Capt. Rykert Toledano Jr. puckishly calls Farley Dennis and Kelly LeBouef “good guys and good friends, but best of all cheap labor.”
For the love of fishing, they sometimes deck hand for him on charter trips.
The three men couldn’t be more different. Sixty-seven-year-old Toledano is a scion of one of New Orleans’ old families. He moves with an easy dignity and is well-spoken, as a successful attorney should be — he is a principal partner in Toledano and Herrin Law Firm in Covington.
He calls his charter fishing “a good diversion from my day job,” adding that “it’s one of the few things I can do to get my mind off of my law practice. Besides fishing, running is another thing. It’s therapeutic.”
He has a home gym and runs three to four miles every day.
Farley Dennis is the youngest of the trio at 51. He lives in Mandeville but grew up in New Orleans East and oozes “Nawlins” from every pore. He is operations manager for U.S. Maritime Services, a ship-cleaning company.
“I’ve been fishing since I was a kid, like a lot of other New Orleanians,” he said. “Dad and Grandpa fished the Chef, the Rioglets, Lake Catherine, and Delacroix-Hopedale.”
His father Jerry owns the camp next to Toledano’s in Delacroix.
Dennis, who sports a genuine 1950s classic crew cut and wears a mischievous grin, turned out to be a tireless fishing machine.
Kelly LeBoeuf is an early retiree at 59 years old. He managed Cable TV systems, including St. Tammany Parish’s, which is how he met Toledano, who was attorney for the city of Covington.
He has been fishing with Toledano since 1986, and spent a great deal of time helping Toledano restore his Hurricane Katrina-damaged camp.
“It’s hard to turn (Toledano) down,” LeBoeuf grinned. “He knows the marsh better than anyone and he has a nice boat.”
Originally from lower Lafourche Parish, LeBoeuf now lives on a 200-acre private lake managed for largemouth bass in rural Pearl River County, Miss., and admits with an almost embarrassed laugh that he bass fishes almost every day.
“I’ll catch a 2-inch perch with a cast net and fish it under a saltwater popping cork,” he said. “I catch 7- and 8-pounders pretty regularly. I would consider it unusual not to catch a 6-pounder in two hours of fishing.”
LeBoeuf isn’t from Mississippi or even North Louisiana, but he has picked up the drawl like a native. He is laconic and very, very laid back.
He is also the only person I ever met who carried a mattress into a boat for a fishing trip. He used it, too.
