costs to make that not so fresh. You can bring you can bring.

Fresh shrimp to some areas like like further north that that are far away and bringing fresh shrimp and they'll be like, oh, that's that's good. It's wrong when it was wrong. When it's like this is fresh, it's wrong. It's rotten, like it's efficient. And on the display at the store is like you could see like the heads all black and starting to turn orange. It's it's rotten, and they lose their The thing I found I'm just a casual. I told you that's now I'm a big

His head's on there pretty good, and you let him sit around, his head gets to be where it's just isn't He doesn't have a lot of fidelity to his body. After a while, spots the fall away.

Well, we were even doing spot prins last week and you could tell day one the way they looked. And then we were cooking up like our last meal for dinner. Just the look of them look different, different shade.

Yeah, and their eyes, eyes are glowing when they're alive. That goes away. You know the thing I found. Maybe you guys can explain to it. Thing I found about shrimp is it? Uh, if you pull him up from deep water. So when we catch shrimp, we'll fishing three hundred feet of water with pots. Okay, the shrimp pots baited with fish heads. You don't think I've seen it. Yeah, if you pull him up and just any kind of minimal handling, you cannot put that thing back in the water.

Because you're bringing us from such a depth.

Well, no, because like if you're pulling it up in a shrimp squirts out at the surface. Yeah, you'll see him kick down and I don't know if he's fine or not, but he kicks down. I don't know if he survives or not. But if you take that sucker up on a boat.

I mean and you dump them in a bucket, there they're done.

You put them in a bucket and wait a minute, and you put them back in the water. He is deader like something that a fish would not phase the fish. It seems they're just a sensitive correct, you know, sensitive creature.

Man. Yeah, here too, I mean you could they could take so much. And then you know, especially these white shrimp, even though they're big, they're really not all that a durable you know, a brown ship shrimp they could have survived a little drop of water. You know, they'll suck in that little drop of water and still living. But a white shrimp, man, it's just like I'm done.

Yep. Is there a big price difference between what you get for white shrimp and brown shrimp?

Well, the big difference there is the size is the brown shrimp will not get big like a white shrimp.

Okay.

Yeah.

And then when we were coming, I wish I knew better where we were Chili. When you and me were driving in, we got a little side tracks. We're trying to find that pole boy place.

Order.

It was. The town started with an R. We were in Racelan and that's where we got her.

First I got I thought, I hit the pole Boy Place, and we want to buy a hospital. Then we thought the poor Boy Place is in the hospital, and then we eventually realized that somehow just clicked down the hospital.

And then to keep driving around the hospital.

Being like, I understand how there's a pole Boy place in here to the cafeteria, I honestly wouldn't be surprised. Yeah, it's like this right next to stand, just like the ambulances and stuff. Yeah, see the pool we walk in.

She's like he is here for.

Yeah, I was. I don't know how to explain it, Chili, but I somehow clicked down the hospital, not the poor Boy place, But we want about the pole Boy place where. I think this should have been our first sign that the shrimp industry was in trouble because this guy lays out mine, He lays out my bun. This is a phenomenal poll boy. First I got a little nervous. Yeah,

A bun.

And a patty nothing, And I was like shit, and we'd already ordered, and I'm kind of panicking, like I don't want my pole Boy without shredded lettuce and tomato.

And he was very distraught about it the place.

But then we see in the background, we catch a guy come through with a bunloaded with lettuce and that breathed easy. Yeah. He takes fresh catfish, very fresh. We saw him go. He went in the back room. It looked like he flayed the damn fish. Yeah, comes back a while later, holds the flave, treating his fingers.

And I'm like, they didn't freeze that.

No, no joke.

He goes in the room while later walks out with a catfish flake like this, very impressed into that fire.

And then I made a bad call.

I then he like very quickly lifted the basket and I'm like, Jill, you're gonna get some raw ass. I was watching the wrong basket. He'll take anyway, The point being I knew the shrimp business was in trouble. Yeah, he lays my bun out and he was packing shrimp into that bun, like when you're trying when you got too much stuff in your duffel bag and you're trying to get one more little bit of clothes in there

He spent like ten minutes just eating shrimp.

