Atchafalaya Basin People: 2026-04-26

Atchafalaya Basin People: Chapter 22

DATE: December 26, 1995

INTERVIEWER: Jim Delahoussaye

LOCATION: Residence of Joe Sauce, Jr., and his wife Florence Anslem Sauce, 208 Easy Street, Franklin, Louisiana, 70538.

COOPERATORS: Joseph Sauce, Jr., Florence Sauce

[still talking to Joe Sauce at his house in Franklin, conversation has shifted to talking about tools used in fishing]

Joe: Anchors, we were talking about anchors, and, uh, ., we used iron anchors and that type thing a lil later, but first of all, the way that lines were anchored at the beginning, in my memory of fishing…was poles, willow poles. . Driven into the ground, ., to anchor the line down. ., you want to talk about anchors…include poles. ., and uh, malls were used. ., you might add that to this list.

JD: Yeah, I see that, I don’t have that on the list [of tools to talk about in the interviews].

Joe: And that…and the old malls…course now and then they’d get ahold of a iron piston with a hole already in it, you know, and they’d drive a wooden handle into it. .. But the old people, I understand, and daddy…they’d go cut down an oak tree or an oak limb about six to eight inches in diameter . and get a short stump of it, you know, about 12 to 18 inches long ., whatever they wanted it, and they’d auger a inch and a half, two-inch hole in it . and drive a wooden handle into it, and they drove these poles down in the mud in a straight line.

JD: I had no idea. So that must have been…the poles must have been pretty heavy poles too, to drive…

Joe: I can recall helping Daddy right around the lower end of Myette Pt. at the Cut. What we call the Cut, you know?

JD: Below Goat Island you talking about?

Joe: Goat Island, driving poles when I was a boy. And helping Daddy hold against the current with an inboard, air-cooled, and sometimes it was a lil too fast for the current, sometimes a little too slow, and you’d speed up, slow down, and I was trying to help him to hold up against the current to drive the pole and that was a hard task ., and he would be up following the pole along the side of the boat and swinging [the mall]. And one time he missed the pole…hit me on top the head.

JD: Oh no! Really?

Joe: [He] Say “you want to go home?”. [I] Say “Yeah”. [laughs] You know, they would be cussin and a fussin trying to get the pole in the ground and the current was aggravating. And so, you know that was…uh, they had a lot of flow through the Basin [then]…during the high waters….

JD: Well, the poles, Joe, if you could drive a pole with a mall, uh, the poles I’m used to seeing…they’re slim, they go out to a point. But these poles must have been cut off pretty thick on the end?

Joe: they were cut, to get into 12, 14 foot of water you talking about poles that probably were four inches, three to four inches in diameter at the butt. .. And they were pretty straight, maybe they were two inches in diameter toward the top

JD: All right. So, you had a two-inch target to hit with that big mall, then?

Joe: Right. You had about a two-inch target and you had to get a…deeper the water, you know, ., the stouter, stiffer the pole you needed. .. And uh, you try to get the poles…you know…and uh, in the old clay bottom, was the hardest bottom to drive in, that’s really why originally you needed those heavy malls to drive…it [the Basin] had a lot of clay bottoms. Later it changed to sand and [in] some sands you could shove the pole down into it pretty good, you know, and drive and get down to good stuff ., and other sands, you know, would spit the pole right back up, ., as well as stob poles [would spit these back up too]... But poles were aggravating, because, uh, course in low water times, and, and, probably it evolved from the time when there was no current in the Basin and you needed your lines off the bottom, ., and so we had some of that sense in low water times when had… the lines had to be halfway off the bottom, or a foot off the bottom, two foot. You could adjust your bridles accordingly, you know, and your line sinkers, to keep it adjusted like you need it, wherever the fish were up and down.

JD: So those lines would be hanging almost straight down from the pole.

Joe: Yeah.

JD: You’d be tying your bridle on top of the pole…

Joe: And no current ., no current issues. But you had to…as it developed in high waters in the spring of the year, water’s coming thru the Basin now more than it did before ., because of Old River Structure, and Mississippi water comin through the Atchafalaya Basin versus…it’s like Red River water that came was natural throughout the Basin, the way I understand, you know which would be less current. .. Anyway, during low water times…probably prior to high water times in the Basin and it narrowing, and the current speeded up and that sort of thing, and so what I would say from the poles you would need longer and longer bridles ., in order, because your lines needed to be on the bottom ., and you’d use heavy sinkers, pieces of iron you could find, old railroad spikes, whatever, old chain links from the sugar mills, and all those kind of things. So, you might want to put iron anchors…that might be what you meant by anchors.

JD: Actually, what I meant by anchors here was anchors for crosslines in the main channel. Where you drop a 40 or 50 pound…hunk of steel..

Joe: Yeah, but you can see…....anyway, you could see the reasoning behind it, ., that technique. .. How it developed, and uh, the more the current the longer the sinker line…you might have 30 foot of bridle line . in order to get your line down at the bottom. . The water came high and it was, uh, it became, uh, more of a hardship in order to run the lines .. And it became a problem keeping the poles down in the mud cause they would spring out cause of the pressure on the top of the pole ., you’d reach down as far as you can and tie the line [to the ] pole, you know. And then later another thing that developed was tyin…

JD: Let me make sure of what you just said, you’d reach down as far as you could and tie the bridle as low as possible…. on the pole.

