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Is there a devil in your ditch?
Crawfish are almost our totem animal in Louisiana. A big, red crawfish held aloft in a clenched fist is the symbol of Cajun Power.[…]
Creature Feature
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Everybody eats pogies
Yes, everybody eats pogies; They just don’t know it.
The sea is a funny place. On land, planting-eating species (herbivores) vastly outnumber meat-eaters (carnivores). That’s because it takes 10 pounds of herbivore flesh to produce 1 pound of carnivore.[…]
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No one can call a triggerfish cute
Drab, mottled gray, buck-toothed, big-headed and pig-eyed — a gray triggerfish wouldn’t fit anyone’s definition of cute or beautiful. Inexperienced offshore fishermen who reel in one of these charmers at an offshore oil platform will usually stare at their catch clueless as to what it is.
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Bass Fishing
Bass fishing: Going to the weeds
Bass anglers have a love-hate relationship with submerged plants. Called submerged aquatic vegetation (SAV) by biologists, they are a constant factor in freshwater fishing in Louisiana.[…]
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ABC means ‘all about crabs’
The blue crab is one of the most-fascinating creatures in coastal marshes. This is one creature whose scientific name (Callinectes sapidus) completely describes it.[…]
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Hail the new snapper king
The gray snapper — usually called the mangrove snapper — is one of 14 Gulf of Mexico members of Lutjanidae, the snapper family.[…]
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Has ‘Destructo’ been rehabilitated?
In the Autumn 1939, Louisiana Conservation Review (the predecessor of the Louisiana Conservationist magazine), James Nelson Gowanloch, the chief biologist of the Bureau of Scientific Research and Statistics for the Louisiana Department of Conservation, wrote an article titled “Gars, Killers of Game and Food Fish.”[…]
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Cocahoe is another name for ‘bait’
I’m not sure why fishermen in the other Gulf coast states call them bull minnows and we call them cocahoes, and I don’t have a clue what the origin of our name is — but you can bet it has something to do with our Cajun heritage. […]
Cobia
Cobia: The curious fish
Cobia feed from the surface of the water down to the bottom, often over 100 feet deep. And they will eat almost anything.[…]
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Yes, buffalo are fish
Actually, buffalo are three species of fish rather than one. No one knows from where the odd name for the creatures is derived. But their scientific names are almost certainly taken from their common name.[…]
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Don’t knock whitey
There are lots of reasons to fish. Some fish for food. Others fish strictly for the pull. For those who love the fight, but could care less about the table qualities of their catch, the Good Lord put jack crevalle’s on earth.[…]
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Amberjacks are tough cookies
Catching amberjack is like going three rounds with a heavyweight boxer. But it’s worth it. They are a delicious table fish — better than anything else in the jack family except pompano and maybe rainbow runners.[…]
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A mullet by any other name is still a mullet
The striped mullet is a fish of many names. By one count, it carries 21 English names and at least 144 in other languages. It is “jompo” in Malagasy, an appropriate-sounding name for this most airborne of fish. In Dutch it goes by “diklipharder.”[…]
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Smart anglers use grass shrimp
Freshwater anglers, unlike saltwater fishermen who well know the role of shrimp in the food web of the species they pursue, mostly ignore shrimp.[…]
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Red Snapper:
Writing about red snapper biology isn’t a lot of fun. In fact, it’s downright depressing. The 40-day recreational season ended in July.[…]
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Can you beat a drum?
Black drum are an underrated recreational fish, certainly when their quality as table fare is considered. A few visits to Louisiana’s fabled Creole restaurants, where the fish is on almost every menu, should convince even a skeptic of that.[…]