Thirty-four years ago, in the early part of March, I launch my skiff to chase a childhood dream – to trap crawfish as a commercial fisher at Belle River. Terrebonne Parish natives that recreationally fish, measure all of their netted crawfish by Belle River standards. ”The crawfish we caught last Saturday was big as Belle River crawfish!” But, I soon learned that a crow couldn’t distinguish the legendary waters of Belle River from other secretive waters just a bullfrog-hop farther upriver – so, I chose to fish 12 miles closer to home – from the village of Pigeon. You see, trucking a skiff 60 miles a day from Baton Rouge stole powerful magic from boat-loads of Belle River crawfish dreams. All of that broad area are Atchafalaya River Basin waters, or as locals call it, The Spillway.
My first voyage up-current of Bayou Pigeon is a cold day in March. I motor into the milky waters of The Atchafalaya Spillway. Cypress trees hold fast to their coppery foliage. They look dead, but their sap wafts the air– the smell of life and ahh….., the smell of Christmas. Cajun Christmas trees, that’s what a cypress is to me.
Before entering the deeper water of cypress and willow slews, where I hide my traps, I first power over a flooded ridge, through flooded thickets of fish-berry bushes. The bow of my skiff parts tall bushes like a giant comb, its hull conversing with fish-berries, exchanging booms, clangs, and clatters for cries and shrieks. I motor through deep shade ignoring this noise, bouncing from tree trunk to tree trunk, my outboard engine gently lifting its foot over submerged logs and branches, like it has a mind of its own. Putter, putter, in the air, the stainless prop spins in harmony with its exhaust, and then settles back into the water. Suddenly, it's quiet again, and I see the sun rising over cypress and willows. I'm in the slew.
My flagged trap-line stretches into the distance. It's waving at me. Each trap is spaced about 50 feet apart. Milk chocolate water wraps each trap like a Christmas present. I throttle to my first trap, slow the boat to a stop, and grab a tight tarred-nylon twine that’s flagged with my colors, the twine disappearing under water. What has Santa left under the tree for me? I pull hard, and with the splash, much like crinkling wrapping paper, I raise my first trap from a depth of 6 feet. Swish! I dump the trap contents into a sorting box. It’s alive with thrashing tails of plump crawfish. In this Water Garden of Eden the crawfish resemble large green olives with pimento legs and pincers, edible ornaments ripe for picking. Each trap holds a surprise. My day is filled with 300 surprises.
March calendar days flip by and, I catch more and more. Once or twice a week, I empty a trap and unwrap a real surprise. Not a snake, not a catfish, nor a bullfrog. Not an eel or salamander. Sure, those surprise me, but my favorite surprise flutters and crawls backwards in the sorting box, and its blue - a blue crawfish. When my daily catch increases to eight 40-pound sacks, I start seeing the blue ones. I soon cipher: If eight crawfish average one pound, and I catch 8 sacks each day, that averages 2560 crawfish per day. I round that to 3000 crawfish per day. At the end of a week I catch 21, 000 crawfish, so ........on average one in 21,000 crawfish are blue – some turquoise, some cobalt, some a mix of both colors, but blue – every bit as blue as a blue crab. That’s why, when I hand color my crawfish prints, I color some of my crawfish blue.