Atchafalaya Basin People: Chapter 26

Continued from Chapter 25

DATE:                        December 26, 1995 

INTERVIEWER:      Jim Delahoussaye

LOCATIONS:           Residence of EJ Daigle and his wife Blue, at 1400 Milling St., Franklin, Louisiana,  70538.

COOPERATORS:   EJ Daigle

CONTINUING TO TALK TO E J DAIGLE AT HIS HOUSE.  TALKING ABOUT SMALL BAITFISH CALLED “LUSH”.

EJ       …[laughs] but those fish at certain times of the year, when they spawn, they real colorful. ..  Real pretty.

JD:      Oh, yeah!  The common name for em is pupfish.

EJ:      Pupfish?  ..  Southwest Pass when a norther start, you ought to see that!  I’m talking about this big around!  ..  Humongous.

JD:      Big sailfin sometime on their backs? .. 

EJ:      Pretty fish.  …big head, big wide mouth…evidently they’re aggressive.  [laughs].

JD:      How about mullet? 

EJ:      Mullet is also a clear water bait [that] we used to use in the rivers when we fishing crossins mostly.  Once your fish would fall off your flats into your deep water.  And you would, uh…

JD:      Rivers, what rivers you talking about? 

EJ:      Well, the Atchafalaya River.

JD:      OK. 

EJ:      And, uh, I guess it would work basically in any river you would fish that would have deeper waters.  Cause your fish will leave the flats and fall into deeper water.  And my reasoning is, the reason the fish leave the flats and fall into deeper water is because when the rivers clear up, your shrimp will also bottom down in your deeper water.

JD:      They do?

EJ:      They do.  Your fish…you can find some places in clear water, especially when it’s cooler, you drop your shrimp dips down 15, 20 feet and raise em real slow, you find shrimp there when you can’t find any near the top. ..  And you raise…you talk to hoop net fishermen, they’ll be raising hoop nets and the big shrimp will just be raining off their nets.  So, um, evidentially the fish follow the feed.  ..  And, uh, they down on the bottom but you also got small shrimp too.  Humongous schools…small fish, I mean…and uh, they’ll clean your lines off with shrimp so you have to resort back to mullet or another hard bait.  And your live mullet are used when you also…your small live mullet, two or three inches, four inches long…when you looking for big fish also. 

JD:      I never saw y’all fish with live mullet in the Basin.

EJ:      Well, those years you remember we had a lot of high waters.  We had very little low waters ..  And the rivers never cleared up that much. ..  If you remember the years you fished with us. ..  And uh, that’s the difference. ..  You just have to develop your techniques to whatever is there at the time. ..  Or you use whatever works, put it that way.

JD:      That’s right.  That’s how all this came about.  OK.  Let’s talk about white eel, if you will.  Uh, where they come from, how y’all know that they were there, what you…when you look for em?  Basically, uh, what’s the story on white eel?

EJ:      We…we have no knowledge of where they come from.  Um.  All we know is they’re there and every winter you find these clear dead water lakes with soft mud bottoms, and uh, when you get a big north wind that rakes the bottoms – big waves, you know, rake the bottom, muddy the water.  The eels will come out of the mud and they’ll just start traveling south with the tide that’s created by the strong north winds.  And uh, they’ll come up…they’ll travel on top the water for ten or fifteen feet, and they’ll go down and pop right back up again.  Uh, they’ll uh, they won’t just come up and swim continuously. It’s an up and down thing.  You’ll see one pop down in front of you, watch back your boat he’ll pop back up again behind your boat lot of times, and uh, some times they’re real…some years they’re real plentiful.  The past years, they haven’t been plentiful.  The last plentiful year we had, I think, was uh…I sold the boat in 19…the winter of ’86, I think it is.  Uh, when the norther first started, I’d go to Lake Fausse Pointe and uh, I would dip as much as uh…as 1500 in an hour or two.  2000, and could have continuously kept dipping.  It’s rated as the number one bait at that particular time of year, when nothing else will hit your hooks, you can put, uh, white eels which you cut into lil quarter inch to half inch sections.  Roll em in cornmeal first in order to be able to hold em when you cut em cause they’re slimy.  And uh, cut em in very little pieces and hook im on the thin edge of the skin so that uh, when you come to take the old bait off you can rip it off.  If you hook it all the way thru from one end of the skin to the other, there is no ripping it off.  You have to push the barb backwards through it to get it off.  It’s a slower baiting technique than anything else you can use, but it…you find in the line that you’re fishing with any other cut baits in the Fall of the year…where you might be catching ten, 12 head of fish on a line…your first run on white eel, you may…you may be good for 100 head.  ..  And, uh, fishing local fish it’s really effective at that time of the year.   You can use it as, for local fish, uh, to the point to where one run [then you have] to pick up and move, cause you’ve caught everything there.  ..  And one reason that you catch…the thing on the eel that the fish really want is the slime, cause you can take eel and let it dry and lose the slime, and uh, it won’t be effective.  You’ll catch a few but it won’t be near as effective. 

