The first, and most important step in a good seafood boil is taking a youngster out to the water to catch the seafood. I just took my son Wyatt, age 4, on his first crabbing expedition To Rockefeller Refuge, right along the Louisiana coast almost exactly where Hurricane Rita hit 5 years ago. I didn't take any pics while we were crabbing/fishing because honestly the action was too fast. We simply bait a line, consisting of a bent coat hanger w/ the cheapest meat you can find, often chicken leg quarters, or turkey necks, and toss it into the water off of the bank. You then slowly drag in the line while holding a long handled net, and scoop up your bait, hopefully with a crab or two attached. This particular morning, we hit the outgoing tide just right, and were catching as many as 6 at a time. We had 3-4 dozen crabs in 15-20 minutes. We also fished a bit, and tried to cast net for shrimp, but since the tide was already going out, we only wound up with a measly 6 dozen small/med blue point crabs and one very cranky/tired lil boy.



It's probably hard to tell from the pics, but we half way filled a 40 qt ice chest solid with crabs. I could have maybe fit another dozen or two, but no more, cause we wouldn't have had enough room for ice.
We called up my Parrin (Cajun Godfather) halfway through catching, and told him to round up the family cause we'd have plenty for a good crab boil that night. My uncle Barry is a masterful chef, which means that I get to simply act as a gopher, and drink lots of beer.

We always cook the veggies and mild batches first, and here's a peek of some great appetizers. Corn, potatoes, and onions are the standard. Uncle Barry adds sausage, baby carrots, mushrooms, and okra.


Then we boil the crabs and get down to business.


I can also attest that the left over potatoes make unbelievably good potato salad and go great with scrambled eggs in the morning. Enjoy.


Next up, call all the family and tell them we're having a boil tonight. We did this one at my uncle's house, and as he is a masterful chef, I just played gopher and drank beerWink

No major secrets to reveal about how to boil. You get a pot, fill it with water and get it to a boil. Next, add your seasonings. We used the gold standard, Zatarain's, around 1/4 of a 5lb. jar of seasoning to start. This will be a fairly mild seasoning, which is how we always start the pot. Kids and those who don't like it too spicy eat first. We also always do the veggies or Hors devours first. The standard for veggies is corn, potatoes, and onions.

My uncle is a clever guy, and he adds to that Savoie's mild sausage, mushrooms, baby carrots, and okra. I assure ya'll that the sausage, okra and carrots disappear very quickly.

Adding whole cloves of garlic is also very good, but we didn't this time. Using the leftover boiled potatoes for potato salad is one of God's own gifts and they are extremely good along with scrambled eggs in the morning.
Then, of course, it is time to add the main ingredient. As I stated before, we always do a mild batch, and then add more seasoning as we go. No salt or anything else is needed, just the seasoning.


As an aside, I sometimes boil a hindquarter of deer of wild pig the same way, and then finish it off in a smoker. It isn't hunting season down here yet, but I'll try and post pics of a hindquarter later on. I wish we could all get together and have a cooking, cause that is some SERIOUSLY good stuff.

If I was 2000 miles closer I hang out at your house.....you sure did make this old guy hungry.

Good on ya and good for the lad....

It looks wonderful. No better eating than fresh blue crab. And nothing like your own shrimp caught with just a little throw net. The part that amazes me is when you think how much people pay for the exact same thing in pricey restaurants up in NOLA's Vieux Carre.

It appears you're in the same neighborhood with Grand Isle...where I used to fish. It was the same thing, oysters, crabs, shrimp, redfish, flounder and above all, specks, in or off shore.

I'm sure if you say "AR boil", you'll get plenty of hungry Texas members start rolling east. I'll bring beer, but I don't think I can bring enough for you Cajun boys!

What SEC football team is that redhead going to play for?

quote:

Originally posted by Shack:
It appears you're in the same neighborhood with Grand Isle...where I used to fish. It was the same thing, oysters, crabs, shrimp, redfish, flounder and above all, specks, in or off shore.

