The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 578: Big Shrimpin'

Episode Date: July 29, 2024

Steven Rinella talks with Tracy Collins, Ronnie Collins, Greg Fonts, Asa Jackson Clark, and Austin Chleborad.  Topics discussed: What a bayou is; fishing oysters by hand; Steve’s self-improvement; ways to catch turtles; sacks of oysters; how water source changes the flavor of the oyster; oyster thieving; shrimp heads falling away; looking for the po’ boy spot in the hospital; when a porpoise flips you a fish; the snail situation; getting digested in stomach bile and then sucked out of your shell; a special gumbo recipe without sausage; eating over a dozen dozen oysters in an oyster-eating competition; and more. Outro song “Liquid” by Adam Patrick, Drew Clayton, and Caleb Widmer. Connect with Steve and The MeatEater Podcast Network Steve on Instagram and Twitter MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. You might not be able to join our raffles and sweepstakes and all that because of raffle and sweepstakes law, but hear this. OnX Hunt is now in Canada. It is now at your fingertips, you Canadians. The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season. Now the Hunt app is a fully functioning GPS with hunting maps that include public and crown land, hunting zones, aerial imagery, 24K topo maps, waypoints and tracking. You can even use offline maps to see where you are

without cell phone service as a special offer. You can get a free three months to try out OnX if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet. This is the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug-bitten, and in my case, underwearless. We hunt the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug-bitten, and in my case, underwearless. The Meat Eater Podcast. You can't predict anything. The Meat Eater Podcast is brought to you by First Light.

Whether you're checking trail cams, hanging deer stands, or scouting for elk, First Light has performance apparel to support every hunter in every environment. Check it out at firstlight.com. F-I-R-S-T-t-l-i-t-e.com Bayou Lafourche is that how you say it? Bayou Lafourche. What's it mean? The fork. The fork in the bayou right here. Okay. When the the bayou came down from the river it forked off just like the foosh the push pole you use when you're hunting yep it forked also that's where it's got

got its name oh a push pole is a foosh yeah introduce yourself tracy collins you ever been on a podcast before no sir my first one that i could recall's it feel? I'm a little flushy. Also joined by his son, Ronnie Collins. You've been on the show before, right? Yeah. When 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. That's right. Can you do me the favor Asa Jackson Clark you're a professional fisherman right yep I've done it for about 10 years on and off

charter fishing down here how old are you 29 so you're a professional fisherman you single no I'm engaged oh I was going to help you out 29. About to be 29 in a couple weeks. Yeah. So you're a professional fisherman. Yep. You single? No. I'm engaged. Oh.

I was going to help you out. Here's the thing that I just want you to pay attention to for a second. Now and then, people will come to me and they'll say, you should really read blank book. You should really watch blank movie. I will say to them, if it's not going to happen, rather than creating tension

and something that needs to be brought up again and again, I will just flat out say, I'm not going to watch that movie. Right. You know what I'm saying? Right. And then it ends. And I don't need to feel that movie. Right. You know what I'm saying? Right. And then it ends. And I don't need to feel guilty about not watching it.

I don't need to feel guilty about not reading the book. They're not going to ask me again if I watched it. I'll just say, I'm not going to watch that movie. Okay? I would like you to go and listen to... Have you ever heard of a show called The Bear Grease Podcast? Yeah, with Clay Newcomb? I would like you to go listen to the three-part series on Asa Carter.

Okay, I'll do that. I like listening. You're going to do it or you're not going to do it? If you were about to tell me to go read an Asa Carter book, I might not have. But I can listen. That's easy because I drive a lot. And I like Clay Newcomb. He's an to go do it. If you're about to tell me to go read an Asa Carter book, I might not have. But I can listen. That's easy because I drive a lot. And I like Clay Newcomb. He's an interesting fellow.

So you're going to listen to the Asa Carter series? Yeah, I will. It'll change your life. I actually will. Okay. It's not my namesake, but I mean. I don't know that it's not. I don't think it is.

You never know. Well, you know, so Asa Carter, his namesake for his middle name was Forrest Carter. Who is? He was a guerrilla, kind of a famous guerrilla fighter during the Civil War. Oh, cool. Yep. Cool. Like 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 kind of dichotomy of his life. Yeah. Very, very complex person. I'm interested now. You know, writer. You piqued my interest. Speech writer, regular writer, brawler, wild man.

Yeah, cool. So you'll do that? I will do that. I won't tell you I'm not going to do that. Don't grin at me. You know what that means? Is that like smiling and you're like, oh, yeah, I'll read it. Yeah, you know you ain't going to read it.

Chili, how was your first oyster, man? Oh, it was incredible i was telling chief here uh that i feel like i'm i'm part of one with land and sea and i might just buy me a houseboat you're by you man now i'm gonna buy 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'm reluctant to admit. Last night, I had to look up. I realized all of a sudden that I wasn't entirely clear on what a bayou was. I was like, I know what it is, but I don't really know what it is.

So what is it? I feel like, yeah, it's 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. Is that what you guys thought? No, a delta is where a river opens out onto a larger floodplain. Fingers out on the body of water but a bayou slow moving river stream in flat country with poorly defined shorelines is this that what you guys thought of like is that what it means to you yeah it was actually a branch of the river bayou lafourche yeah so but I'm saying the word bayou in general. Yeah, bayou.

I was thinking a slow-moving body of stream water. Because I'm as down on the bayou as anybody. Personally. Slow-moving. But I didn't realize what that... I didn't realize being as down on the bayou as I am, not even knowing what the hell that meant, was making me nervous.

So I looked it up. Never really gave it any thought. But as down on the bayou as you can go right here. Yeah. We are down on the bayou. End of the bayou. So, Terry, people call you Chief. What's that all about?

You have it written on your arm. It came about when Ronnie's son was born and his mother said, Mr. Tracy, what would you want Anthony to call you? I said, I don't know, maybe Papa T or something like that. She says, how about Chief? I said, Chief it is. And that's where we're at. Really?

Yeah. I like it. Is that what your grandkid calls you? All of them, yeah. Everybody calls him that now. They all call me. my friends, my buddies. They call me Chief. It's all good.

All right. Do you mind, can you walk us through what, just tell us 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 shrim shrimping you got to kind of go out and hunt have your hunt on you know and search and see where the shrimp are you know you got to kind of look at your tides and your water clarity you know your weather you just sometimes it's hearsay you know we caught some here and you go you go on the hunt so last night i mean uh we had a little rough weather to start but uh knowing that grass that uh there's that the seaweed was moving in what's the word you use

for that or what is that like a raisin raisin grass we call it the sorghum yeah the sorghum is a raisin grass and uh in french they call it uh design so we wanted to try and get away from that so that's when we headed north then uh we ended up going hit one of the canals knowing they wasn't going to have any the the raising grass so i knew it was going to be a little cleaner i just wasn't quite sure if it was going to do anything because the the tide was almost at a standstill but even at a standstill you notice they were real small. That's when your real small ones are going to kind of just float up and play around, you know, and kind of just give a little drift.

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, uh, it went too bad. I was hoping to look, I was looking for the larger ones, you know but uh 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 uh 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 uh with shrimp rigging and we'd go out on the beach or in the bays in back of grand island and uh that's what we did in the summertime just but the winter time it was oysters okay so it was like it was more like opportunistic when you could well we shift from one season to the next from oyster season to shrimp season. So we'd get out of school early, you know, and go with my grandpa and my dad, and I'd start fishing for shrimp, you know. We'd do it every summer.

