All In The Family: Maine Mother & Son Charged in Massive Drug Bust

Get Ready! Red Snapper Season Opens Next Week

Happy Easter, and hope you feel the peace this spring brings you and yours.

This spring celebration ushers us into the fishing season, if it hasn't begun in earnest already, with reports of first-rate sac-a-lait and speckled trout catches blowing up on chat sites and message centers.

And if you're an offshore angler, know the private recreational red snapper seasons opens next week. That's right, May 1 this year.

Private anglers and state-certified charter operations are allowed to take four snapper per person per day as long as they measure 16 inches or longer. The season will be open daily until state fisheries managers determine landings have reached our annual catch limit.

Federally permitted charterboats have a different season.

There are more rules to these offshore trips.

Fishermen need a Recreational Offshore Landing Permit along with the required state fishing licenses. There is no charge for the ROLP and you can get the permit from Wildlife and Fisheries' website — wlf.La.Gov — and you'll need it for taking all reef fish along with some pelagic species.

It's also a good idea to become familiar with all snapper species. Different snappers have different minimum-length limits and daily creel limits. A good illustration came in a rodeo several years ago when a fishermen came in with two snappers to weigh for a rodeo. He believed he had his daily limit (two back then) and one was a red snapper. The other was a blackfin snapper, a species with a daily limit of 10, and the angler admitted they caught, but released, more blackfin snapper that day because they reached their red snapper limit.

Next, federal regulations require the use of non-stainless steel circle hooks along with a dehooking tool to remove hooks Gulf reef fish with minimum damage. Both recreational and commercial fishermen need them or a descending device rigged and ready to use when fishing for reef fish.

Because Louisiana overcaught its allotment in 2024, this year it will have an 894,955-pound catch limit, down from 934,587 pounds in 2024.

The idea behind opening the season May 1 — it was April 15 last year — is to have some remaining allotment left for the Labor Day weekend.

What's up

Veterans Open bass tournament organizers have moved off a May 3 date to sometime in July.

Because they're happening on the same weekend, Swollfest and the Catholic High Alumni Fishing Rodeo are trying to get anglers to enter both.

Swollfest takes in June 4-7 at Grand Isle Marina while Catholic High's rodeo runs June 5-7 from Fourchon Marina.

Stay tuned for updates.

A notable event

The Baton Rouge Symphony is holding its annual Sporting Clays fundraiser Saturday at the Bridgeview Gun Club in Baton Rouge. This unusual marriage is a major contributor to the symphony's effort to keep classical music in our Capital City.

The entry fee gets shooters breakfast and lunch, but you'll need to bring eye and ear protection and your shotshells.

This four-shooter team competition brings some of the top shotgunners in our area and the prizes for in team, top man and top woman divisions with opportunities to improve scores at a bonus station. There's a "super mulligan" to replacing your worst score.

Website registration is suggested: brso.Org to the "Sporting Clay Shoot" pulldown or call (225) 383-0500, Ext. 107.

A big thank you

Hunters for the Hungry is taking time to thank our state's hunters for donating more than 52,000 pounds of venison and hogs to processing centers, which turned the donated protein to food banks and soup kitchens across the state. It meant slightly more than 200,000 meals for the needy.

Tears

Donald Braud, a dear friend to many and an extraordinary bass fishermen, died earlier this month. Losing a dad, a brother and a good friend is painful enough, but losing a kind-hearted, always friendly man makes it tougher.

Condolences to his family and friends. Donald Braud will be missed, mightily missed.

Plenty Of Fish: Gov. DeSantis Says Donald Trump 'supportive' Of Atlantic Snapper Harvest

Florida's Governor says the federal government may come through in expanding the red snapper season in the Atlantic.

"I think the administration is supportive of it," Gov. Ron DeSantis said.

"I have mentioned it to the President, but I definitely mentioned it also to the Secretary of the Commerce. And I know they're still filling out NOAA (the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) and they're doing, still, all that. And there's a lot of irons in the fire, but returning this to state management would be a home run."

Recreational anglers got just one day in 2024, though commercial operations had from July until the end of the year.

DeSantis notes that the restrictions "predate the current administration" and show "the bureaucracy being more ideological and purpose-driven rather than evidence-based."

DeSantis made the comments Monday at Panama City Beach's Treasure Island Marina.

