The Wild Side for May 4, 2008

• By JOE MACALUSO
• Advocate outdoors writer
• Published: May 4, 2008 - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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Sometimes it’s difficult to know where to start writing.

Lots of Baton Rouge fishermen know David Harrelson, the rugged, bearded, loves-to-fish charterboat skipper, who got his feet wet working for Louisiana fishing legend Charlie Hardison.

Harrelson pilots the “Captain Charlie,” a comfortable 65-foot fishing platform named to honor Hardison.

On Monday, Harrelson backed the Captain Charlie into its familiar slip. State Wildlife and Fisheries agents were waiting. Somebody made a phone call.

Capt. Sammy Martin, the agent in charge of the Thibodaux region, said it took agents nearly seven hours to count and measure the red snapper the 18 out-of-state men had in 27 ice chests they brought aboard the boat:  909 red snapper, 287 of which came up short of the 16-inch minimum size.

Worse yet, the red snapper season is closed — it’ll open June 1 — and when it opens, the daily limit will be two.

Harrelson said this group of men have been coming to south Louisiana for years for their offshore fishing trips, and he told them the red snapper season was closed. From what he said, the group thumbed its nose at the rules. Heck, none of them had fishing licenses, though the step-on charter licenses were offered. These men knew where to go to catch fish. They were here, and the fish were ready to be caught.

Harrelson said years ago he was taught that if a fish wasn’t in his ice chest — meaning the big, built-in chests on the boat’s deck — he wasn’t responsible for that fish. He said he had one cobia in the big ice chest.

He said this group of mostly Atlanta-area men are unusual in that they bring their own ice chests and keep the fish each of them catch. A more widely accepted charter-trip practice is to mingle the catch, then divvy it up at the end of the trip.

“I’m not talking about 48-quart ice chests,” Martin said. “Most of them were 150 quart, the big ones, and they were packed with fish.”
Martin said 96 citations were written: The 18 clients, Harrelson and the boat’s deckhand held tickets for possessing red snapper in a closed season, having more than the limit and having undersized fish. The 18 men also were cited for not having nonresident basic and saltwater licenses.

Martin said the snapper citations will be sent to federal court. The license tickets  will be handled in state court.
It’s difficult to know what penalties are forthcoming: 909 red snapper in one place is a lot even when there was no season and no limits.

Today, David Harrelson, a terrific fisherman and a good friend, has to know the customer is not always right. Trouble is, 909 red snapper might be his last great catch.

Epilogue