We opened up the house boat and left the luggage and ice chests and food there, and headed out to fish. My dad knows the place like the back of his hand, so we started hitting the favorite places looking for one where the fish were biting. If we spent 15 minutes without getting good fish, we'd move on to the next.
We fished at the Mud Lumps, the Eads Jetty, we went out to the East Bay oil rigs, which is 60 ft. deep level, looking for snappers and groupers, we fished the Garden Island Bay looking for bass and red fish and speckled trout, we went up to Telephone Lake and Fresh Water Bayou looking for bass. Didn't really catch much, according to my father, we caught a lot of hard tail mackerel out by the rigs, but those are not supposed to be good eating, so we kept a few for bait and threw the rest back. We caught a lot of catfish closer in, but most were hard-heads, which are also not supposed to be good eating. Kammer caught a big redfish, and a brown mullet or whiting, which my dad fried for supper Sunday night, and I made a huge salad. We fished for about five hours on Sunday. On Monday morning we went back out, and started the rounds again. I caught a couple of croakers, and was having a good time, but the game wardens came up and wanted to see our licenses, and mine had fallen out of my pocket. The warden couldn't verify that I had one by radio because his radio couldn't pick up the phone towers, but he just let me go with a warning because Chris showed him his. So I had to quit fishing and just took photos. Used up all my film too fast.
This is a world made of water, and you really feel it in Louisiana. The boundary between land and water is tenuous, permeable, temporary, the boundary between river and sea is constantly changing. The three worlds, land, river and sea, meet and mingle here, enriching all three.
This is also a world inhabited by man, and his handiwork is quite visible, when you look offshore you see the oil and gas rigs spotting the horizon as far as the eye can see. To someone who is not from Louisiana, this may seem offensive, but when I look at it I know that it's making money for the poor coonasses and rednecks, so they can put a house trailer between them and the elements that are so unrelenting down there, and fill up my Rover so I can come down here to see it, and my dad's Bay Cruiser so he can bring me even closer, and let me sit in the boat, rocking back and forth in the arms of the water I love so well. |