I know, And I thought I must have had one hundred bucks worth of shrimp in my sandwich, because like what you because grocery store prices right. But then we left there and we're driving along, I guess the upper side, what the hell it feels by you?

The foochs? Was that by the foosh?

So that same value you were driving along, the same value that pumps out here that we the past.

We went out to go diving, shrimp boat after shrimp boat after shrimp boat after shrimp boat with signs out front selling shrimp three fifty pound four whatever the hell.

Yeah, there's three fifty to go and rate.

And that's like, this is all shrimp is just selling, selling to what you'd get, but selling it at a quarter of the price you'd pay in a store when you can't even get something that quality because these are brand new, fresh caught shrimp r And is it so that is that a function of what we're seeing. That's a function of that the commercial market is just not present, and you're fishing for locals.

But what's what's the price sholl getting for like the twenty sixteen twenties and the ten.

To fifteen for a dollar five and a sixteen to twenty which would be the next size small?

Explain those terms that might fuse people.

Well, sixteen twenty, ten to fifteen to the pound, ten to fifteen shrimp to the pound? Is that tails or heads?

And tail?

Heads and tail?

Okay?

So sixteen twenty ors sixteen twenty? I mean if you count, if you take usually count them by threes. You take three pounds and you dump them on your table, and you come at threes yep, as one. Well, if you count eighteen, what's a sixteen to twenty? If you count nineteen sixteen twenty, God, it's just a way to caliact insteatic doing just one pound? Look one pound and I count fifteen shrimp? No, you do three pounds. That way, it's more to.

Get a better average correct understood, And those little ones like I don't know, like as a consumer, you might wreck popcorn shrimp correct, Yeah, yeah, you know if you guys use that term now, Like yeah, the first the first small shrimp we had was running like a sixty seventy to the pound.

At sixty to seventy shrimp.

To that small those cents bitches.

Yeah, not the last ones we caught. They had a lot more smaller ones that might have been eighty to one hundred to the pound.

And those are worth if you take them, not if you go find a buyer for it, but you go to the shed. Yeah, like the shed, that's the commercial buyer, the shrimp shed. So you take it to enter it into the commercial market where it could get wherever distributed around.

They're gonna pay you what for those little shrimp maybe thirty cents a pound a pound, yeah, not the sixty seventies right now, they might be around forty to forty five. And again, like I said, forty years ago, there was sixty five.

Now that same shrimp. If you keep that same shrimp alive and sell it to the bait market, you get thirty cents apiece.

For one nice shrimp for one when those little shrimp, but you got to keep it on the lost. Do you ever say, do you ever work in that trade?

Though I've been, Uh, I came very close to it because you.

Got got all the air raiders and everything, and.

Yeah, and uh, not only that, you know, it's just a different market. You're not really if you load up with shrimp, well you just got live shrimp. You gotta go in with with just uh maybe a couple of thousand up to maybe six thousand shrimp where you know, you got to have a lot of live wells going on to keep these shrimp from dying.

Wouldn't it Wouldn't that be extremely difficult though, because I think I don't know if it's you or you explaining yesterday that like when you catch shrimp in your net off your.

Boat, a lot of them died.

A lot of them died because they end up drowning it with when they're in the net.

Talking about that you make so when you do live bait tarling, you tryal for very sharp drags. You don't make a long drag like we were doing to an hour drag because you're gonna kill a lot.

Of your catch.

Yeah, once you pick up, you pick up, you dump your bag, you throw in, you deal with that. Then you heard me pick up again. You just continually pulling them in. You don't drag them in the net long at all. You're always dealing with whatever you're catching at the time. Just keep dealing with.

And that's why you for saying he likes to do short pulls too, to keep him fresher longer. You know, look for you coast them, right, they look better because they're not being dragged in the water for that long after they're dead.

Right when you uh the porpoises, they'll tear that mesh getting at they want to get at the shrimp fish, or they want to get the fish.

The fish that are trying to escape or getting stuck in the sod of your net. Sometimes you have a maybe a full five inch fish that will get stuck in the and they want to pull it out of your net. When they grabbing onto your net and they're gonna pull and tear your.

Net, dude, you get what you wind up with quite the caravan man, you know, like you go on the back of this boat. Dude, it's like he's we started before it got We started before it got dark out. And you go on the back of that boat and it's like, first off, you get the sense of those birds have all done that before, you know it, multiple species of goals, pelicans, and they get in there and they could ride the uh they could ride the call it. Yeah,

Man.