Joe: Yeah, when you knew the rivers would be comin up, ., and from that idea…which developed maybe a lil later, was tying the line on the bottom of the pole, then driving the pole ., just tie the loose part at the top and come back and…that way your lines would stay on the bottom .. And say, then from that idea, why do all of that trouble? Use what the net fishermen use: a jiggerpole and stob your pole down with jugs and come back and pick up your jugs and tie it to your line.

JD: Now, do you know that that’s the way it happened? Or do you think that’s just the logical way it could have happened?

Joe: I think it logically took place in that fashion. .. As the fishermen adapted to the Basin, as it filled in ., the change of the Basin. But I think first of all it started out with poles for bentlines, you know, along the edge of the woods, maybe two or three bents out ., you know, and uh, just elevated the line, you know, so it would be under the water, ., and at the right depth to catch the fish, and it was adjusted, and I think that’s how it evolved into the type of fishin that’s done in the current in the Atchafalaya Basin that we [had] later.

JD: Now how do you think, do you think it’s possible that these poles were driven on the edge of the bank and could have even evolved from further back that they were tightlines to start with?

Joe: Uh, that’s another thing, because, uh, they knew how to fish tightlines. As the Basin filled in you’d go in the holes, the coves and stuff, and fish the tightlines. I can recall doin that with Daddy. .. Back in Raymond’s Cove, probly during low water still had two foot of, a foot, of water or so back in Raymond’s Cove, and fishin tightlines back there. Pullin ourselves with paddles and fishin the tightlines and catchin . big eelcats like that.

JD: Big eelcats, hunh?

Joe: Bullhead eelcats. .. Great big old things. And just tremendous, six, seven, eight pound eelcats. .. Lot of four or five pounders.

JD: So I guess what I’m sayin is…you set those with poles?

Joe: Yeah, they’d set em with poles and just tie em directly to the pole without bridles.

JD: So you see what I’m sayin, the evolution from the pole to the bridle to the…

Joe: Yeah, they could of…lot of times when the, the fish [were] on top of the water I’m sure that’s the reason they did it way back, you know, ., along the edge of the woods ., and uh, I seen Daddy already, just fish tightlines on the edge of the woods, so I learned to do that too, ., you know, and even in low water times you catch fish. .. And so I’m sure they had learned that from way back, ., somewhere along the line. . And it seems like the fish in any area you go always…usually against the bank more. But as the Atchafalaya Basin developed the way it is now into lil channels…lil chutes and that sort of thing, all that adapted . into the bottom fishing, more bottom fishing because of the current. So, in low water times, you still wanted to maintain that idea to be able to elevate your lines, . like you needed to, and uh, fish…even in high water times fishing tightlines along the lil willow trees, because you fish along the edge of the woods in the lil willow trees, and that sort of thing .. Boats. I don’t know if there’s any more we could say about the lines.

JD: Well, we can come back to lines, if we think about it. We can come back to it.

Joe: Anyway, what I was telling you earlier about the Lockwood Ash pullin the campboats and that sort of thing . [my] recollection . and of course most of the guys would build their boats, or get a cousin, or somebody knew how to build boats to build their boats. And they would build em out of cypress lumber. and even, even the bottom was cypress lumber. . Cypress planks. And uh, they built boats of tremendous size, narrow by the way I understand, and . long, 20 foot long and maybe three foot wide . at the widest point.

JD: Yeah, that seemed to go thru the water better when you, when you have those Lockwoods and the boat had to stay below water [not planed out] and push thru. .. Seems like the big change took place when you got these outboards so that the boat was expected to get up on the top. .. That’s where it became better if it was wider, seems like.

Joe: Right, easy to plane. .. That’s the type of boats they used, they even fished out of em. Of course, we considered, alongside of this line fishin, paralleled the net fishin, . which really needs to be mentioned.

JD: Well, as long as I stick with this…

Joe: They did both.

JD: They did both, right. . But the reason I’m not as concerned about net fishin is that seemed likely to stay…keep goin.

Joe: Yeah, well they had to, uh, the boats the way they were built had…probly had a lot to do not only with the line fishin but with the net fishing also, ., in the way the wells were separated, ., and that sort of thing. You know, [one well] to dump the fish ., dump the net and another well to throw the fish in. Maybe two wells to throw the fish in. You would dump your net in the front ., and you culled different types of fish. Course these boats were the Cajun bateau-type flat with the . rise in the bow…rise in the bow, and uh later developed…went from the Lockwood-Ash to uh, to uh, air-cooled.

JD: The Lockwood…

Joe: The Lockwoods were water cooled? .. They used what was called a Arkansas pump. It was just a elbow underneath the bottom of that the propeller shoved water thru. It went to the engine, piped to the engine, that cooled the engine. . There was no cooling in reverse, you didn’t stay in reverse too long. The Lockwood-Ash would reverse by the timing. You would slow it to a point where you’d move your timin and the motor would reverse, turn backwards. .. That’s how you achieved reverse.

JD: There wasn’t a gear?

Joe: Wasn’t a gear. But they had a outboard, a Mercury outboard years ago that was made like that…that reversed itself.

JD: With the timing?

Joe: Yeah, it reversed itself and that’s how they had reverse. ., before they came out with gears.

JD: That’s amazing, let me make sure I got this down now. I had never heard it called a Lockwood Ash. That’s what the name of the engine was? Lockwood…Ash?

