Biloxi Boy
Man With A Golden Arm
Have to have been there to understand it. Of all the jobs I ever had, I regret leaving the boats more than any other.
Late Night FM Radio 60's 70's
- Thread starter Island Drive
- Start date
Somehow there is a pull to the sea or the open road. My trucking jobs weren't great, even owning my own rig wasn't big money, but there is always the pull. I used to fish ten or twelve hours at a time when I fished, something about being on the water. One day when the fish were biting we fished eighteen hours straight. Finally headed for the dock at midnight figuring if we stayed out any longer they would have search and rescue looking for us. We boated fifty-five redfish between three of us, I forget what all else. We shook off many more legal reds at the boat. Our slot had gotten down to a half inch.
Three day weekends, I usually fished two.
Hu
Three day weekends, I usually fished two.
Hu
I've got a good friend here in Florence Colorado, a shrimper/boat owner back in his Louisiana days, Bernies his name, likes to drink his beer on ice and starts at 10 am an goes home around 2 in the afternoon. In his youth, he Lived above Pat Obriens. Wow does he have the stories, great man/calm/smart/he's winding down now don't no where, but enjoys sitting on the bar stool jawin' and he always lets me know when/where I can find good 2lb bags of shrimp on sale.
bm
A bearing race split on my 150HP outboard turning it into scrap in a second. I built traps for others for awhile then made a deal to fish a farm on 50-50 shares. Wading a ninety-three acre pond and pulling a thousand pounds behind wasn't for sissies.
After about four months of catching crawfish seven days a week I had never ate one that year. I made sure Bob, the farm manager, was fine with me taking half a day off and pulled traps from daylight to noon and headed out. I had to weigh the crawfish, I was supposed to pay the farm their half. Bob said another fisherman was averaging bigger crawfish than mine, I was welcome to swap out a couple sacks. "Naah, I think I will stick with what I got." Two big sacks of crawfish weighed fifty pounds total.
Bob started cursing me, in a friendly way. I had a sacking table on my boat and the big crawfish that could have went to the Swedish market got tossed into my personal bags with a very quick cull. There were a few smaller crawfish in my sacks, very few! The crawfish I brought to the boil could have passed as finger lobsters. Just showing off, a little smaller tasted better although the big ones were OK.
If you want big shellfish go for high volume and low weight. Oh yeah, those big lobsters in the tank everybody chooses get thrown in another tank in the kitchen and will be back on display in a few hours or the next day.
A cajun serving with my brother found out there were lobsters in the local waters not much bigger than a crawfish. "Hot damn, we are going to have a boil!" They rounded up a few dozen lobsters, appropriated a pot, got some seasoning and boiled over an open fire on the beach!
Our own JoeyA wrote one of the greatest crawfishing stories I ever read but I can't find it now. If anyone can post a link please. Late night radio works crawfishing too!
Hu
S.Arts late sixties..... I got a job working on the tugs.
Badger fleet outta WI....had a shoreline grain barge breakaway, 1 barge could of easily taken out the new Orleans bridge with the river rolling at 7 knots give or take, because of that.
Coast guard mandated having inspectors log all moorings and I was in the wheel house with the captain, then to check the ties/wraps on the shore posts after they were pushed in/attached.
I was the only one that was on boat for 12 hr shifts then got off/switched out with another doing the same job.
This job paid $860 a month, included all on boat meals, and as you probably know every boat captain had GREAT cooks to keep life right.
I had a furnished place off the trolly rail line, furnished with a balcony under $200 a month, life was good, cept when I got the clap and the crabs, but hey those cajun women were sumptin.
Badger fleet outta WI....had a shoreline grain barge breakaway, 1 barge could of easily taken out the new Orleans bridge with the river rolling at 7 knots give or take, because of that.
Coast guard mandated having inspectors log all moorings and I was in the wheel house with the captain, then to check the ties/wraps on the shore posts after they were pushed in/attached.
I was the only one that was on boat for 12 hr shifts then got off/switched out with another doing the same job.
This job paid $860 a month, included all on boat meals, and as you probably know every boat captain had GREAT cooks to keep life right.
I had a furnished place off the trolly rail line, furnished with a balcony under $200 a month, life was good, cept when I got the clap and the crabs, but hey those cajun women were sumptin.
S.Arts late sixties..... I got a job working on the tugs.
Badger fleet outta WI....had a shoreline grain barge breakaway, 1 barge could of easily taken out the new Orleans bridge with the river rolling at 7 knots give or take, because of that.
Coast guard mandated having inspectors log all moorings and I was in the wheel house with the captain, then to check the ties/wraps on the shore posts after they were pushed in/attached.
I was the only one that was on boat for 12 hr shifts then got off/switched out with another doing the same job.
This job paid $860 a month, included all on boat meals, and as you probably know every boat captain had GREAT cooks to keep life right.
I had a furnished place off the trolly rail line, furnished with a balcony under $200 a month, life was good, cept when I got the clap and the crabs, but hey those cajun women were sumptin.
I had drinking buddies that were river captains and pilots and such, cooks too. I could have gotten on a few steps above green hand but those guys were crazy. One captain bragged he owned about four or six hundred feet of the Esso dock in Baton Rouge. A minor miscalculation when he was pushing a string of barges and warming up with Turkey.
Speaking of wild, the wildest thing I ever saw on video was a tug barrel rolling under a bridge. Never lost fire and finished right side up and went to chasing barges.
Personal craziest I saw, I was at the Melville Ferry on the Atchafalaya. Spring rise and it was roiling. A tug came downriver with about five or six single string barges, all you could push up or down that fast twisty little river. He came around the bend from upriver and chose the wrong slot to go through a railroad bridge, maybe just a big pipeline, it has been a lot of years.