Then we kind of broke away from it for a while. Then I had this oyster boat here. I hadn't shrimped in a long time, so 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, no. Because it created different jobs, different class of jobs? We was oystering almost year-round now. Okay. With refrigeration, we was able to fish oysters in the summer months. We had a,

an abundance of oysters. So it was fishing pretty much, uh, it was pretty much our string more than, than going back and shrimp. Uh, how far back was your family go in this area? Oyster?

uh, four or five generations, uh, four generations for sure. Um, fishing by hand in the Grand Island area. My dad was raised in Chenier, which is the little town right before you get onto the island. And after the big storm, the big storm wiped everything out. What big storm was that?

I don't know. I don't think they had a name of it. It was before Betsy. It was before Betsy, 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, while the water was still there, they had dropped the anchor. They had two boats tied together, and when the water rushed back, while the water was still there, they had dropped anchor. They had two boats tied together. And when the water rushed back in, the boats separated. The ropes popped. He said the planks were flying off the sides. They found mud in the engine room that flew in through the little cracks

in the windows and all. It was pretty bad. But they didn't have no phones to see the weather coming or whatnot. They just knew there was going to be a storm. They just knew there was going to be a storm. They was coming from across the river from transporting oysters. And they said when they got to the, a strip of locks, they used to open the locks with some mules.

Seriously? Yeah, the mules used to walk in a circle. And turn the shaft. Turn the shaft to open up the locks. Really? And when he got there the mules were gone so they even swept away they had to jump on land and manually turn the locks to open them up to lock themselves through to get to get back home and by that time it was actually

what year was this 65 the year i was born yeah It was 1965, Hurricane Betsy. Okay. But it was before that they wiped out everything and where some of my relatives, where their house landed up in Golden Meadow in Bayou Lafourche, the house landed there and they broke it down in the bayou and rebuilt it on the land. So we landed in Golden Meadow. Yeah. Because that land so we landed in golden meadow yeah because that's

where your house landed that's where that's how you want to say that's it not us there was a relative of mine but my family you know i guess uh you know my grandfather had other brothers that lived in that area also you know so that they went up to golden meadow and uh but um i still have the property uh in shin year where they used to live and all what's there now oh nothing we had a camp there but it got wiped out for i think uh katrina yeah yeah wiped out everything what's a chenier chief like it's like the opposite of a bike right at lamb bridge shin year i'm not quite sure that's oak ridge yeah yeah brownie fix your mic man if you think that's two fingers off it's five fingers off your beard it's five fingers off your beard and not two

off your mustache are we good now higher higher up right here yeah okay i didn't get the mumo greg's two two fingers, three fingers off his teeth. Phil's going to be mad at you guys. I'm sorry. So that's pretty much the oyster. They were fishing oysters by hand back then. They'd jump in the water. They'd cool oysters. They would take the oysters out of the mud and put them in the big boat.

Just hand-picking. Right, right. And they used to have a they call it a trauma a trauma it's a triple net besides our string uh-huh so when the shrimp and season would come around they'd go put out a trauma it might be two three four hundred feet long and it was a a small mesh to catch the shrimp a larger, which would have been about a three inch mesh to catch like your trout. And then they had another mesh that would catch like the bull drum, bull reds and everything.

I actually still have some of the corks that were made out of cypress. They put all three out at once. It's all, one net made all together. And they would just pull it. Why not just have the smaller mesh and catch all the shit? They catch every, well, the biggest stuff would get away as where the four inch mesh the big fish would get caught in it you need to manually pull them out almost like a gill net yeah gill net so it's it's sort of sorting what it catches correct i got you oh i said like so that catches them like

a gill net i got you and what do they call that word? Tromoe. Like three meshes. Okay. Three meshes in French is tromoe. Tromoe. So these were oyster men. Yeah. That would make more other times of year fish that way. Whatever was in season, you know.

And whatever they would have, whatever they would catch, they would load up in some would catch, they would load up in some skiffs, which was a boat without a deck, and they'd run them up the Barataria waterway and go sell them. That was how they'd get rid of them. They'd go sell them up the Barataria waterway and somebody would pick them up,

bring them to New Orleans or whatever. In Lafitte or New Orleans? Probably Lafitte. Lafitte. Yeah. And he had pens built to keep turtles they had a a pond that they would block off with boards they would take the red fish and drum fish and throw them in that pond and when they was ready to go to market they'd go round up everything

the they had drums in the in the ground where the turtles would walk up to lay their eggs and fall in the little drum about a foot and a half deep and they'd go pick up the turtles and they had those in a pan also. Freshwater turtles or salt? Salt. Diamondback turtle. Little diamondback turtle.

Oh, diamondback terrapins? Yep. Yeah. Tell me about the trap again. It was 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 up and fall in them because the turtles would climb ashore to go lay their eggs or whatnot. Oh, and they'd think they were coming ashore. Mm-hmm.

They knew they was coming ashore. That's why they set these traps, you know, to catch the turtles. Man, I'm totally not following. They come up the shore to lay their eggs. I got it. But what are the odds he's going to come up the plank? A lot of barrels. Yeah, you just place them in different areas.

But there was an abundance of turtles. So a wave of turtles. Oh, 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 they'd look for i guess they knew where they was gonna where they was gonna go like if you're gonna go fishing you know the fish is gonna be right here they knew the turtles were gonna come to lay here you 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 well i'm just joking and i'll say i'm not gonna read it right 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 though 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 all right 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 you don't need to spend a ton of time on it i wasn't there so i'm trying to explain it the best way I can.

I'm trying to figure it out. If you just want to mess around and catch painted turtles, map turtles, I'm talking about, I guess, Yankee turtles up where I grew up. They like to come out and sun themselves. Correct. Okay. So you could make a floating pen with mesh in it and put a sunning ramp like a plank that comes up over it and they all stack up on there to sun themselves yeah

and all you gotta do is spook them because they don't back down off the plank when you spook them they just dive in so they walk up the plank to sun themselves and then you just come by and spook them all and they fall in the cave and they fall in the pen. I get that but I don't get we don't need to spend too much time on it. No, that's good man. We alright. You understand it Greg? I have a good idea.

You do? Really? No, you gotta think the amount of time these guys spent on the coastline they probably had a pretty good idea where the sea turtles like to lay their eggs. Not sea turtles, diamondback terrapins. Like he was saying, in the marsh it's mostly mud. They would find a sandy bank on the marsh, which was a rarity,

so a lot of your turtles would congregate there. Knowing they're going to come up to their eggs. The few places I've seen terrapins tend to be sandier parts of the marsh. Didn't I show you one of the barrels? We was going to fish back there a long time ago. It still had the barrel there. I've seen one. the barrels. We was going to fish back there a long time ago. I don't know. It still had the barrel there.

I've seen one. I don't know. It's been years now, but I've seen one still there. 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 caught oysters when you were doing oysters straight to the dredge 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 uh

pulling in the dredge the chain and the dredge pulling 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 was loading the oysters. Yep. Well, we'll 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 hard so we just we're gonna 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 this well you got the state reefs and you got your private leases 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 this is a regulated the state grounds is a regulated 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 a market-ready oyster. Okay. We just load everything up and we bring. And what is that, what permit do you need for that? You just need to have, right now you need to have a seed permit.

A seed, they call it a seed permit? A seed permit. Okay. But back then you didn't have to have one. Okay. And you're hand grabbing these? No, no, no, with the dredge. So you're dredging off the state ground.

Yeah. Okay. Since I've been in the oyster business, I've never had to hand pick. That's when 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 them later. Yeah, but. Maybe they're not market size yet. But what do you, why not just leave them where they are until they're market size? Because they're like nine hours away. So we bringing them home where we can go out

in a 15, 20 minute boat ride and make our day and then we could resale. We might fish, oh shit, 800 sacks of oysters in a day and a half just to load up the boat. How much is a sack? Back then, shit, I got paid as little as $8 a sack. How many pounds? Oh, 100. 100 pounds or less, you know.