Joe: When you talk to Daddy, ask him because I’m sure that …Lockwood-Ash. .. And they had different types [of engines]: Calmers, they call? ., and maybe there was one, I think, called a Detroit, or something, but they had different brands and maybe Lockwood-Ash was the brand name ., I don’t know. One cylinder, two cylinder, six cylinder, had a six horsepower and a eight horsepower – was a two, two and a half Lockwood-Ash, a six and a eight, the way I understand, horsepower. .. But that was the horsepowers. .. And all those engines of that type were around that, and they had a…uh, worked off [of] a dry coil, lil wood box with wire and tar, I guess it was a type of coil, ., with uh, just uh, you know. And it would be wired…that would be wired to the plugs. .. And the timer would, would time your speed. The timer was a lever and obviously the carburetor speeded up automatically…it was spring loaded, if I could remember a lil bit about it, [?] and it would suck more gas, as much gas that was needed, obviously. . And uh, some of the old people tell you more about it. .. It was an amazing engine. And, and, and my connection was because they were gone, by my time, . but as a boy and wanting a boat, I put and old set together at 12-14 years old. .. And that was my first boat.

JD: You put a set…what do you mean?

Joe: I had an old boat…Daddy had an old boat in the canal, one of those old 20-foot, 18, 20 foot bateaus. Cypress boards. I pulled it along the edge of the levee, as the water was comin up, and made a little horse for it and, and uh, I had the old Lockwood-Ash and I put it together and, uh….

JD: What do you mean…you had the old Lockwood-Ash?

Joe: He had the old Lockwood-Ash, it was just goin to waste, and so I cut out foundations…he had a air-cooled in that old 20…the foundations were different. So I put in more foundation timbers, and cut it out to fit the line of the shaft and all of this, and, and uh, Daddy’s brother had an old coil, it was still good, these coils were….

JD: Daddy’s brother’s name was what?

Joe: Bob Sauce, Robert, ., and he gave me a coil, and we got that thing a-runnin. And that was my first boat. It lasted a couple years, ., till I got an air-cooled, and that’s when the air-cooleds…

JD: Why did they go from the Lockwood to the air-cooleds?

Joe: Well, the air-cooleds were the new thing, you know? Modern thing. .. Then came the outboards. See, that was the next step from the Lockwood-Ashs and the long, skinny boats, and they got the air-cooleds and they built the boats a lil wider, . a lil different because they were goin to more line fishin than net fishin. You see, the old longer boats, they were designed for the campboats, and….

JD: They were really a workhorse, pulled the campboats, run nets out of em…

Joe: Run nets out of em, fish lines…they were a lil heavy I imagine for lines.

JD: That’s what I kept thinking.

Joe: I pulled…I had one, you know, and I did a lil fishin out of it as a young boy…. and so I did it out of one, and, and uh,

JD: Don’t stop, keep going with that if you can. And you say that, uh, that uh, I’m really curious about this…

Joe: And uh, you could see the adaptation of the boats and how they changed in the Basin, you know, alongside the fishin. And so, uh, they went to air-cooled and they still…Daddy, I remember raised…I never fished nets but Daddy did and I . raised nets with him and helped him, and uh, with the air-cooleds as well. But they were made similar, just maybe a lil wider, you know, ., not as long because they wanted the boat to go a lil faster so they could travel a lil further because they became more stationary, meanwhile, you know, because they didn’t travel the Basin. They didn’t need anything [to] go fast.

JD: Well, they were on the land by this time.

Joe: Yeah, they were on the land by this time. .. And so, uh, the air-cooled moved faster, they probably moved ten – twelve miles an hour, to the point where they wouldn’t quite get on a step…some of em may have. .. Because air-cooled, uh, when they first came out with em, you know, were about seven horsepower, five horsepower, that sort of thing, .. Daddy had a Wisconsin, was the brand of the air-cooled. And that’s what we mostly used. They were a good brand. I seen, uh, some of the other people had Briggs and Stratton I found out later, when I met my wife from Calumet. They used Briggs and Stratton a lot. .. Those were air-cooled also. But, uh, the Wisconsin was the type Daddy used, and uh, so I ended up, uh, my next boat was a, a air-cooled also. And we build the boat a little wider than the one he had, and we thought maybe it would move a lil faster, you know? .. And uh, my major fishing experience probably out of that boat, as it developed, and I began to fish a lil bit more.

JD: The air-cooled was a lil bit faster? .. And was it any more reliable than Lockwood was?

Joe: Uh. The Lockwoods were real reliable, I mean, they were a slow turning engine. They were low horsepower, but uh, they had good horsepower because they would turn a bigger prop than the air-cooled would. .. Air-cooled would just turn em up faster. .. But they were real reliable engines; they’d hardly ever wear out. If they did, you take the tongue of your shoe, if the bearing would wear out, and you cut it….

JD: The bearings…?

Joe: Yeah, if you had some leather…the tongue of your shoe was leather, you just cut that off and take your engine down and throw you a piece of leather in it. It would get you back home, you know?

JD: No kidding! .

Joe: That’s right. I did that with the old Lockwood Ash when the bearing had worn out. But they poured their own bearings, you know, Babbit bearings. They’d make a mold and pour bearings…

JD: I can’t picture that in my head. I don’t know what that would look like. How could you replace a bearing with a piece of leather? What, what would, uh…?

Joe: You just cut it out and fit it in inside the bearings cup holder. You just put it, bolt it back, and that leather is real smooth when oiled up. And it would hold up for quite a while. .. And, the bearing had worn out in that old Lockwood Ash that I had and that’s what I did. That’s some tough leather, put in there and it kept going a long time…til I quit usin it, on a piece of leather. .. It was slow turning, you know, . not many rpms. .. And so they would last a long time. But they all repaired em themselves that way. And that’s the main thing that would wear out, the bearings in em. I mean, uh, the pistons and rings hardly ever wore out…I’m sure it did [but hardly ever]. And the fishermen maintained em and they would keep em goin as long as they could. The air-cooled replaced it, and, uh, …

JD: Did the boats get somewhat shorter, you say, and maybe a little wider with the air-cooled?