You see, if they would have had thirty forty boats, they would have been distributed. But they sense a boat, so they're all coming from all directions. Man. They want they want a free meal. Yeah.

No, it's funny because you can tell everybody's done that before. Oh yes, indeed they had one guy.

Uh. In fact, that was right in the West Canal where we were. I seen him up against the bank and it was before the storm and he was hand feeding one it would come up and he'd hand feed it and hand feed it. And then I seen him. I said, yeah, man, I've seen your feeding that porpoise. Yeah. Man, he would come all the top to me. But since the storm he hadn't seen him. So, I mean, it's what Yeah, yeah, since the storm he hadn't seen him anymore. But before the storm he used to hand feed that

It flipped me when the fish.

It was there.

And you like take you like take pictures of sunsets and stuff when you're out. Oh yeah, man, you never you never lost track of the beauty of it all.

No, man, Nature's the thing of its own.

Man.

It's just so Yeah, it's nice.

I could see getting like all after all your life, that you lose that doing it for work. No, man, you might after a while, just be ambivalent.

To be honest with you, man, Like I told you, the last three or four times I went shrimping, it causes me to go shrimping. It costs me the money bank to go shrimping and bait ice, I mean a few and ice. You know, it cost me a little bit to go shrimping. And but I enjoy you know, And like I said, the August season is when I really enjoy it. Those big shrimp they're red.

Man.

They're jumping on the deck of the boat, on top of the net. And every time I see you, when I tell my my my crew members, look, look the on top, I'm just it's just so excited you. And uh they're jumping in front of that net just like popcorn. Man, they're running, They're jumping all over the place. When you're really fine them. It's pretty neat.

To see, you know.

It's just I enjoy it.

Yeah, he says.

It's a famous phrase.

Yes, catch phrase.

Catchphrase.

Man, So you haven't gotten into have you gotten into spearfishing like your son here?

Not as much?

Man?

He uh, he brought it to a different level.

You know.

It was we started out just uh going dive for lobsters, you know, with the tank and haul and everything, you know, and and it come on, we're going to get lobs of Dad I don't want to shoot some fish man, so we he so we had to give up our my wife and I had to give up our lobster hunting so he can shoot him some little hogfish and then lo and behold, man, we was lost in one time and he's shooting some fish and I look in the distance and he got some little three foot sharks

Shark shield.

I never thought you could scream under the water. But it's mama was screaming under the water. Man. And I'll looked off to the side and they had a big about eight nine foot, a big nurse just kind of sitting there.

You know.

I'm glad they didn't see that one, you know, but uh, it's good man under the water is beautiful man. It's just a whole other world, you know. And then uh, like Ronnie, you know, Ronnie went for the with and then uh started the free diving.

You know.

Well, I gotta start breathing up and learning how to free diving. I always got them big fans, and I'm not nowhere close to what they'd do, well y'all do you know? But I mean I enjoy you, you know, just go out there. And he likes to go to Bahamas and get some calk.

You like that.

That's fun, man, that's a little wrist diving too. Yeah, you're right, well it's about it's about nipple deep.

We went a little bit further than nipple, you know, but it was about twenty five or sold. But I mean it's just nice to see. Also, you know, just a nature things. And I'm a crustacean fisherman, and so Conker right up.

Here, crustace your crustacean specially, yeah, man, Conker Lobster's like what he likes to do. Like when we go together to the Bahamas. That's your idea vacation. You switch, you just switch crustaceans.

Snails and crayfish.

Man.

Oh yeah, tell me about that that ship man. I even made a note in my phone to ask you about the snails the begnas. Yeah, okay, okay, lay the snail situation out for me.

Well, snails are also in the salinity area, you know, so when we would transplant orses.

Are you guys using the word s cargo, But it's because it's not a land begonna began, Yeah, be gonna.

I don't know how you spell it, or we just call it a big but uh you see, so we transplant these oarsters. Yeah, so these oorsteres have a scent. They have a smell of their origination, origional area. So when you put it in this new area, that's scent travels throughout the water. So drum fish, your snails, your trout, everything trout, they'll come to eat the little fish in the oysters, but the snails smell.