Okay, so you have a place. You have a private place, a piece of 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 uh within uh from like september to uh april some of them will grow an inch to 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 and you got to fish them before the summertime because the salinity like we spoke, may come in heavy and kill them. So we're bringing them to this area for them to grow fast and have a great tasting oyster. We were known for our tasty oyster because you could take an oyster and move it a couple of miles away and if it has a different water source, it'll taste different than that oyster right there.

Got it. And we had a great area for good tasting oyster. Hey, folks. Exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. And boy, my goodness, do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes. And our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join. Whew. Our northern brothers get irritated well if you're

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you can get a free three months to try OnX out if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet. onxmaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX Club, y'all. That's the thing that I never understood about oysters is that oysters, blue mussels 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 oyster it's the same oyster i could take an East Coast oyster and bring it right here to Grand Island and leave it for a month, not even that long. You know what? It's going to taste like a Grand Island oyster. It's not an East Coast oyster no more. Yeah. So we would take these oysters, especially the

closer you could get to the freshwater line. Yep. That oysters are thriving. You take those oysters and put in a heavy salinity area. Yep. yep man they're just gonna explode and grow and be happy but they're vulnerable to death um yeah but we usually know our timing that we're gonna fish them out before they get to that point and then when you go back so you bring these seed oysters in and you plant 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. Skimmers. The popias.

And he would talk about looking out that window and not being able to see. He'd go to fall asleep and wake up and couldn't see you. And he'd have to try to climb over that mountain of 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. So you'd just wake up and there it was.

Yeah, wake up and there would be a pile of oysters. 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, at the transplanting area, we're taking everything. And then when we're going to go back to refish them for sale, then we will grade them. Okay. The little ones, we can bring them to a different area to continue their growing oh so you'll put them in another spot correct it's a forming you

know you could form you could kind of mark out with poles you know what what you have where you know and then you uh yeah and what's that what's that industry like now for this area? The oysters just don't really take all that great in the wild. But with Storm Ida, it turned everything around. It made the oysters, the crabs, the shrimp more abundant. Now it's starting to play back out. How is that? Well, you see, an oyster takes three years to harvest.

So after the storm, the storm stirred everything up but anything that is uh in an oyster growing area anything that would have been like a little shell or anything that an oyster would want to stick to the it stuck so here we are three years later there was an abundance of oysters this year and great prices, but the prices are all going down now because the abundance of oysters. Oh, I got you. So it slowed things down and then the prices shot up. Like immediately after the hurricane. After the storm, there was no oysters. Okay.

Anybody that had a sack of oysters, you could get like 75 bucks a sack. But you just weren't getting any of it. Now, right now, it's down back to the 30s. Yeah. And when it started to creep up, it was good. And then you hit saturation. Yeah. And it's too much oyster.

Yeah. Yeah. Now, shrimp also and crabs. It like, people couldn't shrimp. The boats were messed up. People couldn't go crabbing for a year or so, you know. So, everything was able to just flourish. And when the people started going back out, man, they were catching shrimp.

They were catching crabs. The baby oysters were there. They just weren't market size yet. Got it. So now they're market size. So now they're starting to flood the market with the oysters, with the aftermatter ida, with the seafood. Yeah. Can you explain a little bit that process you were telling me about

of that you would lease oyster ground? From the state, yeah. Oh, it was from the state lease. State lease, correct. I got it. Yeah. But, yeah, just like if you lease a piece of property anywhere, you know, you 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, for instance, like there's an old saying, like in the ranch world, like you have an acre of ground for every head of cattle you have. It was like three bucks an acre. You know, it wasn't that bad. Three bucks an acre of ground for every head of cattle 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 in acres? Oh, you could, I've seen myself work a month and a half, two months on an acre of ground

that had an abundance of marsh. But didn't you have hundreds of acres, though? I had like 1,800. My father and grandfather and all accumulated. Well, how the hell you work that much? Well, not all of it was producing areas. Oh, I got you. So you got a lot of ground that's no good to you within that.

A lot of ground was like mud or currents were bad or too much fresh water. You know, we also have these diversions that they're putting and they're pumping this fresh water into the marsh, hoping to create new ground. So those areas were no more good reason being the fresh water. And it was man-made. They could flush fresh water when they wanted to. But like the rainy seasons, the salt water would come up.

It wasn't running the fresh water so oysters would take again but here we go next it takes three years to make a market oyster so here we are maybe two years down the line your oysters are starting to grow they're about two inches but they will have a rainy season they flush in the water to grow land or whatnot and they all the sea, and they all die with the fresh water. Too big of a salinity. These grounds, too much salinity. We never really had too much problem. No, I'm talking like you get too big of a change straight from fresh to salt.

Yeah, too much fresh water would kill these oysters. So that eventually made the business untenable. For some areas, yeah. You just had to rely on a different area. Yeah. But you eventually got where you were done with oysters. Pretty much. After Katrina, I went into the oil field business, you know,

and did well there. Ended up getting back out of it. And my little brother had the oyster leases and everything, and he had been working everything during that era. But then he gave it all up. Too much problem with thieving and not enough oysters and this and that. Not knowing that either would have replenished the leases, you know. Oh, got it.

Yeah. So how much, like, you've been at this so long fishing oystering correct shrimping 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 and the deep family history down here how would you begin to express the the cultural change that happened with oil well i'm glad he didn't get into the horse business you know is that right yeah you know i mean uh it's a good culture but it's just not it's just not, it's just not there anymore, you know. He wouldn't have really made it because just with Mother Nature, just the oysters were not producing and you just wasn't having a 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 for the good times. As long as you pay your lease. As long as you pay it, that's all they're worried about. 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 me to do with it? But sometimes you maintain areas to keep the other people. You want to put borders on yourself. Right. But we had a lot of problems with thieving going on. Yeah, that's the thing I wanted you guys to explain.

It's oyster poaching. Well, if like when we're seeding and we pollen these oysters up. Yeah, so you're going through all the work. A little boat could come there and in 15 minutes just hurry up and make a few 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 cleaning them up and they're doing it at night a lot these little boats are coming at night who's doing it what kind of dudes are doing it boats and these little small carolina

skiffs would just kind of slide in people that really don't have anything to lose you know but these guys will actually come like you have a leased area and it's worth someone's effort to come into your leased area and harvest yeah in 15 minutes if they make a couple of dredges and they uh make let's say 10 sacks so 10 sacks when the price is really high it was getting anywhere from 50 to 70 bucks they make their night and i got you in 15 minutes 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 10 sacks at 50 at 50 dollars that's 500 bucks i see yeah when you already had all the overhead to go out there and get them and bring them and do all so it's more it's like a quick

money thing quick it's not a three-year play and who they worried about nobody i got it you know what i mean yeah if they get caught sometimes they just get a slap on the wrist you know 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 had held on to like a little bit or tried to hold on to 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 see. You know, so I mean, I've subleased some leases now, you know, and I'm able to get back out there, you know.

Oh, I got you. Okay. I subleased it. And once I get out there, you know, I enjoy it for a little while, and it's like I'm ready to go back home. Is it more work than catching shrimp? In some ways, yes. It's more physical.

Yeah. Yeah. And every oyster, just like the shrimp, you know, sometimes you got to pick all your big shrimp out, you know, where every oyster has to pass through your hand, and you're going to grade it, you know. You got to grade it. When I was looking at those photos of all those mountains of oysters.

Well, those don't have to pass through your hand until you refish them. Yeah. When you're going to go refish them, you put it on your table, and then you start. Well, you got to sort them all. Sorting them. Yeah. Sometimes they have a dead one on a live one. You got to knock the dead one off.