Joe: Yeah, shorter and wider….maybe four foot bottoms, we went to mostly, and uh, sixteen foot long. .. Fourteen foot long, versus twenty and three foot wide. .. And so that changed the mobility, got around a lil faster, might move 12 miles an hour versus five or six or eight or something like that.

JD: Yeah, well that was a big jump – 30%. Do you have any memories of, uh, of uh, either the push skiffs, the push oared skiffs…?

Joe: Not too much, I was just…seen a lil bit, some of the old timers pushin, and uh, never used it much, other than uh… I remember Aunt Ida kept…Jesse [husband] kept an oared skiff, even after they had outboards on em. .. Yeah, they keep the oars. It was a tradition, in case you break down. .. You know, to come back in? .. That’s my memory of oars, pretty much. .. But I was told, you know, that’s the way people got around before the Lockwoods…even in the time of the Lockwoods a lot of em still held to the oars. The way I understand, my grandpa Daigle, Homer Daigle, used an oar boat a lot the way I understand. They oared a lot. .. But my memory is what I was told and what I seen when we would go visit them in Morgan City, so my memory [would] be a lot less in that tradition than over at Myette Pt. and the Sauce family.

JD: OK, see. How about pirogues?

Joe: Uh, just, uh, they were always around. .. In the woods, pirogues in the woods, fishing tightlines…I recall some of that experience, a lil bit, you know. Daddy, when I was a young boy, goin in the woods and fishing lines usin a pirogue, and that sort of thing, and they was…everybody had a pirogue draggin around the bayous. I used to play in the canal back of the house, that drainage canal back of the house, that drainage canal from Southcoast, you know? Which the levee was dug. Right back of where Edward and Uncle Myon used to live ., I can remember me and Justin playin around in a pirogue in the bayou…still didn’t know how to swim too much. .. And goin in that lil canal and it was cold, one time, we turned over in the middle of the canal [laughs] and I swum to the edge, made it to the edge…, and my neck…well, to reach bottom my neck was still stickin up. One of the guys, well it was Milton…Milton Bailey, he’s deceased now, Myon’s son, reached out and grabbed me, pulled me out. .. [laughs]

JD: You were always getting in the water, weren’t you!? [laughs]

Joe: And another experience, course I had build a lil pirogue, uh, later. And when I…

JD: …well, what happened to Justin? Everything was ok…?

Joe: No, he was out of the boat, he had stayed on the bank…we would take turns going up the bayou and back. . And he was on the bank and he was hollerin and I was in the water, so…thank the Lord for that. I also had built a lil pirogue, and maybe, my first…remember when I told you Daddy would put out the lines for me when I was a lil boy? . And I wanted to get some lines and fish on my own. . So I built this lil pirogue and I got some old tangled up line, untangled em and fixed the hooks on em, I recall that. And I begged Daddy [to] let me go across the levee in those holes, where they dug the levee they left those holes, you know?

JD: Big bar pits.

Joe: Those bar pits and stuff. . on the Atchafalaya Basin side. And the water was low, say “Let me go put out some line”, and finally they let me go. And, and I was about 15, or something like that. Chorological it might be mixed up somewhat in my mind, but anyway, it might be earlier, 12 or something like that. And uh, that was really, uh, on my own my first fishing experience, and then that pirogue, and I put out those tightlines and I’d catch me 15, 20 pounds of eel cats in those willows. That was my first money I made for myself, you know, on my own .. And then it evolved into that boat I was telling you about. .. The first Lockwood….

JD: You talking about holes on the Basin side of the levee where they built to put the levee…?

Joe: Yeah, they had a project some years later where they came in and they heightened the levees, and they had dug these holes.

JD: Where are the holes now, Joe?

Joe: They still there. That’s right at the boat landing where you come around Myette Point boat landing, you know…

JD: The one now?

Joe: Yeah. And you see the, you see the…after you come around the old levee, the little levee, you know? When you come around to go to the lake? .. When you see that [small levee] to the right, the first water going down on the right? . Those are some of the holes. They went all the way down to Belleview. They were just dug in different places here and there. They took mud and they rebuilt the levees.

JD: Oh, oh. So those must have been pretty deep at one time?

Joe: Umhm. Yeah, they were eight, ten foot deep. .. Course when they redid the levee project this time they still took a lot of dirt from that side again, and all those [?] holes…they got [?] holes, they got [?] holes now but they all different, because the [?] holes they had before were different, they were all unique. And a lot of guys, when high water came, they’d go back in these holes and fish line in these holes a . and they’d be piled up with fish that lived there all during the low water times…

JD: Because they were deeper.

Joe: Yeah, and they’d survive to then…... But anyway, that was my . earliest fishin experience on my own, when I made money from it, you know? And then, uh…

JD: They were tightlines? . Cause you didn’t have to have poles, drive poles or anything like that, you just went from tree to tree…

Joe: Yeah, and then the Lockwood Ash, and I would earn enough money in the summertime to buy my clothes for school. Momma would fish with me.

JD: Your momma would fish with you?

Joe: Yeah, when I had the Lockwood. . We’d go down with Daddy, down the lake…

JD: Two boats together?