Them like they know something went on.

Then the new food they smell us, so they come into the dinner table. So these snails are moving in. So whenever we bet arsters in the salinity area, we'll always check the edge. And I remember one time we checked the edge and we had like sixty five big snails. So we knew they were coming, so we put it down in September. But when the cool the winter comes, these snails go in the mud or they'll just hide out. So we knew it was gonna be safe that we had to fish them out before the water warmed up.

Thunder set again, so we'd.

Uh sometimes a bamboo or an oak pole. I use the bamboos sometimes to No, bamboo is.

Just the mark. But uh we would nail these palmetal leaves to the to the pole and then wrap them with biling wire and we'd push the pole in the mud on the edge of the reef where the palmetto would just start touching the mud. And these snails they want to hurry up and lay. Then after they lay is when they're dangerous because after they lay, they don't want to eat, so they hurry up and they laying there. They climbing these poles to lay their eggs.

So they wanted to lay the egg on the palmetal.

Correct. They want to climb to put their egg in the water, cool in the water to float around. So they're gonna climb anything they can. They climb the crap cages, poles, anything you have, they're gonna climb.

We could actually walk outside right now, probably catch a couple of off the pilings, like those oysters you saw in the pilings. If you go walk outside now, you're gonna see begos on a metium.

Okay eating the oysters.

Yeah, they'll they'll drill drill a hole in them, either drill a hole in them or they'll they'll cluster up on one and suffocate it until it opens up and they'll get there drilled in there really and they actually spit their stomach bile in the oyster and it it dissolves this orster like a jelly and they'll just suck it out. Liberty hole.

Many way to go, you say, one time, like you actually ate one that had been started to get drilled on.

If you eat an orster that just started to get that stomach ball in it. Man, you just don't want to see another oyster for a while, you know. But it's nasty, man, that stuff. So we we've caught up to like thirty five five gall and thirty five five guy on buckets of snails in one day, just passing out traps. Yeah is that? Are you do that more to protect the oysters?

Are you doing it to eat the snails?

Protect the oysters?

Okay, yeah, but then you're eating those snails too. Yeah.

Well, when we have that big of an amount, it's hard to get rid of them, you know without back then we didn't have Facebook and this and that. Right now, you could get rid of them quick. People really want them. The crab fishing will catch them and they'll put them up. They'll sell them like a forty fifty bucks for a bucket of snails.

Really oh yeah, man, And how do you guys fix those?

Well? I used to have a pressure cooker that could hold a five gallon bucket of snails and you pressure them for like fifteen minutes. Now you could put them in the freezer and boil them for fifteen minutes. But if just a raw snail, you got to boil it for about an hour, whistle, and you got to boil the hell out of it.

That crab ball season we put on the craw fish bowling that same seasoning, and you just take them out with a little small knife.

Now they have a little area on the backside of it you gotta peel or cut off. We call it the back out a tobacco whatnot. It's just the area where they keep that boil at their stomach ass. It turns purple off to you boil it or whatnot. Yeah, you want to cut that off. You eat too much of that of you'll get see got it?

Uh?

Talk about your gumbo. You were talking about your gumbo rest last night. Oh man, I'm getting hume girl ready.

I was gonna say, talking about all these oysters I want to go.

We're talking about oyster gumbo.

Yeah.

Man, he told me that he don't put sausage in his gumbo because the minute you put sausage in your gumbo, it's sausage gumbo.

Sausage gumbo. Man, I don't care what gun of gumbo it is. You put sausage in it, it's a sausage gumbo. And that's my philosophy.

You know, man, Now I've cooked, so you make a huge quantity.

Yeah, I got a certain saucee pod. If I'm gonna cook a gumbo, that's my pot. I put all my same ingredients quantities or whatnot, and I'll freeze it up, man, and I'll eat it for whenever I want some gumbo. It's ready to go.

And you do a gallon of oysters.

Gallon of oysters. I put the chicken towes, chicken legs maybe, and some chicken wings, gizzards and maybe it's salt pork and the and then a gallon of oysters. Man. I make a dark ru and season it up so good, and you eat it out in your boat if you need to. Oh, if I need to, yeah, I'll bring some on the boat and we'll go shrimping and all I'll bring me some gum bull and yeah.

