Atchafalaya Basin People: June 2026

DATE: January 2, 1997

INTERVIEWER: Jim Delahoussaye

LOCATIONS: Edward Couvillier’s house, 148 Oxford Loop, Oxford, St. Mary Parish, Louisiana.

COOPERATORS: Edward Couvillier; Lena Mae Couvillier

Continued from Chapter 48

JD: This is a continuation of a conversation with Edward and Lena Mae at their house on January 2, 1997. We talking about some models of some boats, especially a pushboat with oars that they have here at the house.

Edward: See Jim, that’s the way you do that, right here. You just…

Lena Mae: That was for a front, like…when you back up, you set down, you got a seat right here for backing up.

JD: They had a seat sometimes?

Edward: But I seen people that didn’t know nothin…they put the oars in the water, and when they try to come back, well it do that…they wouldn’t pick they oars up. You see, you gotta rotate that oar. A lot of people don’t know how to get it back there. [laughs]

Lena Mae: The way it…this kind of looks like grandpa’s skiff. [picture in Malcolm Comeaux’s book]

Edward: And you set this…you set these oars, you see…

JD: Who built this…who built this model?

Lena Mae: Justin [their son].

Edward: You see, you set them oars yonder where they pass one another, and you stand right behind em.

Lena Mae: A skiff, you’d put it about right here so you’d have more room in the front. This here should be about right here. And then you stand up and push.

Edward: And when you get where you’re goin, well, you pull your oars off. Lay em in your boat. You didn’t leave em hang there. What they used to use would be leather. Leather straps for that. To go around your oars, to hold your oars.

JD: Put em in your boat on the pins? Leave em on the pins?

Edward: No, you just…well, you could too, you just turn em around like that there. Lot of times you just reach and pull em off.

JD: It’s got a curve to it and everything. The rear end sticks out.

Edward: Our skiffs used to have a lil more…a lil more…they wasn’t as straight, maybe. See how straight that is?

JD: Came to a point more? That’s a nice lil boat [the model].

Edward: It’s a good lil model, you know. Although Justin never did see nothin like that.

Lena Mae: But I wish he’d a put this, back here. More like grandpa’s skiff.

Edward: See that one over there, Julius Mendoza give me that. I went to his house one day in Patterson, and uh, he makes them…

JD: Cypress pirogue, eh? [model]

Edward: Yeah, he give me that.

JD: That’s a pretty lil boat, pretty lil boat. Move on to somethin else. The next thing I have on here is a rake net. Now, that’s what I call a rake net, it’s what we always use on the edge of the levee to rake lil crawfish up with.

Edward: Same thing as a shrimpnet. Course I had a lil smaller one, you see, it wasn’t as big as my shrimpnet. ‘Cause your big shrimpnet [is] too heavy. Naturally, when go…like…to rake the crawfish, when you catchin maybe one crawfish, or two crawfish, and maybe some none. When you catch a thousand, two thousand crawfish, well you gotta have somethin light. I had two different nets for that, I had a big one for my shrimp bush, cause I always wanted a big net for a shrimp bush, when I dipped em. But you could use a shrimpnet for the same purpose [raking crawfish], but it’s just heavy. I just go to a lil lighter size so it wouldn’t be as heavy to…to pull. That’s all that was.

JD: Now, stobs. Um, I guess stobs were always the same thing as I always remember they were, but when you first started using stobs, what…?

Edward: Use ash, most people use ash.

JD: Why?

Edward: Well, they had more of em. They had more ash than they had willas in them days. Well…back up on Hog Island and Keelboat [Pass], we didn’t have no willa trees! All there was, was big ones. But you didn’t have the lil ones like you got now. You had ash, everywhere you went you had groves and groves of ash. Straight as an arrow.

JD: That made real good stobs?

Edward: Aw yeah. They was hard, you see? And then, as that sandbar grew, when you’d get a fresh bar, and the water’d go down and your lil willas would come out, I mean that’s where you get your stobs down here. But up on Keelboat, it was always ash.

JD: [to Lena Mae] And y’all were using willow by that time ‘cause y’all were down here with the sandbars, probly?

Lena Mae: No, there was a lot of ashes over here. Especially after Goat Island growed up. By that time, they had lil willas on Goat Island. When we first moved over here, that levee was bare. There was a levee, where Goat Island’s at? A big levee. And we moved here twice. We moved here one time, and you remember where Bootsie’s camp was? Across the channel, there, right around where, uh, Erik was buried? Well, across the channel, Bootsie had a camp back there. But before that, the first time we moved on this side the lake [from Blaise's Canal], where Bootsie’s camp was, way up the channel, the sandbars was just startin to come out. And they had lil willas, I guess about that high.

JD: Three feet, four feet high.

Lena Mae: Yeah, just about that high. And boy, you’d run through them things and they’s whip the heck out of you! I remember that.

JD: Run through em, you mean…?

Lena Mae: Yeah, when you’d run through em…

JD: In a boat?

Lena Mae: No, on the bank. In them days, there was no pants, you know? Just dresses. And uh, we moved here, and daddy fished on this side for a while. And we tied up along them bars. And then it got so he wasn’t doin nothin no more, so we went back across the lake.

JD: To Blue Point again?