Joe: Yeah, below Goat Island, and we’d have a lil set of lines out, you know? Two or three lines, three or four bents, from the sandbar at the end of Goat Island to the channel. Some on the other side. And uh, we would fish there. Make a few dollars, I made enough money to buy my school clothes and that sort of…

JD: You did? You were going to school by that time?

Joe: Yeah, I would keep half the money and Momma would get half, I believe that’s the way we did it. .. They wouldn’t let me go alone, in a boat.

[someone comes in with some ducks they killed this morning]

JD: Well, we just barely got into the boats thing, and we talked about how that was. If you want to talk a little bit about how bridle lines…

Joe: We talked a good deal about that.

JD: Well, I mean the actual line itself. The actual…what was used for bridle line…the earliest you remember.

Joe: OK, well, the nylon that we would buy. We would use that.

JD: Ok, so by the time you first started fishin, y’all were already using nylon? You don’t remember fishing cotton then?

Joe: No, I remember Daddy fishing cotton . and they would tar it regularly and uh, to keep it from rotting ., and they hoopnets were cotton. They would tar em regularly, they had to pick em up every two or three weeks and tar em. .. [or] they were gone, you know? .. That’s what kept em as long a possible. But uh, I remember nylon, we used nylon, and then every now and then you’d get ahold of an old tugboat rope, inch, two inch rope, or something like that and unravel it, and then use that. . Would save cost, that’s still done. .. Far as bridle line…that’s from the pole to the main line.

JD: And then, if you want to go to bug light, uh, all we’re talking about there is that light that y’all developed to use when you’re buggin on the river. You want to describe how that was built? How that was made?

Joe: Uh, well, we talking about buggin a lil bit. We used to fish our lines in the summer months [at night] and we kept hearing all these fish on the water you know .. Boy you’d stomp your foot and boy there would be a roar [laughs]. But, um, Daddy and some of the other guys had already tried catching these fish different ways, with gill nets…float the net down the river, and all kind of things, and it wouldn’t work. .. And uh, but anyway we’d be fishin lines and we would see these fish drifting on us, we’d tie the boat down [to the main line] and put the hook under the bow, or something, and grab our shrimp nets, you know, that we dip shrimp bushes, and uh, so we’d try to catch some of these fish drifting down on us. I was a half-hour sometimes trying to catch one or two just to see if we could [laughs] .. And finally we got the knack of how to do it, you know? And uh, you just scoop em real quick, throw the net and scoop. And, so, we had heard some of them guys from Bayou Sorrel and Pigeon…well, mostly Bayou Sorrel had done developed a process . for catching these fish…and, that they used monofilament nets. And so, uh, we knitted some monofilament nets and, they said they used lights on the back [of the boat]. Well, we knew the lights attracted the bugs, for sure .. And so we tried it, and it worked out pretty good. And, uh, during the times when the bugs were heavy, during the summer months, it was hard to fish anyway cuz they was around you so much it was hard to bait lines, they get in your eyes and everywhere. So, we learned how to hang a bright light on the stern, either a 12-volt bulb with a 12-volt battery, or a lil sealed beam. Usually worked good, a sealed beam plus a bulb that would cause em to stay around and drop on the water.

JD: Why both?

Joe: Uh, more light, more light, course it would cause the batteries to go down quicker but you wanted your light as low to the water as possible, without touching the water, so they would fall in the water. .. You gather you a pile of bugs, more bugs, and you just drift with em….catch as many fish as you could. And, some of those guys were pretty successful at catching a lot of fish like that. I guess the most I caught was about 300 pounds.

JD: You did catch that much? 300 pounds?

Joe: Some of those guys, they way I understand, would get as much as 1000 pounds sometimes in a night. .. Usually they were a nicer fish than what you caught on lines during the summer months. All nice fish, like that, course you get to pick em out. . If you was going to waste a dip, cause you scare the fish for a moment, you’d try to get the nicest one out the bunch. So, you accumulate a pile of, you know, four, five…three, four, five pounds… I struggle a few times trying to catch a big one and every time I’d either break my net or hurt myself. .. They were almost impossible to catch.

JD: How big would you say some of those were, that you tried to catch?

Joe: Aw, 30, 40, 50 pounders. And, uh, I caught like a 15 pounder, get him in the boat and they so lively when you do it he just stands on his tail, . jump right out the boat. [laughs]. You stomp your foot and get mad, and keep on. .. Yeah, but it was unique. It was a lot of fun.

JD: It was something different. ..

Joe: And you would go out and bait your line up before dark, and then you’d go ahead, you’d bug until about 11:00 or midnight, go back and make a run on your lines. You might want to make another run, another run would probably take you till daylight. .. And if you wanted to quit on the run after the buggin, you quit on that one and get home about 3:00 oclock. ..

JD: So y’all inherited…you think, uh, developed the technique that Bayou Sorrel…

Joe: Kind of developed, kind of heard, and, yeah…the monofilament idea.

JD: How about what fish you would actually catch? Was it all blue cats?

Joe: Just about, you’d get along the edge of the woods…we did that already also…the cypress trees before the sandbars built up against the cypress…you’d get eel cats.

JD: You’d get eel cats along the woods, and, uh…

Joe: Mostly, all blue cats in the channel.

JD: No goujons?

Joe: The goujons wouldn’t come to the top. Well, along the edge of the woods you might see a goujon stick his nose now and then. But they were very shy, even more shy than the eel cats and blue cats, cause they would barely stick their nose up. But I think you’d see one now and then, not much. They don’t like to come up. Different habits. And the nets, uh, I guess were about an inch and a half stretch, two inch.

JD: What size monofilament was it?