Good life, man, good life, living the dream. I like to eat out and never got burned out on seafood.

You're still oh no, man, I'd like to see the palla oyster shells from the oysters I eat in my life?

How many how many ocees you eating? The oyster eating competition that you did.

I don't think I eat that, man, I'm sure I ate about eighty oorsters. Maybe, I don't know, maybe not your own. I know they chucking for you, but you know you had over when they were counting dozens and you did over a dozen dozen. Cool. I don't remember, man, you have a better memory than me.

Man, But did you win? Oh no?

Those professional eaters ridiculous amount.

They would just just inhale like I was trying to pull it. Oh yeah, I don't know.

They throw them back up.

I really don't.

It's like those professional eaters, those people you just qualified. If you throw it up, you are Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

I'm not into that. Yeah, I tell you. I don't mean to judge, man, but I'm not into that hot dog eating contest.

I'd rather enjoy, you know, enjoy yours.

Where they get where they're like, they dunked that bun in water, so you can basically slurp the bun and they inhale those dogs. It's pretty nasty. Come on, man.

Then there's the controversies where they would dip them, but they would leave some of them in there, so not having to con man, they take the cups away.

Yeah, it's hard to dip a hot dog bun have it all come back out. I've never tried it. I'm just guessing it's hard to do it. But we tried to give it a little shake in there. We tried with the bagel chips. This trip worked that well, Oh that's right. Yeah, it's not good. Ronnie and Greg, Can you guys give Chili some critiques on his first sper diving expedition. Chili explained to us, he's not a waterman.

No, what'd you think of it? From South Dakota?

What did I think of it?

So?

I think for us, we see what's going on, but for someone it's hard to explain everything that's going on down there.

Well, yeah, I was gonna say, like it's hard to like rationalize like everything that's going on, Like it's weird. It was weird, like being on the surface and just kind of rolling with all the waves, being next to a rig and then like you get below the surface here.

Talk about being in the boat first, because I kept telling you got to get in the water else you have no idea what's going on?

Right, Yeah, See was yelling at me that I needed to get in the water to just just to be able to put it all into perspective, and uh, I was like, yeah, I'll go, I'll go, and I'll end up going and yeah, it's just it was. It was incredible trying to just like just get below the surface and just seeing like all the different types of fish which I don't know about, and uh, everything is pretty

I'd start playing with that and you gotta fish.

I got it.

Yeah.

The old South Dakota washing rarity, not many people know about it, well, they.

Do know about it, they don't they just don't know about the new name.

So yeah, and I'm getting a barracuda, which is which is great.

He's gonna stuff the head.

I'm gonna I'm gonna hear amount the amount the head. Yeah, that was cool too. And he's gonna have a big fish fry. Gonna have a big fish fry. Everybody's invited except for you, Greg. Uh uh no, Yeah, that was it was just it was incredible.

Yeah.

When I I remember, I was actually right by Dan. It was a byhind the camera right now. Uh, And I saw barracuda and I kind of like had a moment of like, oh ship, because I didn't you.

Know what you were looking at. Just sort of instinctively I knew. I knew that that was a bar Yeah. It's like a fish that like most people be like, oh I recognize, I have to. That doesn't look friendly at all, like a little snag. Yes, the mouth is a little open.

I was like, I don't want to fuck with that thing.

But uh yeah, So I saw it and then Dan was telling me. He's like, oh, yeah, like that's baracuda, and I'm like, oh, that's cool. And then I ended up swimming next to Steve and he's like, oh, we'll try to shoot a barracuda and he's like, shoot that one right there, and I was too far away.

I was probably thirty feet away, way too far.

Wait, I didn't know he had a rifle. Yeah yeah, fed out three hundred weather dead.

But then I told I'll squeeze you when it's time to shoot.

Yeah, yeah, and then we would get up there was cool.

I was watching from you know, I don't know, thirty four feet give you a little.

Goose when Yeah, He's like, I'll squeeze your rom when it's time to shoot, and I was probably like, I don't know, seven feet away from this thing and squeeze my arm, pulled the trigger and ended up getting.

It, and uh yeah, I know. It was incredible though, Like I very very glad.

I got on the in the water and we dripped it away too, So you'll manage to dispatch the South Dakota wahoo.

