What a difference a year makes, last year I spent most of my summer along the gulf coast with much of that time in Louisiana where I drove the highways to and from Grand Isle, Golden Meadow, Lafite and Venice as well as elsewhere. What I saw at almost every turn was a massive clean up effort underway to clean up the oil from the Deep Water Horizon oil spill that had the eyes of a nation on it. Those visions of helicopters dropping dispersant, crews capturing and cleaning birds, boats maintaining booms, skimmers cleaning up oil slicks, crews on the beaches and in the backwater marshes cleaning the sand and grasses all were the sights of last summer and none of them were the sights I wanted to see.
What I didn’t see last summer or saw very little of were fisherman, those folks that I I love to see with fishing rods on their boats, sticking out the back window of their cars or in the bed of their trucks going down the highways, stopped at gas stations buying gear or simply unloading a the boat ramps, those folks were simply gone because much of the waters if not all of the water in certain areas were closed leaving many to wonder what they would find when the waters opened back up to recreational and commercial fishing, I as well wondered that.
Now, as I sit here a year later in the Venice Fishing Lodge it’s exciting to say that media has turned their attention elsewhere to some other headline attention grabbing story. I’ve seen no evidence of oil anywhere, I didn’t see any helicopters flying around dropping stuff from the skies to soak up any oil, the clean up crews have left the marshes and beaches and the red, white and orange booms they are all gone and instead they’ve been replaced by giant schools of redfish and best of all this is only day one of several in the marshes which from my eyes all look fine so as I finish this last sentence guess in a hurry simply because this is only day two of five I’m spending down here and it’s time to go load my boat up and catch a few more for dinner today! See you on the water.