Joe: Uh, the lighter the easier it moved through the water. We started with real light stuff, like about maybe 20 or 30 pound test, and we tried some 40 or 50. What would get the monofilament was during the summer months they would dry rot. .. They would get kind of brittle and you’d use em the next season a lil bit and you’d have to patch holes. And you knit you a new one. The last one I had I used some plastic shrimp webbing, inch and half stretch, . that seemed to work pretty good …not as easy as the monofilament, it was plastic multifilament. . The monofilament was plastic single filament. .. The shrimp netting was multifilament, you know, like twine, .. But it was still dried and was plastic so it moved through the water . pretty well. Good enough to catch em.

JD: How long has it been since you did any buggin?

Joe: Well, last time, I took Mr. Benefield out, oh, about seven, eight years ago, something like that. We went buggin for a lil while. It wasn’t’ too much. It wasn’t right, we caught a few to eat, maybe 20-30 head or something like that, and we went and caught frogs after that, mostly for the sport…eatin. . Every summer I mean to get a rig together to go back for the sport and for the fun of it to get some, . and I never do. I still want to go back and do it, but my eyes are getting a lil worse and so it’s hard for me…. to see at night…as well. I got [?] and I think the glare, light shinin on that [?] and interferes with the way I see at night a lot. .. Course, I’m a lil far sighted and I gotta wear these glasses.

JD: Shoot, we ought to try next summer to do it. .. I’d like to do that.

Joe: It’s fun. Get some fish to eat, whatever. . Who knows, might even go out there and whomp em.

JD: That’ll be fun, we ought to think about that for next summer.

Joe: OK. [looking at list]. Castnet, that was used mostly by commercial fishermen to get bait, shads…

JD: Before we leave the bug net, if you would, explain if you would how you made the rim and the handle.

Joe: Oh, OK. First we started…we go to the hardware store and buy one-inch round pole, fir I believe ., and later I found that it was [better] a inch and a quarter pole, it was heavier but more stouter. . and, uh, you’d get some uh, quarter inch steel, hoopnet steel, .. Hoopnet steel, it’s springy steel . and it was made for hoopnets.

JD: And it comes round?

Joe: Yeah, I comes in a coil, a hundred pound, whatever, if you buy a whole…but most of the time you’d rob an old hoopnet of its rim or something like that. . Later on we got…we had bought…between two or three of us…we had bought . a coil, we divided. But we bought the bigger steel which was hard to get. The bigger steel was 5/16 I believe, and uh, it was better for the dipnets for shrimp nets and for crawfish nets cause it was stouter. . But we mostly used ¼ for bug nets.

JD: Because it was lighter?

Joe: Lighter, and uh, it didn’t need to be that strong. . as the ones to dip shrimp bushes. And uh, we just square it off, you know, the steel off…off the round part to the shape of the pole and then make some lil, some lil uh, dips, you know on the end, you know to drive into the pole.

JD: So, if I can explain, I need to be able to explain that so that I can write it. Joe’s going to write how these hoops are supposed to look, when you make em. We’re putting that right on the outline, here. . Did you, did you notch the pole to put these alongside the handle?

Joe: Yeah, you could make a lil notch that would cause em to stay in a lil better, yeah. . A lil channel in the pole. And uh, then you’d…you could use, uh, pipe clamps . to clamp it, or you can . staple, or if I used staples I’d take a piece of wire and wrap the wire around it, round and round, or you can use nylon and keep half-hitchin it just to tighten it securely to the pole. Cause the staples would work loose on its own. ..

JD: Haven’t I seen these wrapped with nylon all the way from where the hoop starts to the end of that.

Joe: Right.

JD: That looks pretty.

Joe: And on the bug net what you’d want to do if you were looking at a side view of the rim, you’d want to shape it…kind of dip it.

JD: From a side view, you didn’t want it straight, you wanted it, uh, yeah. [looking at what he’s drawing] that’s so it would be like a scoop. . I see what you’re talking about. .. You’d want to make it like a scoop.

Joe: Yeah, mostly toward the top end, you know?

JD: How would you shape it, if it was springy steel like that?

Joe: You just put it under your feet and you bend it ., pull on it, and finally it would take a lil shape, you know. . You’d want to kind of bend it more toward the…about the top 1/3 of the rim. .. Like a spoon. ..

JD: OK, now how about the other end of the…how about the end of the handle of the net?

Joe: Oh, ok, we’d put a paddle because you need to move around. . and you’d just, uh, split the end of the pole and put you a lil piece of wood in it and screw it down, nail it down. Just a lil piece of plywood, or whatever, nothing big. .. And of course you wanted to put it at the right angle of the net to make it more convenient. I don’t quite recall, uh…

JD: Which way it was?

Joe: Which way it was [laughs], maybe crossways, or…you wanted the net to be handy for when you seen the fish to get to it as quick as possible. But either way, the paddle would work. But later on [we] got aluminum poles also. The last one was aluminum pole, but I found it a lil heavy. And the wood, you just drive you a piece of wood into the aluminum pole.

JD: Drive a plug into the aluminum…?

Joe: Yeah, in order to . attach the rim to. . Last one was a lil short so I drove me a piece of wood pole in the end. I guess I still got it back there, I don’t know if I do or not. But I’d have to start all over, if I’d go again.

JD: See, nobody would have cause to know any of this unless we write it down and save it someplace. Nobody would know all of that, and it would be lost. So that’s why I want to do this. ..