Lena Mae: Back to the canal, yeah. And we stayed there, I guess, maybe a year, maybe a year and a half, somethin like that. And daddy decided, “Well, we gone move back, across the lake. If we move back over there we might be able to get them kids in school”.

JD: OH. So, he was talking about that.

Lena Mae: Yeah, well, then, the school board, them people was getting kind of strong on sending your kids to school, you see? And we had never been to school. So, that’s when we…the second time we moved, I guess I was about 13 1/2, 14 years old, when we move back over here. And we never went back.

Edward: What’s unreal, we had a school out there on Hog Island before they had a school at Myette Pt.

JD: I…I know. That’s uh…that’s really interesting because a lot of that seems to have had to do with the missionary Baptists.

Lena Mae: Yeah, it did. It really did.

JD: They were the ones who kind of…

Lena Mae: You see they hadn’t made it our way. They went up there where…with the Baptists.

JD: And there was communities up there. And there was more people, I guess, livin around uh, those areas…all the time.

Lena Mae: Yeah.

Edward: Well, Keelboat and Hog Island, they had a lot of people on em. But you see, the Catholic had been out there for years, but they never…they never started no schools.

JD: Interesting, why that would be, eh?

Edward: When Brother Marks came out there, well, immediately he saw the need to put kids in school.

Lena Mae: Yeah. And then after Brother Marks came, Father Gobeil started comin.

Edward: No, Father Gobeil was there before Marks I believe.

Lena Mae: Well, anyway, that’s where I got my first communion, with him.

JD: Gobeil?

Lena Mae: Gobeil. And then he used to come every so often, you know, and have mass at the house, and…

JD: That’s on that tape right there, Myon’s talking about that on that tape.

Lena Mae: Umhm.

Edward: You see, that’s why I’m against the Catholic religion.

Lena Mae: They never did nothin for us.

Edward: Them priests would come out, and one of em slept at the house one night, and they put him in the bed with me, and that night that sucker reached over there and was tryin to feel me. I come out that bed hoss!! I’ll never forget that either!

JD: That wasn’t Father Gobeil you mean?

Edward: No, that was another one. That was the end of the Catholic religion for me, hoss!

Lena Mae: Father Gobeil never did try nothin…

Edward: Well, he never sleep at the house. I wouldn’t doubt he’d a tried it if he’d a…

Lena Mae: Ah, maybe so.

JD: Myon talks about him on that tape. And he says, uh…he says Father Gobeil actually enjoyed makin his own boats. He built his own boats, he says. Myon calls him “an outdoor man”.

Edward: Did Myon tell you about that time Father Gobeil asked him to find him a woman?

JD: No, that’s on the tape somewhere but I haven’t found it yet [I don’t believe this was ever captured on tape]. Myon said that…said that disappointed him quite a bit. Well, you know, I don’t know what to say about that.

Edward: Well, I tell you what I got to say about it. Why they didn’t let them priests get married?

JD: Yeah, that would have stopped that, or at least it would have slowed it down.

Lena Mae: Well, it would’a stopped a lot of, uh, messin with them young boys!

Edward: Not only that, that nursing home they tore down in Baton Rouge that time? That was years ago? I don’t know if you heard about that? They discovered all them baby’s bodies underneath that…

JD: No, I don’t remember that. All babies that were born out of wedlock, or something like that?

Edward: The nuns.

Lena Mae: The priests and the nuns. They couldn’t get married.

Edward: Boy, that was a big scandal.

JD: How about shrimpnets? Uh, we already talked about dipnets, and you say that’s just a small shrimpnet. But, talk to me about the shrimp…the shrimp dipnet. The bush…the net you dip bushes with. I call that a shrimpnet.

Lena Mae: Yeah, that’s what we call it too.

JD: Uh, what about that? Had y’all always…always used something like that?

Edward: Always had that.

JD: And what were the handles made out of? What was the rim made out of?

Edward: Back in them days, it would be cypress. You get a piece of cypress, set there and whittle it round until you made your handle. That’s what you made em out of. But, uh, then I went…I used to use, uh, ash. Cut me an ash and scrape it [remove bark] and let it dry and use that.

JD: Let it dry how long, Edward?

Edward: Aw, it would take a couple months to get it dry.

JD: It wouldn’t crack?

Edward: Eh? Well, not cypress. A willow will. Cypress wouldn’t.

JD: Ash wouldn’t split and crack either?

Edward: Uhuh. No.

Lena Mae: But you’d put it to dry, and feel your handle, as it would dry it would lighten up.

Edward: And now I buy mine. I go and just buy them two inches…round. Inch and a half round?

JD: And that’s strong enough?

Edward: Aw yeah, that’s what I got on my net.

JD: That’s the inch and a half?

Edward: Two inches would be too big.

JD: And y’all knitted your own shrimpnet?

Lena Mae: Always did.

JD: Um, I got both EJ and Russell talking about how you made the steel and everything else for it, I guess it’s all the same, eh?

Edward: How you made what?

JD: How you made the steel, how you fixed the steel for the rim?

Edward: Yeah, you just take a…a size you want and bend it, heat it and bend it. You bend it…you bend it out, and on each end you put [a short bend] hook to drive it into the handle. And then wrapped it with line, and that was it.