He already had two or three barges through the slot when he realized his mistake. The tug engines screamed in reverse and the wheelhouse came within single digit feet of going into the bridge that was the same height. He got the tow stopped and it slowly inched backwards until he could move it over to the next slot. I don't know if I have ever seen anything braver or crazier, never could decide which it was. It wasn't a huge tug and when the front rail of the tug went under the bridge I would have hit the whistle and abandoned the tow.
Hu
Do you know how two tugs with equals specs/engines etc realized who was the fastest?
Don't have a clue. I saw two tugs from the same company racing up the Mississippi even with the Bonne Carre Spillway, even got some pictures with a good camera. However they were totally different boats and no contest.
Speaking of pictures, the paddle wheeler the Mississippi Queen claimed she was copyrighted and couldn't be photographed. Saw her headed upriver one day when I was shooting by the Mississippi so I took pictures there then jumped in my truck and set up three more places to take her picture as she came up river. Needless to say I didn't hold with the idea she couldn't be photographed. Never did like her though. Unless something has been built the Delta Queen was the last paddle wheeler worth mentioning in my opinion.
Hu
“And now you know the rest of the story.”
Taking me back my man. My dad and I loved Paul Harvey.
We used to head up past North Bay in springtime to the Mighty Ottawa River, before the highway was widened and it became “cottage country”.
Head out in the morning for “pickerel” (walleye). Work little creeks around the Algonquin Park in the day for native “Specks” (Brook trout). More walleye in the evening. Chum up the water in the bay with the guts from the fish shack and then build a fire by shore at night and fish for “bar but”, they looked like tiny channel catfish with a square tail, a big one was 12 inches maybe.
We’d sit out at that fire looking at so many stars, we’d make up and name our own constellations. Dad would turn on the radio and talk about how on clear night you could hear the Cleveland station over half of Canada. I think Paul Harvey ended every hour. I always hoped we’d get to hear an Indians game; the Browns had been stolen from us and the Tribe was the hottest thing around. 600 miles from home sitting around a fire, nightfishin’ with my dad, and listening to my local baseball game! Good times not forgotten.
As I was logging in my daily ''fleet maneuvers'' as mandated by the coast guard, this racing situation came up, and the captain said ''don't put that in the log'' which I didn't.
The small tugs/same size that move and shore up the filled barges do this.
They face off, and go Full Throttle.
Which ever tug pushes the other backwards is the BEST.
Too simple, but the men in the boat that win sure enjoy that moment, especially the guy overseeing the engine and the steering gear.
S.Arts late sixties..... I got a job working on the tugs.
Badger fleet outta WI....had a shoreline grain barge breakaway, 1 barge could of easily taken out the new Orleans bridge with the river rolling at 7 knots give or take, because of that.
Coast guard mandated having inspectors log all moorings and I was in the wheel house with the captain, then to check the ties/wraps on the shore posts after they were pushed in/attached.
I was the only one that was on boat for 12 hr shifts then got off/switched out with another doing the same job.
This job paid $860 a month, included all on boat meals, and as you probably know every boat captain had GREAT cooks to keep life right.
I had a furnished place off the trolly rail line, furnished with a balcony under $200 a month, life was good, cept when I got the clap and the crabs, but hey those cajun women were sumptin.
Reminds me, for years there was a gal turning tricks around Whiskey Bay and Lafayette. Went by the handle Catfish Woman or Catfish Lady, I forget which. Heard her on the CB most every trip but I never checked her out. I always wondered why the little bar type places going up highway 71 would have vehicles packed and on the shoulder for a quarter mile, cat houses! My dad rented one of the buildings years later. A small building had ten bathrooms across the back. One driver parked a loaded eighteen wheeler on the soft shoulder and went inside to have a little fun. When he stepped out the truck was laid over on it's side in a ditch. That one was going to take some 'splaining!
As I was logging in my daily ''fleet maneuvers'' as mandated by the coast guard, this racing situation came up, and the captain said ''don't put that in the log'' which I didn't.
The small tugs/same size that move and shore up the filled barges do this.
They face off, and go Full Throttle.
Which ever tug pushes the other backwards is the BEST.
Too simple, but the men in the boat that win sure enjoy that moment, especially the guy overseeing the engine and the steering gear.
Never saw that, would have been fun to see. Those are some big tugs on the lower Mississippi. I can see why that wasn't logged, a slip and there was going to be a hell of a mess!
Even the ferry at St Francisville had two fifteen hundred horse engines best I recall. A good man at the wheel could bring it to a dead stop a foot from tying up. One day I was on the ferry when it must have been a man not used to that crossing. "Sumbitch, we are gonna hit hard!" I couldn't decide what to hang on to.
Some of my crew were supposed to be on the ferry when the big disaster happened at Luling, some other friends too. For no good reason they weren't on it that morning. They all lost people they knew well.
For a few years my fishing partner and I went night fishing out of a seventeen feet canoe. It was so much fun that the bass boat gathered dust. We fished a line of pits above old river in Pointe Coupee Parish LA. Thought my uncle owned them for years. Before the flood of '73 flushed them out they were jam full of big largemouth bass. Full stringers and some eight pounds or bigger. Not huge by today's standards with Florida bass stocked everywhere but big then.
No shortage of alligators either. On a clear still night we could see them coming from several hundred yards away. The jointed jitterbugs, the only baits we used, sounded like a coffee percolator cranked at the right speed and called the bass and gators too. The moon had went behind the cloud one night and I accidentally set the hook on a seven or eight foot gator. Damned near broke a couple ribs but I had him coming to the canoe when the moon came out. I dropped my rod tip. "please give me that lure back, they are hard to find." He did, and only got within thirty or forty feet of the canoe. I was and am a lousy swimmer and I didn't want him near the canoe.
Hu