Pretty pretty big one like was going about it, and he came. He came swimming.

Okay.

I was about to say that looked like a Greg job.

He didn't like my plan, so I take off and went out of the rig and I saw Steve chasing it, trying to wragule it.

And it was very much alive. And then I just circle back. When you came after you, it was going No, he came right back, but I thought he was gonna get me. I thought he's gonna pale me with the shaft. He was all over you. They got crazy when you shoot him out of the water. Greg didn't like what was going on. It came. He thought he thought we were gonna get mold. This is probably reasonable.

I gave it a few seconds and said to intervene with probably think I was playing cat and.

Mouse with that big dogs messing and all that.

Yeah, So in the end we.

Got we've got amber we got amberjack, which we had in those delicious yep, the controversial amberjack.

Meaning it's delicious amberjack.

Yeah, but it's it's it's one of those many I keep saying, this is one of those many fish that people argue about. Yeah, there's certain fish that people don't argue about, like like if you go, I mean, there's certain fish is just universally accepted as good. Like no one wants to hear from someone who says that, why who's no good? Right, Sure there's.

Someone, but it's just no one care Like snapper snappers.

Some some dude somewhere doesn't like it, but it's just accepted common carp Of course, you're gonna find a guy that says common carp were great. You know, you're gonna find a guy that says kyote meat is great. But it's just generally people aren't into common car. But it seems to me in my limited experience, the amber jack splits people right down the middle, supplits people right down the middle. There's a little bit of regionality to it.

Well, there's even I feel like when I first came down here with some of the guys I was going with, it's the first fish I ever shot in Louisiana, And even they were like, eh, you know, maybe maybe I have a little bit. But they weren't like, oh good, you shot a shot a ambridge.

Well my take on was, how bad could it be if it's so tightly regulated. Uh so this was like bad one a day, a short season. It can't be that bad.

It was a little looser back then. I mean you're talking probably fourteen fifteen years ago. I shot it in March. I mean it wasn't even the same time of year.

Okay, I'm trying I'm trying to remember when they started bringing in the season on amberjack. Yeah, I say, I was trying like middle school when they started putting on so it's.

A tight season.

I also didn't realize how old I was getting, so I've been coming down here for a long time. And then you talked about and Ronnie's consumerly younger than I have. But yeah, it's the regulations changed greatly with that fish over the year, so.

It's a one a one month season one day. Yeah, it's a tight ass regulated fish, which says to me, someone wants it.

But the commercial guy who got a long season, they could, Oh they do they get them like a winter, they long let them. No, they they bandit bandit fish them, kind of like snapper. They do what bandit fishing, big giant reel, put a big, big hand crank on it and they'll put like twenty to fifty hooks on it and up it down or with the amber jacks, sometimes they'll run a lot less hooks. But you never seem

No, I haven't seen it.

It looks like a big black pulley on like a metal arm that they'll sticking a rod holder in the gunwale and they just crank it up.

But it's it's got a big metal wheel on it, like it's got one main line with a bunch of droppers on it exactly bat them as it goes out. Yep. Yep. You'll have like an auto jig auto jigs or what.

No, you just lay it on the bottom and then by the time on a good spot, by the time you get it all on the bottom, you bring it back up.

Basically.

God, it's all just circle hooks. Yep. Yeah. And that's how they catch them.

That's how they fish them.

Got amberjack, Yeah, got gray triggers yep. Also tightly regulated.

Yeah, very tightly regulated per day, and they all also have a very small season, like they close the same day as Amberjack.

Okay, kobea tighter and tighter all the time.

Yeah.

That that was That was a killer for me, not one per person, but was hurting yesterday seeing all those Kobe and letting them swim away.

There was a lot.

First, my side job is commercial kobea and it's like you used to be able to go and you know, you get two per person and no boat limit. Now it's one per person to per vessel. Oh see, if you're out by yourself, it's one. Yeah, so if you buy yourself is on one.

Yep. Mangrel snapper which still very you know, a very friendly regulatory structure.

They haven't really changed much. They've been the same as long as I can remember.

And no season on them.

Something.

I think it helps the mango snappers and they're tougher to catch on rod and reel. They're a lot smarter.

Than the reds. They're slick, yeah, got it.