He's made similar complaints before, including earlier this year. In February, he pleaded for a longer red snapper season in the Atlantic "just like we do in the Gulf," saying "anglers will be really, really happy" if the Department of Commerce gives Florida its much-desired extension.

"The people are there, they see the fish. I mean, they're there," he said in 2024. "So why don't we go and actually do this in a way that makes sense?"

He even made the case when he was in Congress.

"Our coastal communities up and down the east coast are just now beginning the long road of recovery after Hurricane Matthew," said DeSantis eight years ago, during Trump's first term. "A 2017 red snapper season would go far in bringing an influx of tourist dollars to help fuel our recovery."

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Putting The Art Into Artisanal Fishing

On the southern coast of Mexico, fishermen work with what they've got and supply local markets.

We've all found a place to sleep in the 24-foot open boat, the Jania, out of Puerto Escondido in Oaxaca, Mexico. A gillnet stretches 500 meters toward shore, where the big breakers crash on the sand and send up geysers of foam illuminated by the waxing moon. Offshore, the sound of humpback whales blowing seeps into our dreams. Luis Escamilla, our captain, lies comfortably across the thwart in the stern. His crewman, Diego de Leon Franco, has made a nest of the anchor rode on the floor of the fiberglass skiff, and I am curled up on the hard foredeck with my sea bag for a pillow.

Vessel owner Polo Hipólito and other fishermen help launch the Jania off the beach at Puerto Escondido in Oaxaca, Mexico. Every night, a fleet of 20 or 30 boats heads out from the port to set gillnets for Pacific red snapper—and other species. Photo by Pa

We had launched the boat a couple of hours earlier, pushing it down the beach over wooden rollers with help from other fishermen. Luis started up the 60hp Yamaha, and after a rough half-hour run west along the beach, we reached a spot he thought might be productive. "There's a lagoon on the other side of the beach," he'd said in Spanish. "When it rains, it floods, and there's a lot of feed for the fish."

He's after, huauchinango—Pacific red snapper, Lutjanus peru.

Luis Escamilla started fishing with his grandfather at age five and worked on coastal boats when he was 12. He has an interesting technique for making up a handline: tying the knots rapidly with his teeth.

Waiting for the sun to go down, Luis made up a handline. He tied a swivel onto some monofilament and added a fathom and a half of finer line. With surprising speed, using his teeth to tie and cut the knots, he made four snoods, and using the same method with his teeth, he tied on four hooks and added green tread. "Green is for cosinero [barred jack], white is for huauchinango."

While he worked, he told stories about how he started fishing when he was five, going with his grandfather in the lagoon, catching pargo, a snapper-like species that often frequents brackish waters and mangroves.

"When I was 12, I went for the first time on the ocean, fishing on other boats. My father and grandfather both fished in the lagoons. I'm the first one to fish on the ocean."

He noted that his grandfather taught him to use marks on shore and the stars to fix his position and mark the time.

Near dark, he put the handline aside and used a leadline to check the depth and direction of the current. "We set across the current," he said. The fish swim against the current, looking for food, and hit the net."

He signaled Diego to toss the first anchor buoy overboard. As the buoy slowly floated away, Diego tossed an anchor made of five pieces of rebar welded together with the ends bent out like the petals of a flower. Diego hauled on the anchor line until it grabbed.

"The bottom is sand and mud," Luis said. "Just a few rocks."

He put the engine in reverse and backed away from the anchor as the net paid out over the starboard side. The corks went over easily near the bow while Diego fed out the lead line. Slowly, Luis backed the boat. Every now and then Diego pulled the lead line tight. After about 10 minutes, he came to the end of the net. He tossed another anchor and then tied it off to the bow.

With the net set at dusk, Diego de Leon tries to add to the night's catch by handlining a few snappers.

No sooner was the line made fast than Luis took his blanket out and stretched across the aft thwart. In the fading light, Diego caught a few small cosinero with the handline. I found my spot to lay down in the bow.

I'm now trying to get comfortable there and more or less manage. Finally, I drift off between the waves and the whales. The cosmic clock wheels from horizon to horizon, and when Orion is overhead — 9 p.M. — Luis rouses us. He has no watch, no compass, no electronics other than a single light bulb hooked up to a car battery and tied to a wooden pole on the port rail.