JD:      Is that what I hear people talking about…about some people freeze em, and some people don’t and…?

EJ:      The frozen eels, if you freeze em like that, and you defrost em, the slime tends to ball off…ball up and fall off ..  I have dried em, and froze em ..  And uh, you put em to soak in warm water before you’re ready to cut em up…and it’ll…it’ll swell back up and still retain some of the slime ..  It’s not as effective as fresh eel, but it’s still more effective than any…any conventional bait you use at the time.  And I have used em at times in muddy water.  I was fishing down at Calumet, the last year I fished, as a matter of fact, and I had lines in water this deep…

JD:      Six inches deep.

EJ:      Six inches deep.  My bateau would drag bottom, with the motor up. ..  And, uh, the tide be low…I have to take my net and a tub and walk out there to take the fish off the line ..  Hard sandbars out there? .. And, uh, I seen right there where the game warden camps are on the delta area, lil pocket in the back in there, water was real muddy, and that’s when the winter fish will tend to pull up in the shallow waters.  I guess cause the shallow waters are warmer, that’s where most of your feed’s at in the winter.  So, uh, big fish normally, three, four, five, eight, ten pound fish, with eels that were frozen – muddy water, you catch four, five hundred pound of fish.

JD:      Frozen…with frozen eel…

EJ:      Frozen eel.  Dry em, and then freeze em. 

JD:      Uh, people still try to keep em alive?

EJ:      They…they…they keep alive real well.  Uh, and eel is something you can put in any old boat you got, or tub, or anywhere where you don’t have to stack em too thick.  You just put water lilies in em with a inch or two of water in em and give em a place to get into the lilies and, and uh, you can…I’ve kept, uh, 2000 as long as two weeks.  ..  I’ve got that big freezer chest…ice chest, rather, I used to have in my big boat.   Used to use it in my transfer boat down at Belle Isle ..  And you put about this much water in it ., about two inches of water in it, and uh, put my eels in it and just throw water lilies in it and uh, the problem with that is as long as it’s cold they’ll keep well, ., but when it gets hot you tend to lose em…lack of oxygen in the water, so, a cure for that was I would take a…get me a bucket of ice ., and just set right in the middle.  . And let the ice defrost slowly…melt slowly . and I guess it would radiate enough coolness in the water to where your eels would keep…stay alive.  ..  But uh, I always thought of getting, you know, aerators and stuff ..  I’m sure that would work real well.

JD:      Now, you talking about  using white eel…in any circumstances out there in the lake?  I mean fishin…cause when that water’s low like that, a lot of times the water’s clear and the channel…the channel is low…you fish white eel both in the lake and across the channel, in crossings?

EJ:      Yes.  Uh, white eel, your fish in the summertime…late fall…will go local, and they won’t move.  But they’ll move for this eel.  You know, it’s like a vacuum cleaner [to] run the line ..  You [can] come back and bait with other baits and not catch a thing after that. It will take a week or ten days before you start [catching fish again].

JD:      Does it really?  Well, what do you have to do, move your line or…?

EJ:      Well.  When you fishing white eel, what I used to do, the last year I fished em I was fishing something like eight or nine crossings in the river ..  What I would do, I would move three a day ..  Three a day, and uh, when the river’s that low…the river was dead low to where [when] normally the current…takes about 190 hooks to cross, ., and the river was so low that, uh, a crossing took 130 ..  You could pull the line tighter.  And we were fishing with long [?] lines.  And, uh, when it’s that low it’s nothing to run one out without the current…the current pressures, current pressures. on you that’s it’s so bad that it makes it difficult to fish.  But when the river gets down like this year, it’s not bad to fish. 

JD:      Interesting.  I hadn’t heard that statistic.  190 hooks under normal low water to cross…

EJ:      Umhm.  When the river…from uh…I fished the river at six feet, at Butte La Rose, and you need a full complement of 190 to 210 hooks to hold a crossing.  ..  And uh, that’s with a heavy two and three pound weight every ten hooks.  ....to maintain em on the bottom…which…backbreaking work like that.  But, uh, [unintelligible] …one of the years where there was no current, you know, you couldn’t…you could run lines in a hurry.

JD:      I remember I was pulling up next to you and you said I could hang on because there wasn’t any pressure on the boat, I remember that.