JD: You dig a hole in the handle where those two pieces can go in?

Edward: Drill em, or whatever.

JD: And I guess you could even drive it a lil bit if you wanted to.

Lena Mae: Depends, on if it would split or not.

Edward: It could split a cypress, you take a dried ash or something, it wouldn’t split that easy, you know? That’s how we made that.

JD: Ok, we already talked about sinkers, which is something good. You realize that I have nobody talking about sinkers, on here? This whole time I talked to y’all last year, I didn’t have anybody talking about sinkers.

Edward: That’s something you had to have, was sinkers, if you didn’t you couldn’t fish without a sinker.

JD: Well, the worst…the poles, you saying, because of the poles you had to have even more.

Lena Mae: Right.

Edward: And now, I use sinkers, but not that much.

Lena Mae: You don’t use much. Russell don’t ever use sinkers.

JD: He doesn’t?

Lena Mae: Unless the water’s real high, you know?

JD: To get it to the bottom off the bank?

Lena Mae: Umhm. During high water he use a few sinkers to get his line down.

JD: Well, just to make sure I understand, when you put a half a crossing or a crossing, you still have to use sinkers on the crossing, yes?

Edward: Yeah, yeah, in the channel, yeah. Gotta have em in there. I usually put em about eight, 10, 12 hooks apart, in there. Even at that, there, you go put 100 hooks, you got a sinker ever 10, 12 hooks, in 80 feet of water, by the time you pick up that line, you pickin up eight or ten sinkers at a time, you know? Makes it heavy.

JD: Now, uh, snag lines. Did y’all [Edward] ever fish with snag lines in the bayous…?

Edward: The Old Man did, I didn’t.

Lena Mae: I didn’t either.

JD: You remember seeing him do that? You remember how it was? What it was? What they looked like?

Edward: Yeah. It was just a line, with every hook on it, about four inches apart.

JD: Stageons?

Edward: Yeah, your stageons was long.

JD: Two feet, two and half feet long?

Edward: At least two feet long.

JD: No swivels?

Edward: No. No swivels. And the purpose of that [snag lines] was just that people were too lazy to go bait a line. [laughs]. And you could go in them bayous and…and…and it wasn’t easy to put a snag line out! You figure your hooks that far apart, tryin to get that sucker [out] without your hooks tangling up?!

Lena Mae: I remember daddy had one, and that was the biggest mess!

Edward: And when you caught a fish, and you put it out, and one hook caught a fish, then you had 15, 20 hooks in that fish! That’s what it was, it was a snag line. And it didn’t make no difference how big it was, you bringing it [the fish] to the top.

Lena Mae: Snag anything come along, roots and logs, and…!

Edward: But they didn’t have too much of that, no. ‘Cause it was too much trouble…to much trouble.

Lena Mae: I remember Daddy owned one, I remember Daddy owned one. He didn’t want no more after he got rid of that one.

Edward: Now, you take a snag line, Jim, in a bayou that’s as wide as from here to the corner of that house over there [100 feet?] with a hook every four inches apart…how many hooks you need?

Lena Mae: I guess so!

JD: And then if they didn’t last long – the hooks? You had to catch a lot of fish with those things in order to make it worth while!

Lena Mae: That’s right. And that’s why there wasn’t many. Daddy just owned one because they was too expensive to build.

Edward: It was too much work, too, to get that thing out, man that was a lot of trouble.

JD: Do you remember what it was like to set one?

Edward: Aw yeah. Just like you set a regular line, but, it’s just like two porcupine making love, how they do that? ... real careful. That’s the way they put them lines out.

Lena Mae: You threw one hook out of the bucket, you had 20 tangled up!

Edward: It would take a long time to put one out.

JD: So, once you got it in the water, I guess you wasn’t too anxious to get up up again to…to put it in the tub, or something.

Lena Mae: Uhuh. That wasn’t fun at all!

Edward: And then when you put a sinker on there, you had to skip your hooks when you put a sinker on there. You couldn’t put a sinker between three or four inches of [the] hooks. It would mess up.

JD: Well, that’s what everybody keep saying, that they were so much trouble that people didn’t use em very much.

Edward: Right. I don’t know any other way to put em overboard, either, that they wouldn’t get tangled. That was the problem, puttin em overboard without tangling em up.

JD: How about stageons? Uh, just…I mean, stageons are an important part of what…what you do to set a line. But, have they always been the same? Stageons?

Lena Mae: Just about.

Edward: Naw. Well, back where we fished back there, they didn’t use swivels.

JD: Over there, in the bayous, you talking about, up north…Keelboat.

Edward: But, your stageons was long.

JD: Two-foot stageons.

Edward: You made em long, and when they twist, well, you’d have enough…

JD: Plenty of room for them to twist up [and still not let the fish twist off].

Edward: But in the lake, stageons that long [two feet with no swivels], in two minutes a fish can twist off.

Lena Mae: Ever since I can remember, Daddy used swivels.

Edward: Yeah, but they was down in the lake. What I’m talking about is different, where we was at. They was fishin bigger fish.

JD: Down here they were fishing bigger fish?

