Speckled trout, redfish and many more saltwater species dine on brown shrimp
Oh boy! Shrimp season is here!
Without going all Forrest Gump on you, is there any way you don’t like shrimp prepared?
No? Well, you’re in a large group of friends who enjoy these tasty morsels from our waters.
Like my old friend Mike Cook (God rest his soul!) said many times, “There hasn’t been enough fried or boiled shrimp in my life yet, and I’m determined to fill the rest of my life with ’em.”
I’m sure lots of you can give an Amen to Mike’s life-long ambition.
It’s brown shrimp season in May in Louisiana, smaller than white shrimp, but extra flavorful.
Brownies in the first part of the season can number 60 to the pound, which makes them great for stuffing eggplants fresh from the garden, combined with artichokes for a soup, or for shrimp and eggplant jambalaya, which, if you haven’t tried, then take time to find a recipe and have at it. Add a slice of toasty garlic French bread and grilled veggies and you’ll want seconds.
Brown shrimp make the best gumbo. Sure you have to peel a lot of them to make sure folks can see the shrimp amidst the darkened gravy, so the trick is to add about half the shrimp when you’re cooking the gumbo, then add the rest about a half hour before serving.
Got your mouth watering yet?
Well, so do speckled trout and redfish and so many other species that, like you, like to dine on brown shrimp.
An important resource
The benefit of this springtime push of brownies into our marshes is that it comes darned near the time when specks and reds are moving from the interior marshes to spawning areas along the coast.
Shrimp are an important resource for these two predatory species. Brownies provide the fats needed to produce healthy eggs in females and the energy the males need in a speckled trout’s summer-long spawning cycle.
When you pull up in a good-lookin’ place in a bay or along a barrier island and you see brown shrimp breaking the water, you can bet there’s a nearby trout or a redfish, and sometimes both — along with hardhead and gafftopsail catfish.
Except for that cold front in early April, this year’s brown shrimp run has had favorable conditions.
Drawing on the experiences of sitting through decades of Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries Commission meetings held in the first week of May, small brown shrimp move into the marshes on late winter tides and the occasional southerly winds. They thrive best in water temperatures near 70 degrees and in water the salinity of which is measured at least 10 parts per thousand.
Sure, there are other factors, but those are the main ingredients.
Get a cold front, or strong north winds, or above average rainfall, and brown shrimp growth takes a hit.
Those things are what the Wildlife and Fisheries’ Shrimp Study team begins to track as early as January in our major coastal basins — Pontchartrain, Barataria, Terrebonne, near Marsh Island, the Mermentau and the Calcasieu.
The team takes trawl samples, checks water temperature and salinity levels, then comes up with a plan to present to the commission at its meeting in May.
Setting the spring inshore season
The study team recommends opening days of the season in major basins. The report is based on a date when the team believes the brown shrimp count will cross over 100 to the pound.
Usually the Barataria Basin is the first to open. Other basins usually lag behind it, and, through the years, the wishes of the Pontchartrain Basin shrimpers preference for taking larger shrimp now is a factor in opening the season in places east of the Mississippi River.
Yes, it’s a complicated process, so much so that back in the 1950s, 1960s and into the 1990s, the decision on setting the spring inshore shrimp season covered two days.
The commission gathered on a Wednesday, usually in the afternoon, to a packed house of shrimpers willing to tell the commission about what they wanted from their season.
Over the years, the work of the Shrimp Study team has become so refined — and the number of commercial shrimpers has dwindled (especially after Hurricane Katrina) — that setting the spring inshore season is contained to the regular May meeting held on the first Thursday of the month. Because that first Thursday of May is May 7 this year, we might expect the meeting date to be moved up.
The Louisiana Shrimp Task Force meets the week before the meeting with the Shrimp Study team to get a clearer picture of what this brown shrimp season looks like, and the Task Force makes its recommendations.
No matter when it comes, no matter the opening date, all of us can hope this brown shrimp season starts Louisiana on an uptick. Mostly because brown shrimp landings have been falling for most of the last 20 years.
Let’s pray that streak stops this year.
