These anglers don’t just get hooked; they are consumed with the “thump”
Here in Cajun Country, there’s no shortage of superstitions and idiosyncrasies that pertain to fishermen, especially crappie, or as they are called more often, sac-a-lait fishermen. And while most of these beliefs never rise beyond the level of quirky, there are some anglers whose cerebral misfirings put them in a category all to themselves.
I like to refer to these anglers as Crappieholics. Throughout my years of learning from these anglers, I’ve had the opportunity to converse with them to better understand why they think like they do. Join me as I dive head-long inside the minds of three Crappieholics.
James Bates
James Bates grew up fishing the saltwater marshes around Chalmette. After Katrina leveled his home in 2005, Bates’ family relocated to Lacombe, where he was forced to learn how to fish the freshwater rivers and bayous that are prevalent across the Northshore of Lake Pontchartrain. After a few lackluster bass fishing trips, he met a local angler who took him on a fishing trip where he experienced what it was like to catch sac-a-lait. After the trip, Bates was hooked.
“There was something about that ‘thump’ on the other end of the line that intrigued me,” Bates said.
The 66-year-old proceeded to buy anything and everything having to do with crappie fishing, including more than $1,000 worth of baits and subscriptions to all of the crappie fishing magazines and websites. But perhaps his most productive purchase was his LiveScope sonar unit. Bates learned how to read the screen and in only a few months started catching 20-30 sac-a-lait each trip. But the purchase didn’t come without any negative effects.
“I looked at that LiveScope screen so much I started seeing it in my dreams,” Bates said. “The dream is the same every time. I’m standing on the front deck of my boat staring at my 10-inch screen. The screen is set to emerald green and I spot my jig fluttering down into a group of sac-a-lait. Then I see this huge sac-a-lait turn up and inhale the lure. That’s when it happens. I jerk my right arm to set the hook and then I wake up.”
It’s been over a year since the dream has been playing in his head and it’s the same dream every time. Unfortunately for Bates, the results are the same as well.
“The last time I set the hook in my sleep I woke up my bride,” Bates said. “She asked if I was alright and I said ‘yep…but I missed him again!”
Donald Barrios
Donald Barrios of Franklinton has been fishing the Tchefuncte River for over 20 years. Through those years he’s marked thousands of brush piles that have become great spots to catch sac-a-lait. But there’s one spot that Barrios said was his go-to spot and perhaps his favorite.
“It was my go-to trash pile,” he said. “This spot was fantastic when the sun was shining bright. I mean this spot was automatic.”
In 2022, the Department of Natural Resources launched a 6-month project that aimed at removing debris left over from Hurricane Ida. Among one of the rivers that were scheduled for debris removal was the Tchefuncte River. Barrios fished the river that winter and watched as crews got closer and closer to his beloved fishing hole.
“I kept telling myself, ‘They’re not gonna go that far south,’” he said.
But on a cold day in January, Barrios stopped in on his favorite spot and it was no more.
“I couldn’t even recognize where I was, but my electronics insisted I was at the spot,” he said. “I mean, it was nothing but bank and water there.”
The crappie angler was furious. That night he stewed over the event and then came up with a brilliant idea.
“I’m ashamed to say it, but I put together a plan in my head to go to the log pile that the crews piled up and take the wood back to my spot,” he said.
The next day came and Barrios stuck to his plan.
“I drove right up to that barge and started grabbing anything that would fit into my flatboat,” he said.
Barrios then motored downriver to his spot and started tossing the logs and brush overboard. The temper tantrum lasted about five minutes and after the spiteful episode was over he sat down and reality set in. Not only did he fail to recreate the original trash pile but he put himself in danger in more ways than one. Barrios said the phrase “You big dummy…you big dummy,” echoed inside his head as he sat on his ice chest.
After returning to the scene of the crime a week later, Barrios hoped to save face with a story that had a happy ending. He threw down his trolling motor and eased up to the spot. However, it didn’t take long for him to realize there would be no happy ending to this story.
“There weren’t any fish there and even worse, the current had washed away everything that I stacked up in there,” he said.
John Guillot
Crappie angler John Guillot of Kiln, Miss., may be retired now, but during his career in outside sales, he applied a method of demoralization when competing with other salesmen.
“In outside sales, it’s very competitive at times and everything you can do to get a leg up on the competition helps,” he said.
Guillot would demoralize his competitors by specifically targeting their accounts so that they would lose motivation and not work so hard for future accounts.
Guillot recalls a time when he applied the same concept on the water to demoralize other crappie anglers in the Pearl River.
“There were certain guys that fished Wastehouse Bayou that would keep everything they caught,” he said. “If it had two eyes and four scales, it was going in the box.”
Guillot noticed these fishermen in the same spots.
“I picked one guy at a time,” he said. “I pulled every crappie I could out of their go-to spots and threw them in the live well for relocation or the freezer depending on their size. I managed to deplete their spots to the extent that they stopped fishing the Wastehouse and moved on to areas outside the Pearl River delta because they believed their honey holes didn’t have enough fish anymore.”
Today, Guillot is a whole lot less competitive and even looks back on his behavior with regret.
“Life’s funny how it teaches you lessons along the way,” he said. “I actually later became friends with one of those guys. He’s since passed on but I named his favorite area in the Wastehouse after him. I would love to see him out there fishing again. A day missed fishing you can never get back. As I grow older, I really regret my competitive nature when it comes to fishing. Today as a crappie angler, I give information fairly freely to any crappie fisherman, hopefully paying back the many blessings I have received.”
While these anglers represent what is perhaps the most extreme of cases when it comes to their actions on the water, (or in the bed) make no mistake, they are among some of the best crappie fishermen I’ve ever fished with.
And if it ever came down to being diagnosed as a Crappieholic in order to catch the amount of crappie that these guys catch, sign me up as a card-carrying member!