You got to clean it up and put it in your pile. Then you got to sack them up. So then you got to stack them. Then you got to load them on a conveyor. Then you got to put them in the truck. Then you got to take them in the truck then you got to take them out of the truck you handle these oysters eight ten times you know so it's a lot of physical work i mean you know who are you selling most those oysters too um a lot of these places are out of business now but uh it was just some uh little shops that were we would sell to,

and they would buy the oysters, they would shock them, they would pack them, and then they would distribute. We'd wholesale. Also, we had a retail business that was out of this world. We would just bring them in front of the house and sell them off the side of the road. That was that sign you had. Yeah.

Oysters, get you some. Get you some get you some and you'd sell them shocked or whole uh we had a little shop that we would do some shocking yeah and we sell them but a sack ron did you get tangled up in that business when you were young for a little while in high school after school i'd go shuck a few sacks. You would? Yeah. Yeah, he's got that special shucker with him. Yeah, man. Yeah, he made that. He made that bomb.

Yeah. When was the first time you started shrimping for money, like commercial shrimping? Oh, about three years ago. Okay. And you rigged out your oyster boat. 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 those tables and everything and that big winch 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? Maybe two nights, three nights at the max, you know. Yeah. And you sleep on the boat in the daytime? Yes, sir. Because it's a nocturnal business.

Well, sometimes you're catching the daytime, you know, so I mean, sometimes you got to 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 want to try and find some little piece of island to get behind

just in case, you know, while you're sleeping you get a storm because sometimes these summer storms will have 50, 60 mile an hour winds. Come out of nowhere. Yes, indeed. And then you cook up whatever. Cook up some of the catch from the night. You know, I'll get up and fillet some fish and peel a few shrimp and put some rice and beans on. And we've got a meal.

Meal like, eat like a king, son. And then you like, then you guys go to bed and get rolling again. Oh, yeah. Well, yeah. And what's the, like, lay out 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 it this morning. Yeah. I was reading about what you're telling me about right right so um 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 ronnie's talking about it too yeah senator kennedy senator kennedy who uh ronnie was playing me a clip senator kennedy who was talking about it too. Senator Kennedy. Senator Kennedy. 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 a crackhead. Yeah, correct.

If you don't like cops just because they're cops, next time you're in trouble, call a crackhead. That's right 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 list making the claim that a lot of stuff was from aquaculture facilities in China where they were using antibiotics

antibiotics and shrimp some questionable practices injecting yeah that injecting video is pretty scary injecting silicone and then not video is pretty scary injecting silicone and then and then not having the u.s not having proper regulation on what's coming in exactly mislabeled seafood correct seafood coming in mislabeled origin um companies that would sort of masquerade as regional companies with names that would be deceptive,

that were actually imported seafood, killing the industry here. Yeah, correct. And so your senator's saying, man, I'd like to do more protective tariffs to protect the American people. Yeah. And then I was surprised to see in the same little bit of casual reading we did

this morning that Louisiana is actually a major consumer of imported crawfish. Wow. Because people probably just see it's crawfish. I think if you see the name, you just assume it's right. Yeah. You're like, oh, I'm in Louisiana. Say it's Fouchon Seafood. Yeah.

I'm in Louisiana. Yeah. I'm in Louisiana. It's crawfish. Who the hell you see the name, you just assume it's right. Yeah, you're like, oh, I'm in Louisiana. Say, Fouchon Seafood. Yeah, I'm in Louisiana. I'll buy local. Yeah, I'm in Louisiana. It's crawfish. Who the hell would suspect that it's from overseas? And a lot of people, I guess, they go after 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. No, Bulls is incorrect. I would just think i was buying local naturally right you don't think about it yeah so what uh what kind of price fluctuations you see you told me something last night about a price from 40 years ago yeah man no yeah 40 years ago not even adjusted for inflation but 40 years ago you were getting more than we are today for the same size shrimp.

It was a 60, 70 shrimp. Right now, we're getting like 35 cents, 40 cents. 40 years ago, we were getting 65 cents for that same size shrimp. But that's what's crazy is you're talking about wild caught. Wild caught, real good tasting shrimp and 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 the people. I mean, they just, the people don't, maybe the people just don't hear and know any better or whatnot. I'm not quite sure, you know. It's hard to say what was the problem there. Because I've been in the supermarkets where the prices were really high. It's not going to you.

No, man. No way. How can you give the fisherman a dollar and you go see the same shrimp in the market somewhere for maybe $14, $15? And it looks rotten. Yeah. It's nasty. They charge you that much to rot it down. It's aged. It's nasty. They charge you that much to rot it down. You don't know how much it costs.

It's aged. You don't know how much it costs to make that not so fresh. You can bring fresh shrimp to some areas like further north that are far away and bring the fresh shrimp and they'll be like, oh, that shrimp's not good. What's wrong with it? What's wrong with it? It's like, this is fresh. It's rotten.

It's rotten. The fish on the display at the store is like, you can see the head's all black. It's starting to turn orange. It's rotten. And they lose their, a thing I found, I'm just a casual, I told you that's not how I'm a big time shrimper. I'm actually not very bad. I deal in very small quantities of shrimp that we catch. But the thing I found, man, is like a questionable shrimp,

his head is much more willing to detach from his body. You ever notice that? Like a new one, his head's on there pretty good. And you let him sit a while and his head gets to be where it just isn't. He doesn't have a lot of fidelity to his body after a while. It just wants to fall away. Well, we were even doing spot prawns last week, and you could tell day one the way they looked,

and then we were cooking up our last meal for dinner. Just the look of them looked different. Different shade, different color. Their eyes are pretty glowing. Oh, yeah, they just change. Eyes are glowing when they're alive. That goes away. You know what the thing I found?

Maybe you guys can explain this to you. The thing I found about shrimp is that if you pull them up from deep water. So when we catch shrimp, we'll fish in 300 feet of water with pots. Okay. Shrimp pots baited with fish heads. I think I've seen it, yeah. If you pull

them up and just any kind of minimal handling, you cannot put that thing back in the water. Because you're bringing it from such a depth? Well, no, because if you're pulling it up and a shrimp squirts out at the surface, 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... You dump them in a boat, I mean, and. You dump them in a bucket, they're done. You put them in a bucket and wait a minute, and you put them back in the water, he is deader than dead.

Like something that a fish would not phase a fish. It seems they're just a sensitive. Correct. You know, sensitive creature, man. Yeah. Here, too, I mean, they could take so much and then you know especially these white shrimp even though they're big they're really uh not all that durable you know a brown ship shrimp they could uh survive in a little drop of water you know they'll suck in that little drop of water and

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Onxmaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX Club, y'all. Is there a big price difference between what you get for white shrimp and brown shrimp? Well, the big difference there is the sizes. The brown shrimp will not be like a white shrimp. Okay. Yeah. And then when we were coming in, I wish I knew better where we were.

Chili, when you and me were driving in, we got a little sidetracked because we were trying to find that po' boy place. Is it? Or Dakker. The town started with an R. Raceland. Raceland. We were in Raceland. Yep.

And that's where we got our first i got us i thought i hit the po-boy place and we want to bet a hospital then we thought the po-boy place is in the hospital and then we eventually realized i somehow just clicked on the hospital and then the next place we tried to get driving around the hospital being like i don't understand how there's a po-boy place in here. To the cafeteria. Next to the ER. I honestly wouldn't be surprised. It's right next to the daiquiri stand. Next to the ambulances and stuff.

I'm like, you guys seen the po-boy place around here? We walk in. She's like, you guys here for emergency or po-boy? Like, here for a po-boy. Yeah, I was like, I don't know how to explain it, Chili, but I somehow clicked on the hospital, not the po'boy place. But we wound up at the po'boy place where I think this should have been

our first sign that the shrimp industry was in trouble because this guy lays out my, he lays out my bun. This is a phenomenal po'boy. First, I got a little nervous. Yeah, he was very nervous about the veggies.

