A Little "Bayou Peace"

  Recently, a friend came to the Bayou wanting a bit of "peace".  She proclaimed that the Little Bayou House is her "happy place"...a place where life can be lived without stress.  While a few find the place not to their liking, most find it as a refuge.  To my way of thinking, if you cannot find serenity here, then the problem lies within you not with your surroundings.  

  Of course, after being here for a few hours, we wound up on the pier.  Fishing is always a good stress reliever!   Even though the weather was trying its best to throw a kink in our plans with high winds, we managed to get bait and even catch a few fish. Just as we were about to call it a day, she hooked into a regular "fighting fish".  This delighted her to no end.  The fish pulled on that drag and darted this way and that.  It hit the water's surface then dove down deep.  First, a major rush out to deeper water then a sharp turn to shore.  As a last resort, the fish headed under the pier.  Knowing that the line would most likely be cut on the barnacles that coat the pier posts, I told her to steer it out again.  She did and after a good fight, Darlene pulled the tired fish to the surface.  A loud "Whoop!  Look what I caught!!" burst forth.  Yep, she had a doozy!  The fighter turned out to be a small gar.  I grabbed the line and flipped the fish onto the pier.  

  After a few photographs documenting her catch, I set the camera down, grabbed the knife and turned to cut the line.  At that moment, the gar gave one last thrash and did its own cutting.  It laid loose on the pier.  Well, that made it easier!  I picked up the gar and tossed him back into the water.  Like a torpedo, the gar shot southward to deeper water.  I guess he was glad to be away from these two crazy ladies!

  With the fishing trip successful, my friend and I headed back to the Little Bayou House.  "I like it here.  It is so calming.  When I am here, my troubles all disappear." she murmured as she wandered from room to room.  Yep...my thoughts exactly.  If you cannot find peace and happiness at the Little Bayou House, then you do indeed have deep-seated problems.  

Not Eating It!

   If it seems that I am bombarding the blog with far too many fish tales, it is merely because that is what I am doing at the moment...fishing.  When the fish are biting, we have a tendency to linger on the pier far longer than other times.  Here on the Bayou, we look at fishing as a means of getting a meal not as a sport.  When fish are biting, we fill the freezer for when times are lean.  Seafood of all sorts are caught, cleaned and frozen for later use.  While others look at our fishing trips as "playtime", we look at them as a necessity.  If we wish to eat seafood year round, we better catch it when it is here.  That said, I do draw a line at just what I eat from the Bay.  Nope, I will not eat the catfish, nary a stingray will cross the lips nor will I dine upon gar.  Well, maybe none of these.  If I was starving, I suppose that I would not be so picky but with seafood plentiful, I can make choices.

  Just this morning, my line started zipping out from the reel.  Thinking I had a large redfish on the hook, I snapped the pole back to lodge the hook and started to reel in the line.  Geez!  This thing was huge!  As the reel turned, the drag buzzed loudly as the line was being pulled in the opposite direction.  Still not being the strongest after the bout of illness, I called on Mark to "catch my fish"!  He took the pole and landed the monster with no problems.  Nope, it was not a redfish but rather a three foot long gar.  Well, now.  That was not going to feed too many folks at the Little Bayou House!  Not at MY house anyway!

  While gar meat is supposed to be edible and some say quite tasty, it is not something that I feel like tackling.  A gar is covered with diamond shaped scales that are interlocked to form a sort of armor.  Cleaning the fish is most difficult and, to my way of thinking, too much work when there are nice trout willing to take my bait.  Plus, the gar roe is poisonous.  Nope...not happening.  I will pass.  Let someone else munch out on the weird fish.  I will stick with what I know!

A Life Wasted

I watch critters.  Sometimes, I feel an attachment of sorts to the critters of the Bayou and surrounding areas. Perhaps this is a bit surreal to some folks but, think of it this way, these critters are a lot like my pets.  Just because they live outside all year round, I do not feed most of them and I surely cannot pet some of them, they are definitely like my pets..or friends!  This attachment causes me a bit of anger when someone needlessly kills one of the critters.  I figure that each creature is here for a reason..that reason may not be to our liking at times but still there is a reason.  It all has to do with that balance of nature that I am always talking about to everyone.  Mess up that balance and a place withers and dies.  For an example, I was telling Mark about a family of rats that live down under the pier.  They have runs through the marsh and holes dug so they can escape predators.  He made the comment that we should set traps to rid the area of the rats.  NO!!  As long as they stay in the marsh, I have no problem with them whatsoever!  They perform a needed service.  Rats are scavengers that clean up others' messes!  Any leftover fish that the osprey or otters discard, the rats are ready to haul away to their nest.  Can you imagine the stench of the marsh if someone did not clean up behind others?  Anyway, that said, the rats are safe as long as they do not venture near the Little Bayou House.

My whole point of this rant comes to head with the senseless killing of one of the predators of the waters.  A small gar was floating near the shoreline. The fish was about three feet in length and quite lovely!  It had obviously bitten someone's bait and was "knocked in the head" when they caught it.  This does make me sad as there was no reason to kill it!  My goodness, Folks!  Cut the line if you do not want to keep the fish!  A lot of folks think gar meat is a fine feast but most of us would rather just let it go on its merry way. One thing that is quite important to remember about gars if you ever plan to eat one..their eggs are highly toxic to humans!  DO NOT EAT GAR ROE!!!!  Simple as that!  So..if you do not plan to eat the fish...cannot eat the roe...refuse to use the critter as crab bait...then let it live!  No hook is worth the life of a beautiful fish like this!

Note of interest!...Back in the day, the Native Americans used to use most parts of the gar.  The meat was smoked and eaten.  The hard scales could be attached to arrows as arrowheads if necessary.  This provided an instant weapon!  The hide or skin of the gar with scales attached could be used as armor!  Sort of interesting that we as a society have found it far to easy to be a "throw away" people.  Not once would we consider to use parts of a critter in such creative ways.  Perhaps it is time to look back at our ancestors and learn a few lessons.  One being...if you kill something...you better use it!!!  This reminds me of an incident from a few years back.  Some of Michael's buddies were fishing on the pier.  I had wandered down to see how they were doing.  They proudly showed me a dozen or so small fish in their cooler.  I made the comment that they at least had supper and they looked at me incredulously!  "What?  Eat the fish?  Nah, we just throw them back over when we are through fishing."  Ha!  That is what they thought!  I told them that they would learn to clean fish right then and there!  They would take the fish home and eat them or they would never fish from my pier again!  Needless to say, it took them hours to clean those little croakers and they did eat them!  Now if they want to come fishing and they do not want to clean the fish..they had better do the catch and release!  Do not kill my critters needlessly!!!!