EJ:      And uh, that was one of the worst years I had on the coast, cause the water got so low the fish just moved up the river.   The sharks moved in uh, into the coast, the blue cats moved up, and after that they never stopped…they just…

JD:      Back on.  I think we’re talking about crawfish now, as bait…

EJ:      As bait? ..  Crawfish as bait is used in, in just about the times when spring is converting to early summer.   Uh, where your water temperatures are starting to rise from your winter lows.  And, lot of times…mostly uh, mixed waters.  In the real strong current in muddy water, well they just rather…your shrimp are still more effective.  But when your shrimp get to where…the waters are warming and you’re catching a little smaller fish, you can put crawfish on and you’ll catch a…catch a nicer run of fish.  It holds better and, at that time of the year your fish are…are hitting crawfish just about everywhere, even your bass and stuff in the woods.  When you see them [sportfishermen?] start going, uh, using crawfish colored crankbaits and stuff, you can pretty well start using crawfish on your lines, and uh, stuff that way. 

JD:      What size crawfish? 

EJ:      You want your smaller crawfish.  Two inches long, is about the most I like.  You get to your bigger ones, well you break the tips of the heads off in order that the crawfish is not too big for the hook. ..  And if the crawfish is too big for the hook, your fish can just grab the head and he’s gone with the head and, you lost the fish and half your bait [laughs]. 

JD:      How do you bait the crawfish?

EJ:      Crawfish, what we call, we string em…the term we use.  You go in underneath the tail and come out just about where the mouth is, between the claws.  ..  And try to get the whole barb of the hook out of the crawfish.  .. 

JD:      Freshwater shad. 

EJ:      Freshwater shad is, uh, what I would call a bait of circumstances.  Um, in muddy water I seen it pay off.  ..  For the simple reason, same thing like the eel does.  Your shrimp will gather on it. ..  And the fish…nicer fish will hit these clusters of shrimp.  Because shrimp can also…also use…a technique we use [with shrimp] I didn’t mention, is uh, we don’t use it much today because we can’t sell big fish, but uh, when everyone was looking for big fish, cause when you caught a big one you made a days work ., you would uh, what they call bunch up live shrimp.  Take your bigger shrimp alive and just hook as many of em on a hook as you can to where you’re not killin em. 

JD:      Like where?  Through the tail?

EJ:      Like through the tip of the tail, the top of the tail right through the shell, or through the top of the head shell, to where you’re not injuring the shrimp [enough] to kill him.  Just jam as many as you can, and you call that live goujon bait.  ..  Umhm, big goujons like live shrimp ., and the fishermen used to go along…that’s what they used to do when your big goujons were prevalent, uh, now we throw big shrimp away, use the small ones. ..  But those days they used to just take the big shrimp and…when you accumulate enough of em on top your pan [whatever the bait shrimp were kept in] you would just live hook em, four or five to the hook ..  And every now and then you would do that and it would, uh, catch a big fish every now and then. .. 

JD:      So, but, you said that you’ve seen freshwater shad work in dirty water, but it’s primarily a clear water…

EJ:      A clear water bait, a hard bait that uh, when your other baits won’t hold and your smaller fish strike at it they can’t knock it off the hook, allowing it to be there longer till a bigger fish comes along, takes a bite of it. 

JD:      We talking about cut, or whole, shad?

EJ:      Well, you…we used to use whole fresh water shad, as big as six, eight inches long, live. .. 

JD:      How’d you keep em alive in your boat, long enough to do that?

EJ:      Uh, you’d go dip em in your wellbox…

JD:      And you’d have a wellbox full of water…

EJ:      And we used to have to go at night, and uh, it was used mostly for local fish.  You’d go move four or five…you’d go mostly before dark and move four or five lines, bents of line, in the stumps…which is about 100 hooks, and uh, go that night, dip your live shad, put water in the wellbox, run straight to your line, hook em on the line crossways the back, and just let em swim around.  And uh, next morning you’d go run em, and, and, . have four, five, six head of 15 to 40 pound fish. ..  So uh…

JD:      Both blue and, and goujon? 

EJ:      Blue and goujons. Goujons more prevalent in your stumps, but you could get a lot of blue cats also.  And uh, it…it’s a bait used a lot in…in salt…in your saltier water areas, cut…like when you fish the coast, and stuff like that.

JD:      Cut shad?

EJ:      Cut shad, is…is better in any of those areas. 

JD:      Then you used to use perch.

EJ:      Perch.  Perch in my experience, unless you were fishing for [with] live bait…or if it was a small perch, inch and a half, that you could string on when the lil blue cats are biting, and the water’s kind of mixed like it was settling out from muddy water, your pressure’s are falling off the river and your water’s starting to settle, these lil string perch would…

JD:      By string, you mean like, uh…thru and then thru again?

EJ:      Sideways thru the eye, coming out at the tail.  ..  And uh, it’s effective on the smaller blue cats.  Cut perch, very seldom have ever caught fish on cut perch.  For some reason it’s just not a bait that really works.  It’s not effective, as compared to other cut baits.  ..  Now live, goes back again to when you could fish bigger fish .. 

JD:      Sure, but that…I do need to go back . into the historical things. 