Edward: You big fish don’t twist like them lil fish do. They just don’t. You take a goujon, a goujon gonna…you hook a goujon, he gone try to go back to the bottom. That’s all he gone do. You catch them lil catfish, they get on that line and…

JD: Spin, spin, around and around.

Lena Mae: I remember, uh, must have been about eight years old. I wanted to go put some bushlines out, between the canal where we lived, and that other canal at Blue Point, that Blue Point canal? Where the Carpenters [who are they?] used to live in there. And I’d fish in between there. Paddle a pirogue.

JD: Along the lake edge?

Lena Mae: Along the lake. Oh, I looked and looked and looked [for] some old swivel to put on my lines, you know? Couldn’t find none. Say, “Shit, I’m gone do it like this”…so I just put me a hook on my bushline and I tied it in a tree, no stageon, or nothin. Just tied onto the line. And I was fishing out of that pirogue. And it was cold! They had ice! Barefooted, barefooted…no shoes to put on. Well, I wanted to go run my lines. I had baited with live perch. And I got in that pirogue, by myself now, and started catchin them goujons.

JD: Big goujons! [she measures with her hands] Three feet long.

Lena Mae: I mean goujons! Twenty, 15, 20, 30 pounds. Well, I got about halfway, I had to turn back, my pirogue was loaded down with fish. I done forgot how many head of fish I had, but anyhow, I come home, unloaded my fish. And I wanted to go back, Momma said “No”. I say “Momma, I got to go back and run my lines I didn’t finish runnin”. And they got all excited about the fish I had caught. Boy, I went back and I caught just that much on the rest of the line! I must’a had 250, 300 pounds of fish. But it was too much for the pirogue. So, then, they was all excited about my fish. So, the fishboat came, and I sold my fish. I had over $100 worth of fish. I mean, in them days, it took a lot of fish to…for $100. But boy I got there and went to dividing the money. Boy, I give Momma and them so much, I say “Momma, I gone keep this much, I want Pinkerman to bring me two dresses”. I wanted some dresses. So, I told Mr. Pinkerman, “Bring me two dresses”…and he did. He come back with my two lil old dress, and I wore the heck outta them dresses. And that’s what I bought with my money, and they didn’t costed maybe four or five dollars apiece, if they cost that much. The rest of it, give it to Momma and Daddy. Everything I’d make, I’d give it to Momma and Daddy.

Edward: Milton [Bailey] used to do that, give all his money to Myon. Every nickel he made.

Lena Mae: And after we moved over here [Myette Pt., Myon’s Canal], I put me a line out in the Cut [between Goat Island and Myette Pt.]. And I was fishin, I wasn’t catchin…

JD: A crossing?

Lena Mae: Yeah. So, one day I went and I fished me some perch. And I went and hooked on my line, and next day, boy, I went back…I caught four big fish. I mean…Oscar Lange was buyin fish then ...he bragged from here to Morgan City about them fish I had caught! Them big fish! He was telling “She’s a better fisherman than the mens over there!” [laughs] But he bragged about the fish I had caught, to everybody!

JD: So, stageons always had swivels down here, and they’re always short, and up there, up around Keelboat and so on, y’all didn’t use stageons…I mean swivels…you used long stageons?

Edward: Right. They had some people would fish without swivels [around the lake]. I don’t think fish twisted as much in them days.

Lena Mae: Some would fish without, the ones couldn’t afford to buy the wire to make em. If we didn’t buy it [the wire] we’d pick black moss and trade it.

JD: Pick black…you talking about picking moss that’s already dry.

Lena Mae: Yeah, that’s already black and dry.

JD: Now, where would you find that black moss?

Lena Mae: In the woods.

JD: I mean, it was dead moss, but I mean, wasn’t it mixed up with the live moss?

Lena Mae: Uhuh.

Edward: It was moss that was low to the ground, and when that high water would come, it would be underwater. When the water would go down…it would…

JD: So, the bottom piece of live moss would be dead moss hanging down?

Edward: In them days, Jim, they had moss from the top of the tree to the bottom of it. It wasn’t like it is now.

Lena Mae: It was by blankets hanging on the big limbs.

Edward: When you get water come up six or eight foot, well naturally you gone have a lot of moss on the bottom that’s gone be in the water. When that water falls, that’s black moss.

JD: So, it would be ready to sell, just like that?

Lena Mae: Ready to sell. Go pick it, and make a…a, how you call that? Bail it?

JD: Would they give you the same amount for that black moss as they would if you…

Lena Mae: A lil more than the green moss…

JD: No, but I mean if you picked green and dried…?

Edward: They wouldn’t buy it green.

Lena Mae: It had to be black.

JD: But it was the same price, if you processed the green or if you picked the black moss, it was the same price?

Lena Mae: Yeah.

Edward: The green, you had to put it in water and let it soak for a week or two, then put it on the bank and let it dry. Hang it up on a line…

Lena Mae: Milton wasn’t no bigger than Sage, there [about five years old], and Daddy would take us in the woods, and he’d pick moss too. And we’d pick moss to trade for…for beans.

JD: Your daddy talks about that on the tape too. During the Depression, umhm. That’s what I understand, because the [fish] boats wouldn’t extend credit anymore.

Lena Mae: Umhm. I remember we went and picked two bales, and we traded it off for food.