We caught these @ Rockefeller, which is just East of Grand Cheniere, and 20 miles east of Cameron, so Probably 150 miles east of Grand Isle, but I've fished there also. It's just about twice as far for me to drive, so...

quote:

Originally posted by Cazadore humilde:
I'm sure if you say "AR boil", you'll get plenty of hungry Texas members start rolling east. I'll bring beer, but I don't think I can bring enough for you Cajun boys! Big Grin

There sure was a time when I could drink my fair share, but 2 or 3 seems to be plenty these days. I wish we had the supply of wild pork that ya'll have in the hill country. Maybe we could have a "mutual cookin'"? I'd darn sure be in for a bunch of us meeting up and breaking bread.

quote:

Originally posted by dampatents:
What SEC football team is that redhead going to play for?

I assume you mean that he's a bil ole boy for 4, and he sure is. It amazes me how much he can eat sometimes. I don't know about football, but if he's like me (and he is), he may be known to rodeo (roughstock), and play some rugby in college. As for an SEC team, anyone but Bama.

If I lived on the same continent, you'd have me banging on your door!

you'd be welcome

Very kind...... I love seafood. We live only a few hours from Durban and not much further from Lorenco Marques which is now called Maputo and is famous for it's seafood........ you'd think that we'd be able to buy good seafood here but can we hell.

I'm having a bowl of cereal with half a banana for breakfast, and this is what I have to look at...

Rich

daniel, what is the story on the specks over your way? How do y'all fish for them and cook them up??

ISS,
Are you sharing those nuts and twigs with a squirrel?

Shack,
It depends on the time of year. In Oct. they'll be heading out to the Gulf, and most will start hitting up the closer rigs, platforms, and whatnot with artificials for the bigger trout. During the summer months, we generally fish the running water (inlets, cuts, banks, and islands) looking for baitfish being ambushed. We generally cast net for bait, or stop a shrimp boat and get some live shrimp or a bit of their by-catch. Schoolies (smaller trout in the 1-4 lb. range) aren't hard to catch once you find them. To help find them, we also always follow the birds.
Honestly, I'm more of a redfish guy, as it's like stalking deer, and they sure put up a fight.
Most of the time, when we're strictly fishing, we head to the Dulac/Cocodrie area as the fishing is MUCH better out that way than to the West. For quick trips though, we go to IntraCoastal City and head to Marsh Island. I've fished Grand Isle a few times, but mostly we went offshore out of there, cause you can get to deep water so quickly. The Gulf gets a LOT shallower the further West you go. Out of Rockefeller/Cameron/Calcasieu area, I think you have to go something like 50 miles out to get to Snapper depth water, where you can be there in 7-10 miles out of Grand Isle or Dulac. As for this year, the oil spill and resulting water closures have messed up a lot of the season, but the reports I've heard have been good fishing. My dad's really the fisherman of the family and goes a whole lot more than I do.

As for cooking them, my favorite way is to grill them. I fillet them leaving the skin on, and put them on the grill skin side down with just a bit of seasoning, butter, and lemon/lime juice. When the meat retracts and the skin is crispy, they're done and very, very delicious. I like most fish cooked this way. It's pretty darn hard to pass up a mess of fried speckled trout though. Damn, I'm getting hungry. Are you still in this area, or have you moved away?

Yesterday, we helped my uncle catch a mess of bluegill and chinquapin, then gutted, scaled, and deheaded them and fried 'em whole. That was a real nice lunch also. I'm pretty bad about taking pics of all this stuff, but it's real hard to beat fried bream IMO.

Daniel, I'm up in W. Tenn., but used to go to Grand Isle regularly. It's real popular with guys from this area (and everywhere I guess). I think what it is, is that it just kind of got the reputation for the specks although everywhere else obviously has them. Maybe the main thing is it's pretty much a straight line drive from here, 500 miles.

I got started there many years ago fishing with a French speaking local. The sea trout were my main interest. And the last thing we'd do is fill the ice chests with shrimp at Estays, straight off the boats.

We fished only the shallow, seafood rich, salt marsh of Barataria Bay. It's on the north side of the island. Off-shore and the waters of the open Gulf of course are to the south. Our guide wouldn't go off-shore. It probably wasn't the best boat in the world for it (it bore a striking resemblance to Bogey's African Queen - seriously).