Joe: Yeah, and uh, that came toward the end of…well, it’s not ended yet, some people still fishing, but the end of my linefishing career so to speak, to make a living because…I’m still hoping I could do like Russell [Daigle], he gave the shrimp boat to Louis [his son] to run and he’s out there runnin it, and Russell’s havin all the fun in the Basin. [laughs].

JD: Yeah, just playin around, like, almost, huh?

Joe: Yeah, but still makin money. .. It’s just, uh, the money difference is so, so vast between shrimpin industry and nowadays catfishing. Linefishing, it was a hard livin, it was a good livin but…

JD: It’s a hard livin, lot of hard work, a lot of hours, and not much return for it.

Joe: A lot less money.

JD: That’s right, a lot less money.

Joe: And so we do a lot better with the shrimp boats, and…and uh…

JD: So that’s why all this is goin away, I mean it’s…if it would be a good livin, now, if it would be a good livin people would be doin it. . And they’re not.

Joe: Well, I think what caused it to come to a point of, uh [collapse]…was the ponds. And people just gave it up ., when you couldn’t sell em anymore.

JD: The market.

Joe: The market caused their…’cause people would still go back to it, I’d still go back to it during the months I couldn’t shrimp ‘cause up until ’85 ., and ’86, we fished below Calumet spillway [Wax Lake Outlet] in the winter months . and catch a lot of catfish.

JD: In the new delta down there.

Joe: The new delta, you see. And fishing was tremendous! Easier to fish, didn’t have the hangs you do up in the Basin, . fish a lot more hooks…

JD: Bait wasn’t hard to get?

Joe: I recall, uh, probly about ’84, something like that, and first month I fished I grossed $4000.

JD: What?!

Joe: In, uh, I believe it was the month of…part of the month of March and part of the month of April.

JD: Gollee! $4000 in line fish. . But ’85, what happened?

Joe: Well, uh, I sold my boat [shrimp boat] in ’86. . I went to seminary. And then the fishin, the market got bad right after that, after ’85 I believe. You couldn’t hardly sell em. We did a lil fishing in the winter months, I had a seine then. We did a lil seining, we couldn’t sell the fish, they didn’t want the seine fish. They would take a few line fish.

JD: Why?

Joe: Uh, because they had too much fish, really. That was the extent of it. .. If they would have needed em, they would have bought em. They just didn’t want us to catch too much. .. I could recall going out with the seine and wrapping about a 2500-pound haul of catfish. And I gave some to EJ and Russell, my father-in-law, we were parked together in a…by Belle Isle Lake .. We skinned, in order to sell those fish we, we had got a sale for 1200 pounds…well, that what we had, 1200 pounds skinned. You know, collar [tape ends]

Atchafalaya Basin People: Chapter 21

DATE: December 26, 1995

INTERVIEWER: Jim Delahoussaye

LOCATION: Residence of Joe Sauce, Jr., and his wife Florence Anslem Sauce, 208 Easy Street, Franklin, Louisiana, 70538.

COOPERATORS: Joseph (Joe) Sauce, Jr., Florence (Flo) Sauce

[begins with some talk about genealogy of the Sauce family, looking at charts JD had made, and some records Joe: has]

JD: …cause it was Agnes’ grandfather who came directly from France. And I don’t know….

Joe: …and here’s some taken from census, in here.

JD: You got this from a commercial service?

Joe: Yeah. I don’t know how much light it shed, but a lil bit…

JD: Well, every lil bit helps, cause like I say, all I have for this is word of mouth.

Joe: Well, that’s what all the old folks say, they came from France, but I think that’s assumed.

JD: From what you showed me, it well may be assumed. But the thing is, I think that what I want to…what I’m holding as important here is not so much where they come from but the fact that they did…this generation came from…at least this piece of this generation came from Europe. Somewhere. And they came and settled down here and gradually, between this generation and this generation, became houseboat people. Between here and here…these people didn’t live on houseboats, they lived…these people right here lived on, uh, had a big farm on Lake Verret: your grandmother and grandfather on this side. And this generation…let’s see, that would be your great grandmother…your grandfather would have been Blaise Sauce?

Joe: My great grandfather would have been Blaise Sauce. My great great grandfather [on the chart] would have been Larnce.

JD: …so they lived on this…they lived on this big farm on Lake Verret, apparently. And Blaise Sauce was a houseboat person. His family was on a houseboat. So, somewhere between this area and this area [parts of the family], this family [Blaise Sauce] became involved on campboats in the Basin. And the same thing over here. I don’t know about these people right here, I have to ask…I have to find out more about them, about what they were like. But, Myon is the one that became a houseboat person in this branch of the family. Because apparently all of his people, these people, lived on Fourmile Bayou – just north of Grassy Lake, just south of Lake Verret.

Joe: They lived on the land?

JD: On the land. They sure did.

Joe: I knew they lived on Fourmile Bayou, I didn’t know it was on the land.

JD: Yeah, in houses on the land. On Fourmile Bayou. And they moved…

Joe: Because, uh, my grandfather, Momma’s daddy, had uh, he lived along The Pit [Morgan City]. They fished the Basin.

JD: The Pit would have been in Morgan City?

Joe: ..this comes from Myon. Myon was Baileys, but uh, …

JD: Your mother’s last name was not Bailey. She was Daigle.

Joe: You see, Uncle Myon was a half brother. But, Grandpa fished, and did just about everything people on this side did. His house was a campboat on a barge that was pulled up on the edge of the…the other side of The Pit in Morgan City. And then they moved it …

JD: Give me a name, give me a name…your grandpa on what side? Daigle? Your mother’s father was named Daigle, he’s not on here.