Edward: And now they got food stamps, and welfare, and, uh…

Lena Mae: But, we never did starve. We always had something to eat. Lot of time it was biscuits and beans, but we had it.

JD: You [Edward] used one of these things, I don’t know what to call it, but I call it an “unhooked”. But, uh, what do you call that thing? What do you call it?

Edward: All I call it…a pick. Russell still don’t use none, him.

JD: But you use one in your boat now, don’t you?

Edward: Oh yeah. A long time, I been usin that.

JD: By a “long time”, you talking about several years. You not talking about 30 years?

Edward: Oh no.

JD: Nobody used one back then, did they?

Lena Mae: Well, in fact, Kevin’s [their youngest son] the first one got us started on that.

Edward: You let em flop until the get tired, and you catch em with your hand. [this is if you handle catfish routinely by hand] Save a lot of time, specially if you catchin a lot of fish.

Lena Mae: Got a many a fin [puncture wound]. Like to know many times these fingers was stuck by fish fin.

JD: Aw, almost every day for a long time. Almost every day.

Lena Mae: Just about.

JD: Well, that takes care of all the tools, that we have down here [on the interview matrix]. Yall added one for me…a…a shad net. I didn’t have that down here.

Lena Mae: How about a frog net?

JD: Frog net? Frog net would be a good thing to talk about, except it’s not part of what… it’s not part of what y’all used to fish lines.

Edward: Well, they used to fish lines and hunt frogs both.

JD: Yeah. That was part of…uh, part of what you had to do to make a living.

Edward: The old man used to hunt frogs all the time.

JD: Hunt frogs, pick moss and fish. Those were the three big things y’all did.

Edward: He did more frog huntin than pickin moss or fishin.

Lena Mae: Your daddy…your daddy did.

Edward: He never did too much fishin. He fished, but he never was…never was a worker. He didn’t work that much. No, Momma did.

Lena Mae: He never was a fisherman, him, until he got old. His momma [Edward’s] did. His momma fished.

JD: Your mother fished, and your daddy didn’t do it that much?

Lena Mae: Uhuh. He didn’t do nothin, but hunt frogs.

JD: Did he make money at that?

Edward: Uhuh.

JD: No? [laughs]

Lena Mae: No, they wasn’t worth nothin then. And they didn’t really…you couldn’t hardly sell em…at that time.

Edward: Jim, I was 12 years old when I got my first pair of shoes. Hard to believe, but that’s the way it was.

JD: Well, your daddy didn’t…he didn’t, uh, he just didn’t have much energy? Didn’t have much, what would you call it ?

Lena Mae: He was lazy!

JD: Well, I didn’t want to say that!

Edward: Until he got old.

Lena Mae: After they moved across the levee [he started fishing]

Edward: …moved on the levee, out there, he would fish in the woods back there. And we used to try to keep him out the woods. We couldn’t keep him out the woods. He wanted to fish.

Lena Mae: That’s a long time after we got married, before they moved back of the levee.

Edward: He was old, he could hardly get around.

JD: And he…he…he wanted to work, then?

Lena Mae: Yeah, really, when he started drawing his…uh…made 65 and he started drawing old age pension. Then he started fishin.

JD: How did he get an old age pension [from what source]?

Edward: Governor Long started that. Back with Cousin Dud, he’s the one started all that. [Dudley J. Leblanc?].

JD: You talking about Social Security?

Edward: Old age pension.

JD: What’s that? I want to know what that is.

Edward: It’s just like Social Security; you get a check every month.

JD: But that’s gone now, right?

Lena Mae: Yeah, that’s gone.

Edward: Nooo. …still getting em! Agnes is still getting em.

JD: I don’t know what that is.

Edward: Myon was getting em.

JD: And that’s different from Social Security?

Lena Mae: Yeah.

Edward: It wasn’t much now!

Lena Mae: He was allowed to make a dollar a day.

JD: It was Louisiana? Louisiana, not Federal thing?

Edward: Louisiana.

Lena Mae: And he was allowed to make a dollar a day. So, when he started drawin his old age pension, he put him some lines out in the woods and you had to fuss to make him stay out the woods.

JD: Funny, huh? What made the difference you believe?

Lena Mae: But he never would work to bring his children up. If she didn’t work and fish, they didn’t eat.

JD: So, she’s the one.

Lena Mae: She’s the one.

JD: She fished, and made the money to raise the family…raised the family and…

Edward: Oh, he helped a little, you know?

Lena Mae: And when thing would get tight to where she couldn’t make it, well, Grandpa…my grandpa…momma’s daddy [Blaise Sauce] would go bring em some groceries if they had some.

Edward: That was before I was born.

Lena Mae: That was before you was born, I guess so.

Edward: Don’t remember that.

JD: Well, did your daddy…never mind…? I was…

Edward: What…? No, he didn’t drink, smoked a lot though.

JD: He smoked a lot? Most everybody did, smoke or chew.

Edward: That’s why I don’t smoke, on account of him.

JD: Um, what I’d like to talk about now, if, uh…you see, you see how much time this takes? I mean, we been talking probly off and on for a couple of hours now, and I know y’all…y’all not tired?

Edward: Uhuh.

JD: You sure?