EJ:      Umhm.  Your lil…your lil black goggle eyes were the best. ..  Were the best, comin out of clear, clear water.  Small, whitish colored perch not near as effective.  ..  Sac-a-lait, useless except to eat [laughs], as a bait. ..  Never could catch anything on em.

JD:      But those lil bluegills and punkinseeds and things, you’d catch things on them?

EJ:      Yeah, strung.  If they were small enough to string, uh, you’d string em on your hook and your lil blue cats would love it. 

JD:      Now, the goggle eyes, they got after the big fish? 

EJ:      That was your big fish bait, if you fish your lil goggle eyes, lil black ones about four inches long. ..  Goujons love em!  ..

JD:      That makes sense because there’s goggle eyes… usually you like to catch em around stumps when you’re fishing for em…goujons there too.  Interesting.

EJ:      Cause you see, years ago you didn’t have the separation from sandy areas and stumpy areas like you got now.  It was all stumpy areas all the way around the entire Basin, you didn’t have the sand in the middle.  And that’s where the feed and the fishes were hanging out [in the stumps].  ..  So uh, that’s what was worked.  Now, you see my Daddy, uh, was one of the first fishermen to come to Myette Pt. and start fishing. .. 

JD:      Oh, really?  From…from where?  Blue Point? ..  Come across the lake and…?

EJ:      Come across the lake.  And he moved the campboat here, fishing, by his lonesome…here.  And then moved back [to Blue Point], and then came back.  He made…my Daddy, before Leroy was born, when Momma was pregnant for Leroy, Daddy said he made big money at ten cents a pound ..  Those big blue cats in that current off of Myette Pt. were uh…the current [was] so strong they were fishing wire line.  ..  Swivel wire?  That 16 gauge galvanized wire Momma used to make swivels with?  ..  And that’s what they would fish as a main line.  Cotton line couldn’t hold. 

JD:      You kidding me?  They really did?

EJ:      All them big 4/0 limericks they used to use in those days.

JD:      4/0 limerick hooks?

EJ:      Umhm.  They would, uh…blue cats…such big fish, and the current was so strong, if you didn’t dip him when he came to the top all he had to do was curl his tail in the current, ., the current would just straighten the hook up.  They used to use those, uh, black yellow tags…

JD:      What’s that?

EJ:      It’s a black hook.  It was the sharpest hook on the market in those days, but it’s livelihood didn’t last very long.  They would rust off right away ..  But it was the most efficient, deadly hook they had in those days.

JD:      Black, yellow tags, they called em.  Big hooks too.  4/0, you said…

EJ:      4/0s and sixes. [6/0].  You know, big fish.

JD:      Now, when you talking about your Daddy coming across the lake to fish over here at Myette Pt., he came over and fished, uh, what we would call bentlines? Now, . with poles, mallet driven poles?   And they would drive, like how many?…how much line you think?

EJ:      I don’t know how much they would fish, but they would mostly maintain along the banks, you know….

JD:      Along the current?

EJ:      No, what I’m saying is, uh, three or four bentlines stretch you know, without big long stretches out in the current ..  But, uh, I remember Mr. Pete Gondolfo used to tell me, uh, before uh, they had nylon, and they had cotton nets that,uh…the fish used to come around Myettte Pt. in that bunch of cypress trees, but that bunch of cypress used to be two times bigger than now.

JD:      That’s those few cypresses that used to be out around the end of Myon’s Canal?

EJ:      There used to be a big, big clump there.   And, uh, they’d fish hoop nets there, and, uh, no way that they could raise em.  They’d lift em to the top of the water and cut em open to get the buffalo and the catfish out. ..  And, uh, the nets, after fishing three or four weeks, the fish would just tear em to pieces…they were cotton, and couldn’t last.  They say fish was unreal. 

JD:      Now those were the days you could see across the lake, I mean, all the way across?

EJ:      Yeah, no sandbars.  I can remember…far back as I can remember, uh, when we moved back to Myette Pt., and I can start remembering geography, . the sandbars were just even with Goat Island, the bottom end of Goat Island…which Goat Island was only half as big as it is now. 

JD:      The bottom end of Goat Island, you saying, so you…so at that point you could not see across the lake from Myette Pt. then?

EJ:      Not as I can remember.  This was, I guess, in ’52, something like that.

JD:      But if you got below Goat Island you still had the full lake width?

EJ:      You could look…you could look across and see what we call Thibodeaux Chute in them days.  It was just two lil hills, with a chute going through it.  And you could see the low bars in the lake.   You could still see over em, lil short willows growing up on em ..  And uh, from there to 1960 it just blossomed unreal kinda. 