Yeah, And from what I heard back in the day too, is that you used to be the mangro What we like do with mangrove fishing now where we go up and chum a rig and then we'll let the you know kind of free line, let the hook float back with it. It used to be white trout and croakers like back this way before my time. But like, yeah, we used to fish on Grand on Grand, I would say, yeah,

They're like this big.

So I heard I was never here for this because in the seventies eighties, but it's what it used to be. The mangrove fishery was a croaker fishery really yep. And as those croakers went down, the mangrels came up. Yeah you know cyclical, something else comes up and takes hereinks your spot and.

We got red snapper yep, which went the other direction. I mean, I know it fluctuates all the time.

Yeah.

So we fished last year Friday Saturday, so the season was a certain window of time.

Yeah, just a weekend and you can only have two per person, and then as the season went one they opened it up to by the end of the season last year you could have four per person yep. Whereas I mean I can remember as a kid going out when I first started free dive and everything that it was like one week a year and you can only have two per person.

And right now it's open all week.

Now it's opening. It opened it up the I think in April they opened the mid April. They opened it this year and it's opened all week long and four person.

Hmm, sixteen inch.

It's a very uh in Louisiana. It's a very fluid regulatory structure, like they're fine tuning all the time.

So one of the places you have to go to you really have to pay attention if you're coming from out of state. I'm just so used to a season and a size.

That's you say, when I go to my mom's lake, Like when I go to Michigan fish my mom's lake. In my lifetime, there's been one change, yeah, and that was that pike went from twenty one to twenty four inches and bass went from twelve to fourteen. Other I can't think of a single change that's happened in fifty years.

Well, even here the end season change, they'll be does he go throughout?

Yeah, yeah, they'll they'll close it on you last minute, or even like like the amber jack season just just popped up. What in April I think, or Scelda the text, Hey, look, they're giving us a springs amber jack season this year, which is Spring's my favorite time to shoot him because they come up higher in the water column. It's a little easier free dive for them versus like trying to shoot them in August because they give us an August season.

What else did we get?

Trying to think we had a dog snapper dog snapper scamps and they get a scamp sandwich.

It wasn't a monster one, but scamp, grooper, campgrouper.

Yep, what else? That's about it?

That's about it?

Passed up.

I mean there's all kinds of fish we didn't get.

Yeah, I mean alma cot. Did we get alme CoA?

Yeah, they get some almal cozy.

Special Almalco.

Yeah. That was great man, Thanks for having us down.

Yeah.

You people bill watch all about it. Yeah, we'll be able to watch all about it.

How do you like those amberjack amberjack fights?

I could see getting drowned by one of those. I could see you got if you didn't do something right and got wrapped up, he's gonna drown you.

Yeah.

Yeah, to know where your knife is.

Yeah, you got that line when he's going all crazy, If you got that line around your foot, he's gonna drown. No, man, you're not holding him back. He'd have no problem dragging you.

Oh no, they're not even trying, and they're just working you.

You cannot you'd get like you try to tighten down on him and you just going under water, Yeah, pulling you down as you go, and you got to realize you gotta let go to get a breath.

Yeah, it's all about finding that right amount to give him and attention to like yourself, but still not letting them get to the rig, because once they get to the rig, it's pretty much it becomes even game over.

It becomes really tough to go retrieve them. Yeah, these fish like just people listening. These fish. If you shoot one, you can get over. And these guys will no joke, hand the lineup or hand the gun up to the boat and they tie this thing off to the cleat to try to stop it. Yeah, I mean tie it off to the cleat on the boat, and then you run the risk that he'll pop off because he's got something firm to pull against. But other than that, you're gonna lose it. Anyway.

When we're riding real fishing forum on charters, it's we use big fifty with tigger fifty wides and they'll be Once you hook them up, you basically got to slam it in reverse and hold the hold the spool with your hands. And they're still screaming out like forty to fifty pounds of drag. Just to give some perspective, So use big uh what's the Jerry Brown braid? Like three hundred pound braid braid and you just basically lock it

Yeah, you try to back the boat away. Yeah, you have to. You have to use the boat.