Lena Mae: Uhuh. Just something to talk about. [laughs]

JD: Yeah? Well, the next thing is the whole group of baits. The first time we talked about…all that last list we talked about was the tools, that everybody uses. The nets, the hooks, the line…now I’d like to talk about baits, different from all of that. And the baits I have listed down here…what I’d like to talk about [for] each one is how you caught it, or got it, when you used it, what kind of fish it caught, and anything else you can tell me about each particular kind of bait…as we go down [the list], what season it was used and all of that. Let me list em for you first. The ones I have down here are shrimp, saltwater shad, black eel, mullet, white eel, crawfish, freshwater shad and soap. That’s a pretty good list.

Lena Mae: You got it.

Edward: Well, shrimp, is a year around bait.

JD: OK, so we gone talk about shrimp first. That’s what I have up here first.

Edward: That’s a year around bait. You can use that anytime.

JD: And always good. That was always good, all year around.

Edward: That was a good bait.

JD: Would you say it was your basic bait that you used?

[someone comes in, back and forth a little]

JD: Would you say it was a year around bait, for all year long?

Edward: Aw yeah.

JD: If you could get em?

Edward: Yeah.

JD: Cause now, y’all don’t tend to use shrimp in clear water.

Edward: Well, it’s still a year-around bait, you know? There’s certain times of year that some other kind of bait work better than shrimp. Still a good bait.

JD: All right, now what, now how did you catch shrimp? From the beginning to now?

Edward: Always…back in them old days…

Lena Mae: With sacks, shrimp bushes… shrimp traps, shrimp boxes in them days.

Edward: Yeah, we used to make our own boxes.

JD: And we gone talk about the bait getting techniques later. How about saltwater shad?

Edward: Back in them days, we didn’t get saltwater shad.

JD: You think they weren’t here, or you just didn’t need em?

Edward: Back in them…you didn’t have the water back up in here like it do now.

JD: So, the water itself was different than it was back then.

Lena Mae: Time, change everything.

Edward: You’d get shad, but it wasn’t saltwater shad.

JD: Uh, how about black eel? When would you use black eel?

Edward: Wintertime. Cut it in lil old chunks.

JD: And how would you catch em?

Edward: On lines.

JD: You would only use em when you happened to catch em on your lines?

Edward: Used to have a box, a special box to keep em in. You’d keep them things for years at a time.

JD: What kind of box was that?

Edward: Just like a lil fish car, closed it in all the way around. Leave it in the water.

JD: Must have had some real small spaces between the slats on it, huh? You’d keep em alive?

Edward: Umhm.

JD: And you used em a good bit for bait?

Edward: They used to use em a lot back then, and they saved em year around. Now, we don’t …

Lena Mae: Especially fish in clear water.

Edward: I don’t like to use em, too tough. Can’t get em on [the hook] and can’t get em off. [laughs]

[meet somebody here called David Jones, recorder goes off, and back on]

[Lena Mae has started a story]

Lena Mae: We went and put us a row of lines out. I went and run the motor for im [to] drive the poles. Went cut a boatload of poles and I don’t remember, about 12 bents we had there, eh? [to Edward] Tied it to the bank, on a cypress tree, and we started drivin our poles from that cypress tree goin out. From that cypress tree to the channel, we had that row of line. Them poles was straight! I’ll never forget, Dan [Lange] went looked out there and say “I want that row of line”, he say, “I want them poles”, say “that’s so pretty the way y’all got that row”. And he always bragged about that row of poles we had drove to put our lines on.

Edward: The reason why I could do that, [is] you put that anchor, and you could set your boat even with the next one [pole].

JD: Yeah, you could let enough line go from your anchor to set yourself up for the next one.

Edward: I seen a lot of people drive one here and it be 15 foot up that one, 15 down, and that’s the way their line do [the line of poles would be crooked]. And ours would be just straight as an arrow.

Lena Mae: Straight! And they was all about the same height out of the water. About like that.

JD: Three feet, four feet out of the water.

Edward: If they was too high, I cut em off. Make em all the same height.

JD: Was there any reason, when you put your bridle…when you tied your bridle on those poles, you probably tied it at the water line, right? Not at the top?

Edward: Right at the water line. Well, a lot of times the water would fall, or, you might tie it here and the water come up two foot, then you under the water two foot. If the water fall two foot, then you out of the…it’s out of the water two foot. We didn’t worry about it.

Lena Mae: The way we’d do that, Jim, he’d drive his poles like that with his mall, and we’d take our line and run it [out along the poles]. And they pole would stick out that far out the water [ three feet], well, we’d run our line and then we’d make a loop on each one of the poles [as they got to it]. At the top of the pole, now.

Edward: You don’t tie it. Just make a loop.

Lena Mae: Make a loop on it, to where it’ll hold. And then when you get through with that, then you come with your bridle. You unloop it and tie your bridle to it [the main line] and then you line is done. That’s with poles.

JD: Now, with stobs your bridle’s already on because that’s part of it.

Lena Mae: Yeah, and you got a buoy on it, you know, to hold it up and then you just run it up to your bridle.

Edward: I don’t like a line that’s crooked. I like…I always like my lines straight.