JD:      But if you know if you have any memory of uh…Let me ask you this.  I’m trying to get a picture in my head of what the lake would have been like when the bars were still…?  In the ‘30s, in the…in the ‘40s, before the lake really started to silt up.  I wonder what was Grand Lake like in terms of…we know how wide it was…. What I’m wondering about is…was there a channel in the middle of it…that the…was there a main channel then, even…?

EJ:      They had a…they had a, a…

JD:      A deep spot?

EJ:      I guess you could call it a deep spot, that the boats used to use, but they were always running aground.  I remember as a kid, tugboats stuck for days and days and days…before they dug the channel, I think in uh, 1957 or ’58, in that neighborhood, they started redigging that channel where the made it deep as it is now ., and prior to that you had uh, you could sit there and listen to these big river boats just grindin away trying to get their tows unstuck ., right there at Goat Island, you know? ..  And uh, like what you’re talking about, uh, those years I guess you could sit right there at Myette Pt. [and] look straight across to Hog Island.  ..  Kind of northeast ..  To Hog Island, all the way across.  ..  And you could look to your left, and you could see, uh what they call uh, Chicken Island going up above Charenton.  Which is a good ways above Charenton, another eight miles north of Charenton.  And you had Shaw’s Island, Chicken Island…

JD:      All right, let me do this.  Let me show you why I’m asking.  Uh, I’m just trying to get clear in my head, what was it like when you could get all the way across?  Was it…was the lake a deep lake, like ten feet deep ., from Blue Point to Myette Pt.?

EJ:      Yes, right.  Yes.

JD:      It was?  . and was there a channel, a natural channel in the middle of it where the main water came down through the middle of the lake?

EJ:      Well, you see, what you gotta remember is there was no main water, prior to the Basin [levees]. The lake had one, one continuous depth . all the way around, pretty much. And the boats, those days, we didn’t have the big boats…tugboats and stuff you got now…so whatever they had, had a minute amount of barge traffic.  ‘Cause you see, I can remember uh, living on Bayou Boutte and having barge traffic…barge traffic going up Bayou Boutte.  ..  Instead of going up Six Mile Lake and finding shallow water, [they would] hit the deeper bayous.  They come up from Morgan City, hit  [?] Pass, American Pass, come up through Bayou Boutte and then shoot on up north.

JD:      So, there was shallow water in those lakes then, though?

EJ:      Well it, it…I say shallow, uh, six, seven, eight feet ..  Uh, barge traffic and all, you know, took…takes more water than that ..  I remember Daddy saying the lake straight across to Blue Point was…was pretty much one continuous depth, at one time.

JD:      And was that shallow enough to drive poles with a mallet?  To fish all the way across?

EJ:      Umhm.

JD:      You could? 

EJ:      You could have put lines all the way across.  You could have.

JD:      OK, that’s…that’s what I was wondering about.  Before we leave this, can you tell me what you know about the way they used to fish with soap?

EJ:      Soap?  Best soap to use was P&G. That’s a white soap that uh, when…when you put a hook through it, it was pliable enough that it didn’t split, or crumble or break up.  ..  P&G…and it was used in clear water, when the fish would go local.  Clear water days, that you bait with soap.  Also, some Octagon soaps would work. 

JD:      And how would you prepare it to fish with it? 

EJ:      You cut it in lil cubes, and uh, bait your lines with it.  It, it was a technique though that you had to sell your fish right away, . because once your fish bit on the soap and swallowed it, they wouldn’t do so well in the fish car [laughs].  I guess the gas would bubble em up, or whatever.   So uh, but I have used some soaps in my earlier days. 

JD:      You did use soap?  And you did catch fish on soap?

EJ:      Umhm.  I never had no real luck with it [laughs], course in those days I was just beginning…my fishing techniques, and my resolve then were not as good as they developed to be. 

JD:      Well, I want to…I want to ask you, when I come back and talk to you some more…I want to ask you about your early days at fishing.  Uh, you know, how you got started as a young boy…how Russell got started, when he was there, going with your daddy or whatever it was you did.  Talked to Joe about it this morning, it was really neat, kind of predictable, where…where the kid was, man, living to go out there with Daddy in that boat, and…and then living for those first few days when Daddy gave him three bents of line to use…just for his own ., and then living for that day when he could go and set a lil bit of line and run it all for himself?  I mean, was that the same sort of thing?  Does that kind of happen with you too? 

JD…over again because it might be that you can pick up some stuff here.  The reason I think this is…this book…have you ever seen this book before?

EJ:      Uhuh.

JD:      This was a master’s degree…(there is nothing on the front), it was written by Malcolm Comeaux.  Uh, it’s a master’s degree that he wrote called “Atchafalaya Swamp Life, Settlement and Folk Occupations”, and he’s got a LOT of good stuff in here.  Although it doesn’t cover what we’re talking about in the detail that we’re . that we’re talking about.  It was written in 1972 so it’s not terribly, terribly old.  But uh, one of the things that’s fascinating about it is he…he uses a base map in here that was based on a map used by this guy Abbot in 1863.  So it’s that Civil War age map we were talking about before ..