Joe: Yeah, but you see, Ernestine Daigle was my grandmother, but she was married to, uh, to my…Albert Bailey, whoever he was, Uncle Myon’s dad, died or was killed, in a boating accident – nobody figure out. Somebody think it was a murder involved in there. That maybe my grandpa killed Albert Bailey. Possibly. Yeah, they went out in a boat together and one come back alive. That’s what we understand.

JD: The other one drowned? Didn’t come back?

Joe: I’m not sure if he didn’t come back, or he came back dead. And, and, I don’t even know…I think his name…. Daddy would know his name, but he was married to Ernestine. And they both were Daigles.

JD: That was her second husband then? So, his name was what? Daigre or Daigle?

Joe: Uh, just like you spell the Daigle name, Daigle.

JD: So, his second marriage was…

Joe: [he calls Neg Sauce] Daddy, you remember, uh, grandpa Daigle’s first name, what it was? Grandpa Daigle, momma’s daddy. Yeah, Homer?

JD: Homer Daigle, I remember that… So, she married…so she was married to him, to Albert Bailey, and Albert Bailey was the father of…how many of these, you remember how many of these were halfs and how many…in other words of em were Daigles and how many of em were Baileys?

Joe: Oh, just, uh, for as I know, I don’t know if Angelina was Bailey or not …she may have been. I think so. Rudolph and Myon…those three.

JD: And the rest, Marie, Odelia, Eula, Norman, Azima, Ike and all of them, they were all halfs. So, they were all Daigles, then.

Joe: All Daigles, right. I don’t even know if, uh, Angelina was Bailey. I think she may have been. But for sure the rest were Daigles. And you see…her…she was a Daigle and he was a Daigle. Those two Daigles, maybe were kin, married to each other.

JD: Interesting. See, the more people I talk to the more complete this gets. You’d be surprised how many people seem to be interested…in this sheet. So that when I finish with it, I’m gone to give all of .y’all a copy of it so that .y’all’l all…you know, for whatever it’s worth…

Joe: Larnce Sauce had a brother too…what I heard there were two brothers.

JD: Yes, remember his name by any chance? The other Sauce? His brother?

Joe: Not at the moment. Like they got two branches of Sauce in this area that are not kin anymore, and that’s probly why…those two lines. That’s the only two lines of Sauces that I know of.

JD: [do you] realize that we can put down on paper, for these people, seven generations of people? Seven? From what’s known right now, seven. Starting with these and going to your grandchildren, seven, generations. That’s a lot for a family to be able to just look at and say here’s for sure who they were.

Joe: And, boy, we just had, like, Daddy’s aunts just a few years ago…they all dead now. Eight, ten year’s ago, somebody would do this? They could a had all kind of information from those older people.

JD: Now, your daddy’s aunts would have been…would have been, uh…

Joe: Felix, Felix…Blaise Sauce.

JD: Blaise Sauce’s brothers and sisters. All these people here…all these people here. [pointing to the family chart] Now, there’s two more that I don’t have on here…but he had apparently…

Joe: Well, Daddy could tell you...Agnes could, and Daddy could.

JD: This is as many as Agnes could come up with. Uh, but there’s fourteen of em. Fourteen brothers and sisters, of Blaise.

Joe: Now, Milton, Milton might still be alive…not sure.

JD: But there’s some of em in here, like, nobody knows who this Chouki was, what his real name is, nobody knows that.

Joe: That’s her, that’s a lady. Chouki, Aunt Chouki, yeah. She was married to a Aucoin. His name was Phillip Aucoin.

JD: But, we don’t know her real name. And nobody knows the pronunciation of this “Souri”, that’s the best pronunciation I can come up with.

Joe: I remember her, I knew her. And probly the only one that’s in my memory because she lived next to Grandma Daigle not far from where we used to visit when we were children, so I kind of remember her.

JD: Where did .y’all visit? Where was that?

Joe: Uh, The Pit, in Morgan City.

JD: All right, who would your Grandma Daigle have been?

Joe: Oh, Ernestine.

JD: Ok, Myon’s mother. … this stuff gets complicated. Now Edward, I put Edward down here so I could show him married to Lena Mae, and Edward’s brothers and sisters. And Edward’s mother and father. Now I’m going to follow his line, the Couvilliers, back, because he can take me…this family can take me to Keelboat Pass, and to people who were born and raised. He wasn’t born on a houseboat, but he was 12 years old when they got their first houseboat. He lived on land in Lil Pigeon when the got their first houseboat, in Catfish Bayou. So u see, he can take me again from livin on land to livin on houseboats. So, to Keelboat Pass and to Hog Island.

Joe: The Langes could also, well of course the Couvilliers married the Lange family. They could take you to Keelboat Pass.

JD: Dan Lange, right here, Dan Lange married Viola…Tete. So, yeah, so that’s another one, so the more of these things I can get…the more stories I can get of how they went from livin on land to livin on houseboats, the better idea I have of how it was…what brought it about. And I’m always interested in what caused people to go from livin on land to livin on houseboats.

Joe: I think it was probly the fishin.

JD: Well, they lived on land for a long time, apparently. And fished from on land. I think part of it, part of it may also be that when the built the levees that the water started rising so high that you couldn’t live on land inside the Basin anymore. Because the idea is [the water] wouldn’t spread out…

Joe: Well, they had a whole town in the center of the Basin, did you know that?

JD: That was at Bayou Chene, you talking…I think, isn’t it?

Joe: I got, uh, a book…a history of Baptists, that can take you back to some of that Baptist work in different areas of the Basin…too might be helpful.