JD: It probly saves trouble in the long run too, because that way you can predict where it’s gonna be if it’s hung up, or something…

LC Well, not only that. If you puttin a line out on stobs, you tie you bridle and you got you row of jugs floatin, and you put you bridle even with your jugs [make the bridle the right length to even up the jugs]. Sometime one might be a lil longer, you know, or a lil shorter, you know…[but you fix it] and your line’s straight. With your jugs.

JD: The stobs had to make it a lot easier. The jigger pole had to make it a lot easier to do.

Lena Mae: Oh yeah. It’s easy; you don’t need as many sinkers…

JD: It’s got to be so much easier to drive those things [stobs]…

Lena Mae: It’s easier to drive the pole [she means stob].

Edward: Drive that stob, couple, two, three licks and it’s gone [embedded in the bottom].

Lena Mae: That way, two of em [people] in the boat, you don’t need a anchor. You just run your boat, hold it at that pole [place you want to drive the stob].

Edward: [but for a pole] You set there with a mall…[hit the pole] boom, boom, you might get a inch, two inches. Drive it down…

JD: And the pole had to be…the smaller it was at the bottom the better it was, I guess?

Lena Mae: Well, you had to sharpen your pole. You’d sharpen every one of em. Take it and sharpen it, pointed, pointed. The pointyer [more pointed] it was, the better it would drive.

Edward: Another thing you had to think about, you come up that lake and you see poles all over. I mean, now? The way them fast bass boats come up there?, you could catch a whole bunch of them suckers. Hit them poles? Go right through them boats. A lot of em [fishermen], over the years, they’d leave em like that [angled pointed naturally down current]. Them boats come along and hit that, go right in them boats.

JD: The first time I ever met Joe [Sauce] there was a line of poles like that up in the…up in the upper part of the lake, and I was fishing above em. But when I met Joe, he came up to me and asked me if I had lines tied on those poles, cause they were his poles. So, in those times, 1972, some people were still usin poles.

Lena Mae: Yeah, yeah, we were still usin poles at that time.

JD: I know. Stobs must have just been comin in then, or…or not everybody had started to use em.

Lena Mae: Well, they had started usin em for nets…they had started cutting jigger stobs for nets, and we decided we would try it for lines.

JD: OK, how about crossings? Let’s say that you don’t have any line and you gonna figure out…like y’all used to do for your bayous up there [around Keelboat Pass], how did you set a crossing?

Edward: The same way you do a…a bentline. You tie one end on the bank, run that sucker across the bayou, ties it on the other side. You put you slack. You figure how much water you got in the bayou, and you let your line go down, almost straight down.

JD: So, you figure out how much depth you got in the bayou, and you allow that much belly in the line to go across, so that…and into this you gotta figure current too, eh?

Edward: Well, yeah, but mostly up there you didn’t have nothin… [not much current].

JD: You would just figure your belly and…

Lena Mae: It’s not like it is now.

Edward: You see, Jim, in them days, when the water came up, back in them days, you didn’t fish the bayous. You fished the woods.

JD: Umhm. Different kind of lines?

Edward: Bushlines, or…oh, mostly bushlines.

Lena Mae: Mostly bushlines, very seldom tightlines.

Edward: And now, if you go in the woods, you fish tightlines.

JD: What’s the difference, because of the number of fish? Or the number of hooks you could put out?

Lena Mae: No…

Edward: Naw. People just didn’t do it that way. They put bustlines, that’s it.

Lena Mae: I still would rather fish bushlines.

Edward: Bushlines [are] easy. Tie to a bush, and you just paddle, and have your bait there, and don’t even stop [bait as you move].

Lena Mae: Everybody had they place to fish a bushline. Now, if we’d want to…say…go in the woods right now and put out a bushline, it would be dangerous.

Edward: It’s against the law, it’s against the law now.

Lena Mae: It’s against the law. You can’t put out a bushline on account of the traffic.

Edward: Course, people didn’t fish 2000 bushlines. You might’a fished 200, 250.

Lena Mae: That’s right.

JD: And that was your whole rig?

Edward: That was it. You got out there and put you 250 bushlines, you might could catch 300 pounds of fish, too. But now you got put 300 bushlines, you might catch 10 pounds of fish. That’s the difference. [there were more fish then]

JD: And you were baitin those bushlines with live perch most of the time, eh?

Lena Mae: Lot of the time, live perch, cut bait.

Edward: Whatever you could get.

JD: [if] Live perch, that would tell you about how many [perch] you had to have. I mean, it wouldn’t be easy to come up with 1000 live perch every day [either].

Edward: I seen, on a cypress limb, a big old cypress limb…not a big one, you know, small, but it would be long? You tie a bushline on there. You go back the next morning, look up there [at the limb above your head], and you see water drippin off of that limb. Well, you know there’s a fish on it. A goujon can take it, he go under the water with it. He take it, go plumb under the water with that limb. When it would come back up, the water would drip off it. You get there in that pirogue and you see that sucker up there…! [excited] In pirogue too, hoss.

Lena Mae: You tie it on that cypress limb, boy, that limb do that! [bends way down if a big fish is on it]

JD: Ohhh, dip him with a net?