EJ:      What I’ve got is bigger detail..  But it’s hard to read ‘cause it’s been recopied so many times, it’s off the original. 

JD:      I sure would like to see that.

EJ:      I got it in the room here.

JD:      OK.  Here’s the thing I wanted to show you about how, how fascinating this was to me.  Talking to Myon and Agnes about where the old people were buried…they kept telling me, what Joe was talking about outside?  .  They kept telling me the Canal, they were buried at the Canal.  I said, “Well what canal?  What canal is it?”.  And Myon says, “Well, it really wasn’t a canal, there wasn’t any water there”.  And he said “I don’t know why it was called a canal, but that’s what it was”.  So I was left with that.  So, I went back to work and started lookin at some various maps of where he was talking about, and he was talking about a place that starts on Lake Verret and ends up in Napoleonville.  And somewhere along the end of that was a canal, and a restaurant and a dancehall.  No water.  I go back and I look and see, I said “The only thing that goes from Lake Verret to Napoleonville is what they now call Highway 401”.  And there is no canal there but it’s a highway, and by God, on the map halfway between Lake Verret and Napoleonville is a little settlement they call Attakapas Canal, in the middle of nowhere.  There’s no water there.  But they still call it a canal.  So I’m thinking at some point in time…., something was there that had water in it.  So I took that uh, I took that map and I took…and when I found this map I started looking at it.  If you look at this map, and what this of course indicates from hearing…from the thing [Comeaux book) is, these are the routes that people took to go from east, in these days, in 1863, to everything that was west, and of course the Basin was a natural barrier just like a mountain range . you had to cross.  You had to get in it through the passes, and so on, to get there ..  The only two ways to get in it was one here at Bayou Plaquemine, which of course was the seat of the town of Plaquemine, and I know that the reason Plaquemine was there was because of the bayou and the river traffic from the Mississippi to the Basin.  well, that’s one.  The other one was this little thing right here, with the town of Napoleonville right there.  Now, in 1863 they show this [canal] as water.  I went back and compared it to that highway 401, and it’s exactly the same, curve for curve. 

EJ:      Bayou followed it, eh?  Or it followed the bayou.

JD:      Bayou’s gone.   The roads still there, the lake [canal] is still goin, I mean is gone.  And it went from a waterway, which was one of the two primary ways you got into the Basin, in 1863, to no waterway at all…just a highway.  It’s amazing to me, to be able to make those kind of connections.  But anyway, this is where Agnes and Ida would go dancing.  Right at the tip of this…what in those days was still a dirt road, right there.  There was a restaurant and a dance hall, right on that tip. 

EJ:      That’s not where they got Shell Beach is today? 

JD:      Uh, there probably is shell beaches in there. 

EJ:      Cause, they got what they call Shell Beach.  It’s back here, you know where we went spend the night [when] we took the surveys? [fisherman’s co-op surveys].

JD:      Yeah.  It was back in there, sure was.  I never made that connection.  Could be.  But anyway, this is where Myon’s people were from, Fourmile Bayou.  Right here, and uh, and Agnes and Ida and them lived right here.  There was a uh, there was a canal there with what they call a skidder camp, right there? And they used to paddle a pirogue from here across to here, to uh, to go to these dances. ..  That’s where we want to go Thursday [trip is planned to go to the graves if they can be found].  Want to come around here and drive down this road and see if we can find the settlement [Attakapas Canal], and the old church and cemetery is about right there.  [referring to a state map now]

 EJ:      Cause you see, my family owns a lot of property…well, they did own a lot of property right back of Fourmile Bayou ..  Right in here, uh, I went there this past year uh, I [had] never been down Fourmile Bayou, where Daddy was from, so I went over there and that’s where T-Man Bailey has a store…has a store there.

 JD:      Still has a store there? ..  Myon’s, uh, kin people? .. 

 EJ:      Umhm, yeah, umhm.  And you go through Stephensville and you drive and you follow…your pavement ends…and you got about six, seven miles of shell road and you come out right on Fourmile Bayou.  He’s got a store and gas pump, and got a brick home right there.  He built him a brick home there hauling stuff in on barges. ..  Cement trucks and all, on barges, there.  .  And uh, yeah, he’s cleaning…trying to clean a lot of property don’t belong…still belongs to the family ..  So, uh, my cousin Byron [Daigle], you knew him ., Byron just got his settlement and uh, he fixing to hire a surveyor.  Survey all that property …

 JD:       Byron got his settlement?

 EJ:      Yeah.

 JD:      Did he do good?