Yeah, the biggest braid you could find with something like three hundred or up to five hundred pound test mind know, with a sixty knight circle hook with a live blue runner and you drop that down to the school and when you when you hit, when you feel meat it, you just throw it in four reverse the back of the school there. Because they go in the rig, they'll cut it instantly. I mean you saw like Greg had even was cutting his dynamo with his first one out on the strip.

Rig donkeys, rig donkeys.

Guy, they're strong.

It's cool to see.

Just it's like a pack of wild dogs coming in when you when you shoot a mangrove or something like that, and when Chili was fishing.

Try it was the benefit of Chili's fishing. Yeah, Steve, Yeah, that's how we. Yeah, Chili dropped down with the rod, caught a snap or pulled it up, and they just come up with it like they're fish.

I don't like to try and shoot deep on a free dive, like you ain't trying to shoot him because you know you got to. You're about to get your hands full, and uh, you definitely want to hurt them. You don't want to You don't want to just take any shot you could get on them because you want to give that that get that stunt on them, so where they're stunned and gives you a little time to get to the surface and prep yourself.

They're not they're not dead.

They're just charging their turbos.

Greg says, you got to break their will, break their will.

Sometimes they break you because sometimes you lock down on them and.

You're swimming up and you're trying to you know, you're trying to break their stread there. Then you look up and go, I'm deeper than I was when.

I shot it.

He says, when you hit it, if you if it stuns for a second, Yeah, then you got to hog it and it kind of He thinks it breaks their will.

Well, I don't think it breaks.

Then they then they puke out whatever they have in their stomachs.

And the like when they flare the up, flare their gills up, and they'll charge up with auction. Like I said, like they're charging their turbos and then they're ready to kick your ass. He's like, I'm gonna vomit up my lunch, charge my turbos.

Take it with me.

When you see the tails start to flick like that, get ready because you bother go for a ride.

Yeah, hold on, hold on, Yeah, I was legit a little bit, not not scares that the right word. But you just become aware of how you could do something wrong.

Yeah.

If you're not being careful about your right well.

You just have to be, especially if you're if you're shooting real like most of us do, and you start getting that line up. If you do not clean off to the boat and you get it up and they make another run where that line is, you just have to be very aware of what you're going.

As you've seen they do, like you'll get you'll start gaining on them like, oh yeah, might I might have broke their wheel and they're like, oh no, no, no, no, we're making another run.

Yeah, it's not a fish, you know. Some fish, you do break them, they'll do wahoo.

They'll do one or two maybe three runs, and then they'll turn side aways or run out of gas.

Where.

Yeah, the amberjack are just no nonstock resilient. Yeah yeah, well, yeah you did it.

I lived, I lived, got you a big one, and then you got your good either.

Yeah. And I labeled that one Steve Steve's Special Amberjack, my little one.

Yeah.

But man, yeah, I was. I thought it was pretty good. And I texted Yanni. He's he's got a strong North Carolina influence, married married into a North Carolina fishing family. I texted him and it said, he says, right off, do they eat those? That's crazy? I said, very popular, very popular, and then he followed up with congratulations, that's cool, so must be something. Well, Chief, thanks for coming on

Man?

Man oysterman. What do you guys call it?

Man?

Ok? I hope they get your prices squared away. I think that consumers of it would be great if consumers of seafood uh factored in the if it costs them an extra buck or two, factored in the source of where they're getting there, the source of where they're getting their seafood, right to help sustain certain you know, sustained certain industries and practices.

Realize it's locally called and you know wild caught fish. Man's wrong.

Silicon free, silicon free, no added antibiotics. Still that's wrong, all right, all right, man, thanks for coming on the show. Thanks guys, thank you, thank you.

Man.

Row your boat.

Gently down the stream, Oh your bod gently down stream?

Man, That says an icey manro me an icey an icey.

Life is not a dream? Row harboled.

Gently down the street.

Roll your bod.

Gently lead down the street. And I say, icey manly an icey an icey.

Life is bo a dream? I listen, I say, I say, life is bod a dream? Rip yr pen.

Gentlyad down the scene.

Oh, rip yr pen.

Gentlyad down the scene? An iceys and iceay manly an I say, an icey, here the lady scream, rip your pants, gent, lead down the scene. Rip your pants gently, lead down the scene.

I say, and I say.

Rollie, I say, I say.

Here the lady. Stream stream stream