I come in, and I come in, and there's a woman in front of me, and she has a burger at the po'boy place it's only whatever gets a burger and that burger is a bun and a patty piece cheese nothing and i was like shit and we'd already ordered and i'm kind of panicking like i don't want my po'boy without shredded lettuce and tomato and he was very distraught about it i was like what the hell kind of panicking. I don't want my po'boy without shredded lettuce and tomato. He was very distraught about this. I was like, what the hell kind of place are we in?

But then we see in the background, we catch a guy come through with a bun loaded with lettuce and not breathe easy. He takes fresh catfish. Very fresh. We saw him go. He went in the back room. It looked like he flayed the damn fish.

He comes back a while later, holds a flay between his fingers yeah i'm like they didn't freeze that no no joke he goes in the room a while later walks out a catfish flay like this yeah i was very impressed into that fryer and then i made a bad call i then he like very quickly lifted the basket and i'm like chill you're gonna get cabbage. But I was watching the wrong basket. Anyway, the point being, I knew the shrimp business was in trouble. He lays my bun out. And he was packing shrimp into that bun

like when you got too much stuff in your duffel bag. And you're trying to get one more little bit of clothes in there before you zip it shut. He was packing shrimp into my bun with the palms of his hands, pressing them into it. It wouldn't even hold all the shrimp. When I opened the wrapper up, it was just shrimp. Yeah, you spent like 10 minutes just eating shrimp.

I know. And I thought I must have had 100 bucks worth of shrimp in my sandwich because grocery store prices. Right. But then we left there and we're driving along, I guess the upper side. I don't know what the hell. for the 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 of the hotel i feels bayou the fuchs wasn't it that's by the food so that same bayou you were driving along the same bayou that pumps out here that we the past we went out to go diving shrimp boat after shrimp boat with signs out front

selling shrimp. Yeah. $3.50 a pound, $4 a pound, whatever the hell. It was $3.50. And that's like, this is all shrimpers just 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. Brand new. 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. What's the price you're getting for like the 2016 20s and the 1015? A dollar.

A dollar a pound? You got a 1015 for a dollar five and a 1620, which would be the next size smaller. Explain those terms. That might confuse people. Well, 1620 means what? 10 to 15 to the pound. 10 to 15 shrimp to the pound. Is that tails or heads and tails?

Heads and tails. Okay. So 1620 or? 1620. a pound 10 to 15 shrimp to the pound is that tails or heads and tails heads and tails okay so 16 20 years 16 20 i mean if you count if you take uh usually you count them by threes you take um three pounds and you dump them on your table and you come at threes yep and as one well if you count 18 what's a 16 20 if you count 19 16 20 got it it's just a way to count to express instead of doing just one pound look one pound and i count uh 15 shrimp no you do three pounds yeah that way it's more to get a better average correct understood um and those little ones like i don't know like as a consumer you might wreck popcorn shrimp.

Correct. Yeah. I don't know if you guys use that term or not. Yeah. The first small shrimp we had was running like a 60, 70 to the pound. Oh, what? 60 to 70 shrimp to the pound. Oh, that's how small those sons of bitches were.

Yeah. Not the last ones we caught. They had a lot more smaller ones. That might have been 80 to 100 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 going to pay you what for those little shrimp? Maybe 30 cents. A pound. A pound? A pound, yeah. Now, the 60s, 70s right now, they might be around 40 to 45. And again, like I said, 40 years ago, they was 65.

Now, that same shrimp, if you keep that same shrimp alive and sell it to the bait market, you get 30 cents a piece. For one nice shrimp. For one of those little shrimp. But you get 30 cents a piece. For one nice shrimp. For one of those little shrimp. But you got to keep them alive. Do you ever work in that trade? No. I've been, I came very close to it.

Because you got to get all the aerators and everything. Yeah. And 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 got to go in with just maybe a couple of thousand, up to maybe 6,000 shrimp, where you got to have a lot of live whales going on to keep these shrimp from dying. Wouldn't that be extremely difficult, though?

Because I think, I don't know if it was you or you explaining yesterday, that when you catch shrimp in your net off your boat. A lot of them die. A lot of them die because they end up drowning when they're in the net off your boat a lot of them die a lot of them die because they end up drowning it with when they're in the net yeah we're talking about that you make a so when you do live bait trawling you trawl for very short drags you don't make a long drag like we were doing you don't do an hour drag because you're going to kill a lot of your catch yeah yeah once you pick you pick up you dump your bag you throw in you deal with that then you hurry up

pick up again you just continually pulling them in. You don't drag them in the net long at all. Gotcha. You're always dealing with whatever you're catching at the time. You just keep dealing with it. And that's why Chief was saying he likes to do short pulls too to keep them fresher longer, you know? Yeah, look at it for your customer.

Right. They look better because they're not being dragged in the water for that long after they're dead. Right. They look better because they're not being dragged in the water for that long after they're dead. Right. When you, the porpoises, they'll tear that mesh,

get that, they want to get at the shrimp. Fish. Oh, they want to get the fish. Yeah. The fish that are trying to escape or getting stuck in the side of your net.

Got it. Sometimes you have maybe a four or five inch fish that'll get stuck in the side of your net. That's what he's after. And they want to pull it out of your net. Sometimes you have maybe a four or five-inch fish that'll get stuck in the side of your net. That's what he's after. And they want to pull it out of your net. I see. Well, they grab it onto your net,

and they're going to pull and tear your net. Dude, you wind up with quite the caravan, man. You know it. Like, you go on the back of this boat, dude. It's like, he's cruising along. 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 that those birds have all done that before. Oh, you know it. Multiple species of gulls, pelicans, and they get in there, and they can ride the, they can ride the, what do you call it?

Yeah, they can ride the draft of the boat. And they're just floating over the back. Yeah, but they got it so dialed that the boat's going in one direction, and that bird is sitting in the draft of the boat, cocked at a 45-degree angle to his line of travel and just moving along sideways, man. You're like, these sons of bitches do this all the time, dude.

And coming down and grabbing stuff. And then in the water, the porpoises. Porpoise, man. You see, if they would have had 30, 40 boats, they would have been distributed. But they sent a boat, so they're all coming from all directions, man. You see, if they would have had 30, 40 boats, they would have been distributed. But they sent a boat, so they all coming from all directions, man. They want that free meal. No, it's funny because you tell everybody's done that before.

Oh, yes, indeed. They had one guy. In fact, it 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. He would come up and he'd hand feed it and hand feed it. And then I seen him.

I said, yeah, man, I seen you feeding that porpoise. Yeah, man. He would come all the time 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 certain porpoise at the same place all the time. You're kidding me. Yeah, straight up. I mean, I was shrimping. My buddy had with me. I said, look, he's feeding.

The porpoise had the head up and just sitting there waiting with the mouth open. He flipped me one of them fish. He was there and you like take you like take pictures of sunsets and stuff when you're out oh yeah man so you never you never lost track of the beauty of it all huh no man nature's a a thing of its own man it's just a yeah it's nice i can see getting like all after all your life that you lose that you in doing it for work. No, man. Then you might after a while just be ambivalent to it. Be honest with you, man.

Like I told you, the last three, four times I went shrimping, it causes me to go shrimping. It causes me the money, bank to go shrimping, bait, ice. I mean fuel and ice. It costs me a little bit to go shrimping. But I enjoy it. 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 they're on top the net and every time i see when i tell my my crew members look look they're on top i'm just it's just so excited yeah and uh they're jumping in front of that net

just like popcorn man they run and they're jumping all over the place when you really find them. It's pretty neat to see, you know. It's just I enjoy it. Yeah. He says this famous phrase, watch out. Watch out. Yes, indeed. That's your catchphrase.