 EJ:      Little over a million, I believe.  He had been pushing for 2.3 if it went to court.  And they settled for around half of that I believe.  ..  Well, his lawyer got 30%.  You know how that goes.  ..  But, uh, he still…well, he’s still in the air about, he said, the moneys…they coming from different factions.  The clutch people, the engine people, the turbo people…so he say the money are comin together and they’ve got to pay a mechanic something like $50,000 for his testimony.  What caused the whole thing is was the mechanics put a bearing in backwards in the clutch ..  Instead of the oil squirting onto the bearing, it broke a line and it was squirting it on the turbocharger which was red hot, causing the fire.

 JD:      Ummm.  That where the fire was?

 EJ:      So, when they proved that, and uh, he said he shouldn’t went ahead and took it but he’s tired fighting it all those years, so he…

 JD:      Well, ¾ of a million will probably help him…

 EJ:      Well, like he says, his lifestyle, what he used to live…live on whatever interest he get off of that and try invest a lil of it to bring him something back.

 JD:      Does he get some sort of continued medical treatment…?

 EJ:      I would think he did.  He didn’t go into details…he didn’t go into detail.  I told him, “What you got gone haunt you forever”.  You know?  .. 

 JD:      So anyway, uh, this was interesting to see this, right here, and to see that Plaquemine was formed here, Napoleonville was formed there.   There’s not a bit of a reason for Napoleonville to be there anymore, once the canal was gone.

 EJ:      No.  But see, where Fourmile Bayou comes into Magazille [Bayou], there’s another bayou called the Magazille here, comes around. And that’s where the part of the property my grandfather daddy had – Sead Daigre.

 JD:      Sead.  I have him on there [genealogy chart]. 

 EJ:      And, uh, he owned all kinds of property back here.  And he sold some it through time, he lost some of it for taxes, his wife was schoolteacher…she went back and recovered it, and the state’s got some of the property right now for taxes that needs to be recovered. And that’s what Byron wants to look into. ..  Because they had one old aunt livin, she had power of attorney over it all in Tampa, Florida.  And I don’t know how, but Uncle Ike and Huey been trying for years to get that power of attorney from that old lady.  She never would give it to em, but somehow Byron got it.   And he’s got it, I saw it.  Notarized in writing.  ..  Notarized in writing.  Matter of fact last year I paid the taxes on the property we got.  There’s 200 acres on there, that is cleared.  The title’s cleared, and uh, I paid $270 something dollars worth of taxes last year on it.   And I’ve got aunts…I’ve got aunts that’s worth 10 million dollars and she won’t…you know…at least try to keep it in the family, you know?  ..  But there’s another, uh, I don’t remember Byron said two…two…or 400 more acres that the state has taken for taxes that needs to be reclaimed.  ..  Byron’s attorney knows a lot about this and properties that T-Man [Bailey] has taken, cause his family uh, got land in here too, and T-Man was grabbin some of their land.  What he do is putting camps on and selling leases on em for years.  ..  For 30, 40 years he’s been collecting leases.  And he didn’t like it, what he did, he went over to the property records that uh, at the courthouse in St. Martinville.  He went look in the books and you could see where he cut the title fee page out.  It shows no transaction.  .. And that’s how he’s claiming the property he’s got ..  Always got one in the bunch.

 JD:      How is that kin to Myon?  T-Man? 

 EJ:      First cousin, I believe. When I went there last year…see, talk to T-Man…he kind of fish…give me the fish eye…figured…what I was after, you know, cause he…he hated Ike.  Cause Ike was…was…pretty much hair strung, you know, he would tell T-Man just like it was and T-Man didn’t like it.  They went on up there one day…to do some…upper canal there, that was the boundary and T-Man come there and [wanted to] run em out the canal.  He [Ike] say he “Had the papers, you want to see em?”.  [laughs] and T-Man didn’t like that at all.  But Byron is fixin to get a survey in there, and uh, survey some of that property.  ..

 JD:      So anyway, when you look at this right here [looking at the 1863 Abbot map], now don’t forget this is 1863, so uh, this does show however what the lake looked like before there was any filling. in on it.  And this is what you were talking about…about looking from uh, from Blue Point…

 EJ:      This is Cypress Island Pass…

 JD:      Cypress Island Pass, yeah, so this would be Myette Pt. right here…

 EJ:      This would be Belleview, this would be Myette Pt. 

 JD:      And that’s Charenton…

 EJ:      Charenton, Grand Avoille Cove, coming into Lake Fausse Pointe. See, coming up in here you…up here you looking at most probably Shaw’s Island or Chicken Island, one or the other right here. 

 JD:      This I believe is Hog Island right here….

 EJ:      Bayou Sorrel, no…Hog Island would be somewhere right in here ., somewhere in that area I believe because it’s just above Bayou Pigeon, and it’s below Bayou Sorrel ., it would be somewhere in that area...

 JD:      And this is what ended up as Catfish Bayou and Bayou Cowan….

 EJ:      That not what it is?  That’s not Lake Murphy?