Edward: I remember one time I put a line, I was on a ridge, you know? I got there next mornin. Didn’t have but about that much water [two feet], and that sucker was stiff! I mean that sucker [was] straight down! Boy, I looked at that, and pulled up there, I mean, I pulled that sucker up real slow…had about a seven-foot alligator. [laughs]. Boy, he just took off, he ain’t never stopped! He just pulled off. I wasn’t that very big either, just a kid. I was already scared of em. And I was going through the woods one day we was cutting timber. I used to get on the logs…floating…I’d float em out; I’d ride em with a pole. I had a pole, I’d push em out. And a daggone bushline on a limb, hooked me in the ear. And I was goin out with that log [big log wouldn’t stop and was taking him with it, with the hook caught in his ear] Overboard I went, hoss! But it pulled…it pulled on through.

JD: That’s why it’s dangerous now.

Lena Mae: That’s what I say. In them days you almost had your spot where you’d fish. People knew that.

JD: Well, how did you…how did you, I know it’s simple, but how did you set a bushline? Just for the record.

Edward: Same thing. You put the top of your stageon right at the water [top]. In them days they had stageons about like that [two feet], so you could [do that].

JD: No swivels. Now why did you have different…you had main line comin down from a limb to the water, usually [number] 36, or 42?

Edward: Yeah, back in them days, mostly it was [number] 30. Yeah. You carried your ball of line. When you see that limb you wanted, you reach up there and tie it, come down even with the water, cut it. Tie your hook.

JD: Tie your hook? Your stageon already had your hook on it?

Edward: Aw yeah. Ready to go.

JD: Rig em up like that? Now, was the stageon also number 15? Or 18?

Edward: It was mostly 15, back in them days. Yeah.

JD: And that’s all you did? No swivel or anything on those bushlines?

Edward: You couldn’t say “I’m gone go out and cut my bushlines down, and I’m gone move em”. Because when you set that bushline out, you might have a five foot string or you might have a eight foot. You’d have to add, you know? Well, people didn’t move that stuff. [it wasn’t worth it to try to reuse the line, it was all in short pieces]

JD: So, they just stayed there. Well, the hook rusted out, probly, after a short time? And it wouldn’t be dangerous.

Lena Mae: Rust out after a few weeks.

Edward: Lot of time you go back the next year, water come up, and you just change the hooks. Line would still be there.

JD: How about tightlines? You say y’all didn’t use tightlines much. Yall didn’t use tightlines when y’all were growing up?

Edward: Uhuh.

Lena Mae: I used some, in them pullboat roads.

Edward: Down here in them sandbars and all, used to fish tightlines.

Lena Mae: I used to fish [tightlines] out of a pirogue. And I remember I went and put out tightlines one day in, one of them pullboat roads. I put out two, three lines. Next day I went back there to run it, they had a conga [water moccasin] bout this big [about three inches thick] floatin right in the middle of my road. And I couldn’t…it was so crowded, I couldn’t go around and pass through the trees. And I didn’t go run that line. So, I come back home, the next day I went and that snake was [still there]…three days in a row I went and that snake was there. So, grandpa had a lil .22 rifle, single shot. I told Momma, I say “I’m gone bring the rifle”. Momma say “No, you gone get hurt with that”. I was young, I was real, real young. “You gone get hurt back there with that”. I say “Momma if Grandpa want me to have it, I’m gonna go and I’m gonna try to kill that snake”. And I went, but I never could kill the snake. [laughs] but a couple of days later I went back and the snake was gone. I don’t know where it went, but the snake was gone. Finally got to go see about my lines. [laughs]

JD: Talking about snakes, did y’all have much trouble with snakes and snakebite back then in the woods?

Lena Mae: Uhuh. No.

Edward: The only one I knew got bit was Steve…Steve Persilver.

Lena Mae: Yeah, he used to float them timbers.

Edward: No, he was…I think he was frog huntin or something, and he was goin through the lilies, parting lilies with his hands and one bit him on the finger.

JD: Yeah. Nothin big came of that?

Edward: Well, it got pretty bad, but uh…

[talking about a drink of cold water]

Edward: I had one chase me one time.

JD: You did?

Lena Mae: Aw, I had one chase me, a blue runner.

Edward: The Old Man had shot a grosbec. And it fell back of the house, and they had about 15 inches of water. I run back there to get him, and that snake was by that grosbec. And when he seen me comin, podnuh, he took off behind me. And I hauled tail!

JD: You took off, eh?

Edward: Did I take off! [laughs]

JD: Uh, you already told me a lil bit about droplines, how you fix those up. And you say that a lot of that…that technique…was used to get in front of drifts…drift piles against the bank? And you would go ahead of the drift and drop it so that the line would, uh, drift back underneath the drift. And it didn’t get hung up underneath there?

Edward: Well, it would get hung up sometimes, but you could get it up.

Lena Mae: The kind of hook we’d use was easy to break.

JD: Oh, is that right?

Edward: Well, they had more…more…back in them days…you don’t see drift piles along the bank no more like you used to. Used to be, one log would hang up, another would hang up, and another one. First thing, you had a drift pile from here to that house [100 feet]. You don’t see that no more.

JD: Let’s talk a little bit if y’all can about bugging.

Continued on Chapter 50

Atchafalaya Basin People: Chapter 49