The fish were one to three pounds. We tried to go around the start of shrimp season which as I recall was the middle of June, although anytime in Summer could be good. The fishing was up and down. It could be incredible one day and nothing the next. You knew they were there, but you didn't know until you tried if that was going to be the day.

Shrimp were good for bait but our guide wouldn't use them because they attracted salt water cats. We always used sparkle beatles (large jigs). When the specks were "on" we'd tie two or even three beatles on one line and catch more than one fish at a time. We used light spin tackle and the beatles were suspended from floats.

The cleaning was always filet both sides, removing the skin too, cut out rib bones and into the ice chest with each bag of filets one after another. Cooking was usually just pan fried with butter, lots of butter in my case.

In my humble opinion, fresh speckled sea trout are the best eating fish what swims.

We'd leave the docks just before dawn as the shrimping fleet was clanking into action and stay out til we got enough. It could get horribly hot out there. You couldn't take enough ice drinks along. And I still remember the cajun rock and roll from our guide's radio.

Anywho, it's been a long, long time now..

Using the leftover potatoes for potato salad reminds me of when grandma fixed rice for supper, my dad and I insisted she make too much so we could have her homemade rice pudding the next day. Mmmmmmemories! I believe I better dig through her old recipe box.

Shack,
Sounds like ya'll were doing it right and I absolutely relate to everything you said. BTW, many people hate those catfish, but if I fried you up a batch of them and a batch of specs, you probably couldn't tell the difference. The bay side is best during the summer. Like I said, they tend to head out when it begins to get cold, and you start to catch them offshore a bit, and usually catch larger fish as well. The size that ya'll were catching are called schoolies, because they stay in schools. That size range is regarded as the prime size for eating. When you find them, the action is usually fast and furious. I'd love to get my son into a mess of them. Catching them 2 or three at a time is a real hoot huh?
I'd guess that the type of boat he was using is a "Lafitte skif", named for the pirate Jean Lafitte, who made his home in the Barrataria Bay and it's islands. Believe it or not, that boat is taylor made for the bay and not too far offshore conditions. Also, the bay, being relatively shallow all the way across, will often be rougher water than offshore.
Not a thing wrong with fishing Grand Isle. It's reputation for fishing and shrimping is well deserved, and I'm told that it was relatively unaffected by the oil spill. Have you been back since Katrina?

Back since K rearranged the place? Nah. Some of it's just me. I'm an old timer now and just playing out the string. Some of it's I just didn't want to see any of that again after Katrina. Long story about that, and I won't weary everyone with it. But, basically we've spent far more time in NOLA than even Grand Isle clear back to the '60s and we were there the weekend the hurricane hit and saw our share, got out just in time, and even helped with the refugee relief efforts. I also saw pictures of Grand Isle afterwards. And, the grand old guy who was our guide and friend is no longer around.

What I'm trying to say is, it's just a chapter I've turned the page on now. The same will be true soon with my hunting.

Yes, the catching two or three at a time was a hoot. I could go on and on about those experiences, but just this - our guide had this knack for being able to pull one out and flip it in the air so it'd fall off the hook and in one motion throw the line back out. It didn't always work, only sometimes, and I never could master it, but when we had this going the fish'd drop on the tarp cover over the boat engine (a Chevy motor) and stack up til I used a net to shovel them up and dump them in an ice chest. Then they got covered with a layer of ice, then another layer of specks, then more ice and so on. Then on to the next ice chest.

I almost went all into the pirate tales of Barataria Bay earlier, but didn't figure it of much interest to most readers here. But I see you're up on your history. Suffice to say, we made inquiries but never did find any of the supposed treasure.

I never made it down for the redfish. But our guide did call a few times and tell us they were running and were being caught up to 45 pounds (I think that's what he said). Time has probably taken its toll on my memory about that, but I think it was in the Fall months and that the redfish were being taken in tidal cuts or runouts. He used to say we had to come on real short notice for that because the runs didn't last long. But alas, the timing was never right..

I understand about turning the page, but we've had enough time now to really get things back right. NOLA is said to be in better shape, and "cleaner" than ever. Grand Isle has a bunch of new construction also, although it wouldn't be hard to find old piles of debris...

Most of those folks, the ones that the media isn't interested in putting on camera, are very resilient and just cleaned up and went back to their lives.