Catchphrase, man. So you haven't gotten into, have you gotten into spearfishing like your son here? Not as much, man. He brought it to a different level. We started out just going dive for lobsters with the tank and hauling everything. And come on, we're going to get lobsters. Dad, I want to shoot some fish, man. 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 uh lobstering one time and he's shooting some fish and i look in the distance and you got some little three-foot sharks uh hitting the bloodline and coming back to hit it again and they're finding their trail to you know who and then uh when this when he sees the little sharks coming they had like two or three of them he's like he sharks you know then he goes he's behind his mom he grabs his mama and I could hear her screaming under shield. I was like 12 years old. Ronnie's original shark shield. Original shark shield. I never thought you could scream under the water,

but his mama was screaming under the water, man. And I looked off to the side, and they had a big, about an eight, nine-foot big nurse just kind of sitting there. I'm glad they didn't see that one. But it's good, man. Under the water is beautiful, man. It's just a whole nother world, you know. And then, like Ronnie, you know, Ronnie went further with it

and started the free diving, you know. Well, I got to start breathing up and learning how to free dive. And I got them big fins. And I'm not nowhere close to what they do or y'all do, but I enjoy it. Just go out there. He likes to go to Bahamas and get some conch. Oh, you like that? He's the conch man.

That's fun, man. That's low-risk diving, too. Yeah, you're right. It's about nipple deep. Yeah, man. We went a little bit further than nipple, but it was about 25 or so. But, I mean, it's just nice to see also just the nature things. And I'm a crustacean fisherman, so conker right up the line.

You're a crustacean specialist. Yeah, man. Conker lobster is like what he likes to do. When we go together to the Bahamas. That's your idea of vacation? Right. You just switch crustaceans? Snails and crayfish, man.

Oh, yeah. Tell me about that shit, man. I even made a note on my phone to ask you about the snails. The biganos. Yeah. Okay. Are you familiar with this?

No. Okay. Lay the snail situation out for me. Well, snails are also in the salinity area, you know? So when we would transplant oysters... Are you guys using the word escargot? No.

Because it's not a land snail. Bigano. Bigano? Yeah, Bigano. Bigano. I don't know how you spell it. We just call it a Bigano. But you see, so we transplant these oysters.

Yeah. So these oysters have a scent. They have a smell of their origination original area so when you put it in this new area that scent travels throughout the water so drumfish 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 there's new food they smell it so they come into the dinner table so these snails are moving in so whenever we bed oursters in a salinity area we'll always check the edge and i remember one time we checked the edge and we had like 65 big snails so we knew

they were coming so we put it down in september but when the cold the winter comes these snails go in the mud or they'll just hide out so we knew it was going to be safe that we had to fish them out before the water warmed up so when uh so we all right for the winter but when the water starts warming we put out these snail traps which would have been a we'd go cut like these little tall oak trees, about a two-inch oak tree, and we'd nail some palm metal leaves on it. Yeah. And wrap the palm metal leaves with some bailing wire. The hell is that?

A little storm outside. Yeah. Yeah. And then we'd stick these poles along the edge. Come back, I got distracted by the thunder. Say that again? So we'd- You got the oak pole. Sometimes, huh?

A bamboo or an oak pole. You used the bamboo sometimes too, huh? No, bamboo is just a mark. But we would nail these palmetto leaves to the pole. Yep. And then wrap them with bailing wire. Yep. 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're climbing these poles to lay their eggs. So they're wanting to lay the egg on the palmetto. Correct.

They want to climb to put their egg in the water column, in the water to float around. So they're going to climb to put their egg in the water column, in the water, to float around. So they're going to climb anything they can. They climb on crab cages, poles, anything you have, they're going to climb. We could actually walk outside right now probably and go catch a couple of them off the pilings. Like those oysters you saw in the pilings? Yep. If you go walk outside right now, you're going to see big on those on them eating them.

Okay. Eating the oysters. Yeah. They'll drill a hole in them. Either drill a hole in them or they'll cluster up on one and suffocate it until it opens up and they'll get their drill in there. Oh, really? And they actually spit their stomach bile in the oyster and it-

Dissolves it. It dissolves this oyster like a jelly and they'll just suck it out through that little bitty hole, man. It's man shitty way to go right there you say one time like you accidentally ate one that had been started to get drilled on it's like the nastiest if you eat an oyster 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 uh it's nasty man that stuff uh so we So we've caught up to like 35 five-gallon buckets of snails in one day just passing our traps. Are you doing that more to protect the oysters

or 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, back then we didn't have Facebook and this and that.

Right now you can get rid of them quick. People really want them. The crab fishermen catch them and they'll put them up. They'll sell them like $40, $50 for a bucket of snails. What, 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 15 minutes. Now you could put them in the freezer and boil them for 15 minutes. But if just a raw snail, you got to boil it for about an hour or so. You got to boil the hell out of it. And you just boil it with a little bit of that crab ball seasoning we put on the crawfish. You don't just boil it with 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 got to peel or cut off. We call it the tobacco or whatnot. It's just the area where they keep that boil at their stomach acid. It turns purple after you boil it or whatnot. Yeah, you want to cut that off. You eat too much of that you'll get sick yeah got it uh talk about your gumbo you were talking about your gumbo recipe

last night oh man i'm getting hungry already i was gonna say we're talking about all these oysters i want to go crack some open we're talking about oyster gumbo oh 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. It's sausage gumbo, man. I don't care what kind of gumbo it is. You put sausage in it, it's a sausage gumbo. That's my philosophy. You know, man.

So you make a huge quantity. Yeah, I got a certain size pot. If I'm going to cook a a gumbo that's my pot i put all my same ingredients uh 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 a gallon of oysters i'll put the chicken thighs chicken legs maybe and some chicken wings gizzards and maybe salt pork you know and then a gallon of oysters man i make a dark roux and uh season it up it's all good and you eat it out in your boat if you need to oh if i need to yeah yeah i'll bring some on the boat we'll go shrimping and all. Bring me some gumbo and yeah.

Good life, man. Good life. Living the dream. I like that you never got burned out on seafood. You're still. Oh, no, man. I'd like to see the pile of oyster shells from the oysters I ate in my life. How many oysters you ate in that oyster eating competition That you did One time at an oyster festival

I don't think I ate That many I'm sure It was over a dozen Dozens I ate about 80 oysters maybe I don't know

Maybe not that much No they shook them for you But you know I remember you had Over a dozen You got shells And this and that They were counting dozens

And you did over a dozen Dozens Cool I don't remember man You have a better memory Than me man I a dozen dozen. Cool. I don't remember, man. You have a better memory than me, man. I don't. Did you win? Oh, no.

That's one of those professional eaters that ate ridiculous amounts. They would just inhale. Like bulimics? I was trying to pull. Oh, yeah. I don't know. They throw them back up? Oh, I really don't. It's like those professional eaters.

Yeah, but I bought a few of those people, man. You're disqualified if you throw it up. Oh, you are? Oh, yeah. Yeah, I'm not into that. I'll tell you, I don't mean to judge, man, but I'm not into that hot dog eating contest. No, I'd rather enjoy yours. Where they get where they're like,

they dunk that bun in water so you can basically slurp the bun and 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 it in there so they're not having to consume as much. Sure, man. And they'd take the cups away. Yeah, it's hard to dip a hot dog bun and have it all come back out.

I've never tried it. I'm just guessing it's hard to do it. Give it a little shake in there. We tried with the bagel chips this trip. Didn't work that well. Didn't work too well. Oh, that's right. It's not good.