 JD:      Well, don’t forget, this is 1863, and your main waterbodies below Sorrel are Catfish Bayou, Bayou Cowan and then you get to , uh, Little Pigeon, which is this, and then Big Pigeon is much smaller.  And of course this is before any of the canals. 

 EJ:      Yeah, this is where Williams [Canal] would be,  this is West …coming up Bayou Long…this would be West Fork…Main Fork…and East Fork right here.   And Blue Point Canal.

 JD:      So, this was…was this Blue Point right here? 

 EJ:      No.  ..  That would be right here. 

 JD:      Oh, that’s Blue Point?  Way down below?

 EJ:      See, you got two Blue Points.  This is a Blue Point , and this was a Blue Point.  You had two canals.  I know they had one here, and I guess it [the other one] must have come in later when they started pullin the timber out of there. 

 EJ:      Let me get this big map I got, see what it…see what it looks like. 

 JD:      Yeah, yeah, yeah!

 [unknown voice, EJ’s son?]:           Bayou Teche, I think?

 JD:      Yeah, Bayou Teche was the backside limit of it [the Basin] during high water.  Actually continued from the Mississippi to Bayou Teche, that’s right.  So you a shrimper, huh?

 [UV]:   Well, we try to make a living out of it. 

 JD:      One of them rich fellows! [laughter]

 [UV]:   We try to make a living out of it, put it that a way. 

 [EJ returns with another map.]

 EJ:      See, Major General N. P. Banks, Henry L. Abbot…well didn’t you say Abbot?

 JD:      That’s Abbot, that’s Abbot’s map, yeah…after Abbot 1863.

 EJ:      1863, February. 1863…. this is [more] detail, you see.  This covers all the way down to Mermentau, and uh….

 JD:      Let’s see, this is the Mississippi, right?

 EJ:      It’s hard to read ‘till you start…get you a start…here’s Grand Lake here

 JD:      Find Grand Lake, all right.  ..  Where’s uh, where’s Bayou Lafourche?  Here.  Bayou Lafourche, see, comes off the Mississippi right there.  There’s that road!  Look!  Look!  What’s it called?  What’s it called? 

 EJ:      Right there!  Attakapas Landing.

 [difficulty reading the name of the canal/road on the map that corresponds to Attakapas Canal – later La. Hwy. 401.]

 JD:      You know what though…now that I know this is here, we need to find out where the original is…take a look and see what the name of that thing is…

 EJ:      I can tell you where the original is February 8, 1862…

 [UV]    You mean they did this?   Come on!  They can’t do this in 1862, nowadays they can’t even control the floods. [laughter].

 EJ:      I rest my point.

 JD:      Look at the fragments…look at the fragments of the parchment, It’s all torn ..  I want to copy this.  See, that’s Fourmile Bayou, right there.  I want to get the information off of that. 

 EJ:      Don can’t see a damn thing far, but he’s got x-ray eyes close up.  Let’s see, Lake Verret right here.  I’ll tell you who can tell you, Carl Carline.  He’s the one got this for me.

 [more trying to read the name on the canal/road]

 JD:      Oh, Carl Carline got that for you?  Oh, well then that’s it.  I’ll get it… I’ll get it. I’ll get it from Carl.

 EJ:      You see, here’s Shaw’s Island and Chicken Island up here ., above Charenton here, this ought to be able to tell us uh…all filled in…you see this right here, right now there’s five foot of bank all around all of this, all you got is a river coming down the middle of it.  And you got one chute that comes right on up through here…And all the rest is…is…is banks. 

 JD:      This is the same map, right here.  This is the same map, except what they did was redraw it.  Because it says “After Abbot, 1863”, so they redrew this to make this, but look, here’s what it looks like now, right here.  All of this that you would see…here’s Grand Lake…this is what it was like…all this Grand Lake, all this is gone [silted in].

 EJ:      This is the levee.

 JD:      This is 1969 [another map], so it’s a hundred year difference.  ..  You were trying to see where Hog Island was. 

 EJ:      This is Chicot, one of these got to be Keelboat Pass and this got to be Hog Island right here.

 JD:      I’ll bet you that’s Hog Island right there.  ..  This is Flat Lake, it says.  .. 

 EJ:      See, here’s Attakapas something up here.

 JD:      Attakapas boundary.  Doesn’t that say boundary?  Country, country!

 [UV]    [confused, trying to follow a line on the map]

 JD:      There were territories that they drew in 1863, about where Indian Lands were, and where various things were…yeah…also various governing areas of Louisiana were divided into things like territories,., like the uh…Opelousas was called Attakapas Post, and that was a big civic area.

 EJ:      Yeah, but I mean, it [the map he has] goes way on up, all the northern part of the state. 

 JD:      I’m going to have to stop this tape now.  I’m gone have to go home and leave these guys.

 Fini