Diego and Luis don plastic trash bags in lieu of rain gear. It's kind of an improvisational fishery conducted barefoot in the warm waters of the Pacific. There is no safety equipment aboard. No life jackets, no flares, no VHF, not even a cell phone. The assumption must be that if you get in a jam, you can swim the mile or so to shore, but I don't ask.

As the sun sets, Diego de Leon, hauls on the first anchor line until it grabs, and begins to set the 500-meter gillnet as Luis backs the boat away from shore. They will make two sets: one at dusk that they haul at about 9 p.M., picking the net clean.

In the limited light, Diego leans over the bow and unties the buoy line. Together, he and Luis pull the anchor aboard and start to haul the net. Diego, at the bow, pulls in the cork line, and Luis, aft, pulls the lead. "In your country, do you have machines to do the work? Luis asks me.

"A lot of it," I say.

"Here, we use our arms," he says. He has time to chat because the net is empty for the first 100 meters.

But fish start to show: a few huauchinango, some cosinero, madrigal [amberjack], the mackerel-like sierra, and a little tunny that Luis calls a "salmonete."

The mesh size on the gillnet is a little less than 4 inches stretched. Luis says it would be rare but not impossible to catch a huauchinango that weighed a kilo in these depths. "Usually, it's three or four to a kilo."

The price? "About 100 pesos a kilo," he says—about $2.50 a pound.

The first haulback starts slow, with a 100 meters of empty net, but it picks up quickly, delivering an average catch of 40 kilos of huauchinango—Pacific red snapper—and a few other species.

The fish start coming steady, mostly down near the lead line where Luis deftly untangles them from the web and tosses them on deck. But by the time the anchor and buoy come aboard, they have a pile of about 40 kilos of mostly huauchinango. "It's about average," Luis says. "We'll set again at 4 a.M. And get another 15 kilos."

Diego dumps a 40-pound bag of ice into the fish box amidship and measures the catch in a box that holds about 50 kilos when full. He dumps the fish onto the ice and covers them with another 40 pounds of ice.

While Diego works, Luis asks about Alaska. "It's my dream to go up there and fish salmon," he says. "I almost went. They called me but I wasn't home, and when I got home they had found somebody else. I missed my chance by half an hour."

"I'll let some folks know," I tell him.

"Diego, too," he says.

With the fish on ice and the net stowed aboard, we all return to our improvised bunks. "You have beds on the boats in your country?" Luis asks.

"Usually," I tell him. "They're not very wide, but wide enough."

Fishing with Luis is like going back in time, to being governed by the stars instead of a clock. He notes that the moon will disappear at about 1 a.M., and Orion will touch the horizon around 4 a.M. "That's when we'll set again," he says.

The moon is gone and Orion is about to disappear when Luis calls us to wake up. I check my phone: 4:05 a.M. He and Diego repeat the setting procedure, this time a little closer to shore. "The depth is about 3 fathoms," Luis says. "The net is about 2 fathoms deep."

He points east. "When we see some red there, we'll haul he net."

After another nap, Luis and Diego round haul the net, leaving the fish in the net piled in the boat. It looks like a good catch, about 20 kilos, Luis reckons, but this time the last hundred meters of the net are empty.

On the beach, Luis Escamilla picks fish from the last set before he and Diego de Leon wash the net in preparation for the coming night's fishing. "We go every night," says de Leon.

With the sun rising, Luis opens up the Yamaha and the Jania flies over a smooth sea back to the beach. Other boats have already arrived, and the beach hums with activity; crowds of people carrying bags and buckets gather around the boats.

Luis drives the boat up to the beach and orders Diego and me to jump. My first time at this maneuver is graceless. I land on all fours in knee deep water but manage to keep my phone dry. By the time I reach our empty slot among the skiffs that have already landed Diego has laid down a path of thin poles, and Luis is racing across the harbor full throttle. He hits the beach, lifting the motor at the last minute as the boat skids up onto the sand.

A crowd forms around the Jania almost instantaneously. The owner of the boat, Polo Hipólito, and his wife are there, and she starts selling the fish as fast as people can grab them out of the box. From somewhere, a small plastic bucket of hot coffee appears, and Diego is handing me a cup.

Within half an hour, it's over. I offer to buy some huauchinango to take home, but Polo won't have it. "Take what you want. It's a gift," he says. I grab four fish, but he insists I take more. It's something I've noticed, having done these stories all over the world, that fishing people are a big global family.

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