Hey, folks. Exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. And boy, my goodness do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes. And our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join. Whew. Our northern brothers get irritated. Well, if you're sick of, you know, sucking high and titty there, OnX is now in Canada. The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season.

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Some of our favorites are First Light, Schnee's, Vortex Federal, and more. As a special offer, you can get a free three months to try OnX out if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet. onxmaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX Club, y'all. Ronnie and Greg, can you guys give Chili some critiques on his first spear diving expedition? Chili explained to us he's not a waterman. No.

What did 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 going to say it's hard to rationalize everything that's going on. It was weird being on the surface and just kind of rolling with all the waves, being next to a rig, and then you get below the surface.

Well, talk about being in the boat first because I kept telling you, you got to get in the water or else you have no idea what's going on. Right. Yeah. Steve was yelling at me that I needed to get in the water uh 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 ended 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 pretty calm and it was yeah it was like one of the i was telling steve it was one of the coolest natural things i've ever seen in my life like not man-made or anything like that but like just the the natural beauty behind it all was pretty pretty incredible and uh i would definitely do it again i don't know if i would go around and buy all the spearfishing stuff, come down and make trips down to Louisiana or wherever else to go diving and snorkeling. But if I got to go on a trip.

There's extra gear on the boat. Yes. If there's some extra flippers kicking around. I'll have to start planning that. And you got to fish. I got to. Yeah. The old South Dakota Wahoo.

A rarity. It's a rarity. Not many people know about it. Well, they do know about it. They just don't know about the new name. Yeah. And I'm getting a barracuda, which is great. He's going to stuff the head.

I'm going to Euro mount the head. Euro mount the head. I'm going to Euro mount the head. Yeah. That was cool, too. And he's going to have that was cool too um and he's gonna have a big fish fry i'm gonna have a big fish fry everybody's invited except for you greg no yeah that was it was it was it was incredible yeah when i i remember I was actually right by Dan. I was behind the camera right now. And I saw a barracuda. And I kind of like had a moment of like, oh, shit.

Because I didn't know. Did you know what you were looking at just sort of instinctively? I knew that that was a barracuda. Yeah, yeah. It's like a fish that most people would be like, oh, I recognize that fish. That doesn't look friendly at all. Like a little snaggle teeth. Yeah, his mouth is a little open. I'm just like, yeah, I don't want to fuck recognize that fish. That doesn't look friendly at all. Like little snaggle teeth. Yeah, his mouth is a little open. I'm just like, yeah, I don't want to fuck with that thing.

But yeah, so I saw it. And then Dan was telling me, he's like, oh, yeah, like that's a barracuda. And I'm like, oh, that's cool. And then I ended up swimming next to Steve. And he's like, oh, we're trying to shoot a barracuda. And he's like, shoot that one right there. And I was too far away.

I was probably 30 feet away or something. Way too far away. I didn't know. Thought he had a rifle. Yeah. If I had a 300 Weatherby, I'd be dead. Then I told him, I'll squeeze you when it's time to shoot. Yeah.

And then we get up. It was cool. I was watching from, I don't know, 30, 40 feet away. I'll give you a little goose when it's time to shoot. Yeah. yeah he's like i'll squeeze your arm 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 pull the trigger and end up getting it and uh yeah no it was incredible though like i very very glad i got into the in the water and we drifted away too so y'all managed to dispatch the south dakota wahoo pretty pretty big one.

Well, Greg didn't like how I was going about it. He came swimming over. I was about to say, that looked like a Greg job. He didn't like my plan. I saw it take off, then it went out of the rig, and I saw Steve chasing it, trying to wrangle it, and it was very much alive. Did he circle back on y'all and came after y'all? Oh, it was going nuts.

No, he came right back. I thought he was going to impale me with the shaft. Yeah, he was all over you. They go crazy when you shoot them. Yeah, Greg didn't like what was going on and came over there. He thought we were going to get mauled. Which is probably reasonable. I gave it a few seconds and decided to intervene with the problem.

I think I was playing cat and mouse with that big dog snapper when y'all mess them and all that yeah so in the end we got um we got amber we got amberjack which we had in those delicious yep the controversial amberjack yeah meaning it's just 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, if you go, I mean, there's certain fish that are just universally accepted as good.

Like, no one wants to hear from someone who says that wahoo is no good, right? Sure, there's someone, but it's just no one cares. Or like snapper. Snapper. Yeah, no one is. Or grouper. Some dude somewhere doesn't like it, but it's just accepted. Yeah. Common carp. Some dude somewhere doesn't like it, but it's just accepted. Common carp, of course you're going to find a guy that says common carp are great.

You're going to find a guy that says coyote meat is great. But it's just generally people aren't into common carp. But it seems to me, in my limited experience, the amberjack splits people right down the middle. Splits 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'll have a little bit. But they weren't like, oh good, we shot an amberjack. Well, my take on it was how bad could it be if it's so tightly regulated? So this... You're allowed one a day, a short season. I'm like, it can't be that bad. It was a little looser back then. I mean, you're talking

probably 14, 15 years ago. I shot it in March. I mean, it wasn't even the same time of year. I'm trying to remember when they started bringing in the season on Amberjack. Yeah, I was going to say this. I was probably in middle school when they started putting on. It's a tight-ass season now.

I also didn't realize how old I was getting. I've been coming down here for a long time. And then you talked to Ronnie, and Ronnie's considerably younger than I am. The regulations change greatly with that fish over the years so it's a one a one month season one a day yeah it's a tight ass regulated fish which says to me someone wants it but the commercial guys got a long season they could

oh they do they get them you know like a winner they long line them no they uh they bandit bandit fish them kind of like snapper they do what bandit fishing i don Kind of like snapper. They do what? Bandit fishing. Big giant reel with a big hand crank on it and they'll put like 20 to 50 hooks on it and up and down. Or with the amberjack sometimes they'll run a lot less hooks. But you've never seen like a snapper boat

like how snapper boats fish with big bandit reels and catch ungodly amounts of snapper no oh i haven't seen it it looks like a big black pulley on yeah on like a metal arm they'll stick in a rod holder in the gunnel and they just crank it up but it's it's got a big metal wheel on it like this okay and it's got one main line with a bunch of droppers on it yeah exactly yeah just bait 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 got it it's all just circle hooks yep yep and that's how they catch them that's how they fish them yeah okay um got amberjack yep got gray triggers yep also tightly regulated yeah very tightly regulated. One a day. One per person per day, and they also have a very small season. They close the same day as Amberjack. Okay. Colbia, tighter and tighter all the time. Yeah, that was a killer for me.

Not one per person. Roddy was hurting yesterday seeing all those Colbia and letting them swim away. There was a lot. The first day. That was brutal. Yeah, the first day. That was brutal. Yeah, the first day. That's right. My side job is commercial cobia, and it's like,

you used to be able to go and you get two per person and no boat limit. Now it's one per person, two per vessel. Oh, so even if you're out by yourself, it's one. Yeah, so if you're by yourself,

it's only one. Yep. Mangrove snapper, which is still a very friendly regulatory structure. They haven't really changed much. They've been the same as long as I can remember. 10 a day. 10 a day and no season on them. 12 inches or something like that.

The thing that helps the mangrove snappers is they're tougher to catch on rod and reel. They're a lot smarter than the red snapper. They're slick, yeah. Got it. Yeah. unreal they're a lot smarter than the red they're slick yeah got it yeah and from what i heard back in the day too is it used to be the the mangrove 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 is way before my time

but like yeah we used to fish on grand on grand say, yeah, there used to be no mangroves, dude. It was all big croakers, like bull croakers that big. You know, like we were catching the little ones in the shrimp nets. They're like this big. So I heard, I was never here for this because it was in the 70s, 80s, but it's what it used to be. The mangrove fishery was a croaker fishery. Really?

