Although Jody Auenson and Ricky Richoux have been friends for at least 15 years, this was the first time they fished together.
“I was really looking forward to this trip,” Richoux said.
“I’ve invited him before,” Auenson said, “but he’s always busy cleaning fish.”
In fact, it was while cleaning fish at marina docks that the two became friends.
“I like Jody,” rumbled Richoux, while he jabbed the point of a hook under another bait croaker’s dorsal fin. “I like the way he treats his customers and I like his personality.
“He’s a hard-charger — full throttle.”
Only 47 years old, Auenson has been charter fishing for 26 years. The muscular dynamo of energy never stops moving in the boat and keeps up a rollicking conversation in high octane Cajun.
His home is in Golden Meadow, but he spends half the year in Grand Isle, moving his camper to the island in early May and keeping it there until September.
“I charter year-round,” Auenson explained, “but do it out of Golden Meadow in the winter.”
The seemingly tireless man does all this while running a full-time welding business. The night before this trip, he crawled in bed at 1 a.m. after working on his boat and equipment, and was up at 4 a.m.
Three to four hours of sleep a night is his average.
Richoux is nine years older than Auenson. The native Grand Isler has cleaned fish off and on since he was 15 years old but has made it his profession since 2003.
He runs to docks and private camps to clean fish for hire, cutting on everything from little white trout to big tuna. He has even cleaned two blue marlins that tail-wrapped and died on the hooks.
On busy weekends, his wife Tina and son Earl pitch in to help clean fish.
Compared to the compact bundle of sinew that is his friend, Richoux’s a big guy — 6 feet, 1 inch and more than 200 pounds. His dashing, grayish Errol Flynn moustache over his huge grin is a familiar sight all over the island.
He also does home repair work and trims palm trees (no small task on Grand Isle), as well as managing two rental camps and maintaining five or six private camps, making him as busy as his frenetic friend.
Richoux takes enormous pride in his fish-cleaning profession, and gives John Bradberry credit for his career. Bradberry was a commercial shrimper, boat operator for the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries and sometime-worker at Tut Cheramie’s shrimp dock.
But he was best known as the guy who cleaned fish for display at the Grand Isle Tarpon Rodeo and in the evenings the rest of the year for tourists at Cheramie’s dock.
“Everybody knew Papa John,” Richoux said.
Son Leon Bradberry, currently a constable on Grand Isle, said his father (who was born in 1911) loved what he did and was good at it.
“He cleaned fish until he was 76 years old,” Leon Bradberry said. “Grand Isle was already a big fishing resort back then. People would come and pick up ‘Mr. John’ to clean their fish, and bring him home after. They would ask how much they owed him. He would answer, ‘Whatever you want, Doc.’
“He called everybody ‘Doc.’”
The younger Bradberry still remembers his father’s skills with awe.
“He could stand up in a pirogue and throw a cast net,” Leon Bradberry said. “Every Monday we had red beans and fried mullet. Mullet was a common food on Grand Isle then.
“If you scale the small ones and fry them up on the bone, they curl up. To me, it’s better than speckled trout.”