Yep. And as those croakers went down down the mangroves came up yeah you know cyclical something else comes up and takes her 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 on, 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 freediving and everything like 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 open, and they opened it up the, I think in April, they opened it mid-April, they opened it this year, and it's open all week. Now it's open. They opened it up, I think, in April. They opened it mid-April. They opened it this year, and it's open all week long and for a person. Hmm.

16-inch. It's a very, in Louisiana, it's a very fluid regulatory structure. They're fine-tuning all the time. It's 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 pretty consistent. When I go to my mom's lake, like when I go to Michigan and fish my mom's lake, in my lifetime, there's been one change. And that was that pike went from 21 to 24 inches and bass went from 12 to 14. I can't think of a single change that's happened in 50 years.

Well, even here, the in-season changes. I mean, they'll be as you go throughout right yeah yeah they'll close it on you last minute or even like the amberjack season just popped up what in april i think right or i sent y'all the text hey look they're giving us a spring amberjack season this year which is spring is my favorite time to shoot them 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 most most years like that's more of a guaranteed season but the spring season we hadn't had it in three years and this is the first time in three years we could actually go out again in in may and shoot them yo what else did we get trying to think we had a dog snapper

dog snapper um scamp sandwich. They get a scamp sandwich. Wasn't a monster one, but. Scamp grouper. Scamp grouper, yep. What else?

That's about it. That's about it. Passed up. I mean, there's all kind of fish we didn't go get. Yeah. I mean.

Alamaco, did we get alamaco? Yeah, they get some alamacos. Why Rod and Real? He was Rod and Real's special

alamaco. Yeah. That was running a special Alamako. Yeah. That was great, man. Thanks for having us down. Yeah. People will be able to watch all about it. Yeah. They'll be able to watch all about it.

How did you like those Amberjack fights? I could see getting drowned by one of those. No, I'm serious, man. I could see if you didn't do something right and got wrapped up, he up he's gonna drown you yeah yeah you have 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 you oh yeah 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 we try to tighten down on him and you're just going underwater yeah pulling you down as you go You'd get like, you try to tighten down on them and you're just going underwater.

Just pulling you down as you go. And you got to realize you got to let go to get a breath. Yeah. It's all about finding that right amount to give them attention to like, where you're drowning yourself

but still not letting them get to the rig. Because once they get to the rig, it's pretty much game over. It becomes even, yeah, game over. It becomes really tough to go retrieve them.

Yeah, these fish like, just for people listening, these fish, if you shoot one, you can get over, and these guys will, no joke, hand the line up 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, you're not stopping. Keep it out of the rig. Once it gets in the rig, you're in trouble. Yeah, tie it off to the cleat on the boat and then you run the wrist

and he'll pop off because he's got something firm to pull against but other than that, you're going to lose it anyway. When we're riding reel fishing for them on charters,

we use big 50, Tiagra 50 wides and they'll be, once you hook them up, you basically got to slam it in reverse and hold the spool with your hands

and they're still screaming out like 40 to 50 pounds of drag just to give some perspective. Use big Jerry Brown braid, like 300 to 350 pound braid. Heavy duty braid.

You just basically lock it down and try to winch them in but they're still screaming back towards that rig. You try to back the boat away. Yeah, you have to. You have to use a boat. The biggest braid you could find with some 300 to 500 pound test mono with a 60 knot circle hook with a live blue runner and you drop that down to the school and when you when you hit when you feel immediate you just throw it in full reverse flood the back of the boat because they go in the rig they'll cut it instantly i

mean you saw like greg had even did, he was cutting his Dyneema. It was his first one he got on this trip. Rig donkeys. Rig donkeys. God, they're strong. It's cool to see just like a pack of wild dogs coming in when you shoot a mangrove or something like that. Or when Chili was fishing. I was like that. They were trying to eat his red snapper.

It was a benefit of Chili's fishing. Yeah. Steve, anywhere. Chili's special. Yeah, that's how we, yeah. Chili dropped down with a rod caught a snapper pulled it up and they just come up with it yeah like mad they're a fish i don't like to try and shoot deep on a free dive like you ain't trying to shoot them because you know you got it

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 stun on them so where they're stunned and gives you a little time to get to the surface and prep yourself because they're not they're not dead they're just charging their turbos Greg says you got to break their will break their will but 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 stride there then you look up and go I'm deeper than I was when I shot it. He says when you hit it, if it stuns for a second, then you got to hog it. Hog it.

And he thinks it breaks their will. Well, sometimes. I don't think it breaks their will. Then they puke out whatever they have in their stomachs. They flare their gills up and they'll charge up with oxygen. Like I said, they're charging their turbos and then they're ready to kick your ass. He's like, I'm going to vomit up my lunch. I'm going to charge my turbos and then I'm going to drown this person.

When you see the tail start to flick like that, get ready because you better go for a ride. Hold on. Hold on. Yeah, I was legit a little bit. Not scared is not the right word, but you just become aware of how you could do something wrong. Yeah. Hold on. Hold on. Yeah, I was legit a little bit. Not scared is not the right word, but you just become aware of how you could do something wrong. Yeah. If you're not being careful about your line.

Well, you just have to be, especially if you're shooting a reel like most of us do, and you start getting that line up, if you don't clean it 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 doing. Because as y'all seen, they do, like you'll start gaining on them like, oh yeah,

I might have broke their whale nose 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. Like a wahoo. Wahoo. They'll do one or two, maybe three runs and then they'll turn sideways or run out of gas where the amberjack are just non-stop.

They're resilient. Yeah. Well, you fun. Yeah, you did it. I lived and. They're resilient. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it was fun. Yeah, you did it. I lived and did it. I lived and got you a big one, and then you got you a good eater. Yeah, and I labeled that one. Steve's Special Amberjack.

Steve's Special Amberjack, my little one. Yeah. But, man, I thought it was pretty good. And I texted Yanni. He's got a strong North Carolina influence, Married into a North Carolina fishing family. I texted him and he says right off, do they eat those? That's crazy. I said, very popular.

Taste them. Very popular. Yes, indeed. And then he followed up with congratulations. That's cool. Must be something. Well, Chief, thanks for coming on the show, man. Yes, indeed. I appreciate it. You're the first oyster man we've ever had on. so must be something well uh chief thanks for coming on the show man yes indeed i appreciate it same here you're the first oyster man we've ever had on all right yeah and i hope they fix

your prices up oh same here man orster what oysterman man oyster man oysterman what do you guys call it oyster man okay i hope they get your prices squared away. Yeah, man. I think that consumers of, it'd be great if consumers of seafood factored in the, if it costs them an extra buck or two, factored in the source of where they're getting their seafood to help sustain certain, you know, sustain certain industries and practices. Realize it's locally caught and, you know. Wild caught fish, man. That's right.

Silicone free. Silicone free. No added antibiotics, yeah. That's right. All right. All right, man. Thanks for coming on the show. Thanks, guys.

Thank you. Thank you Thank you man Row your boat Gently down the stream Row your boat Gently down the stream. And I say, and I say, Marilyn. And I say, and I say, life is but a dream Row your boat

Gently down the stream Row your boat Gently down the stream And I say And I say, and I say, Merrily, and I say, and I say I say I say I say, I say

Life is but a dream Rip your pants Gently down the sea Oh, rip your pants Gently down the sea. And I say, and I say merrily. And I say, and I say. say hear the lady scream rip

your pants gently down the seam rip your pants gently down the seam I say

and I say, and I say, Marilee, I say, and I say, hear the ladies scream, scream, scream. screams Thank you.