Saturday, April 25, 2015

Frontlining Shrimp, Grand Isle, Louisiana

Our time here is drawing short and on Monday we head north by northwest, driving first to Rapid City and then on to Star Valley, Wyoming. However there are still things to do here and it mostly revolves around shrimp.
Hearing that the shrimp boats were front lining we headed to the Grand Isle bridge to watch them fighting for the best spot. During the outgoing tide the shrimp boats fill the pass, all trying to achieve the frontline of boats. (boats in back catch few shrimp).
If they are successful they then partly lower their nets, (if in shallow water they call this butterflying as they resemble a butter fly with outstretched wings). Then with their motors always running they crowd the legal and imaginary line as the shrimp swim with the outgoing tide, right into the boats open nets.
The net result of course, pardon the pun, is shrimp to sell at the shrimp factory. There customers wait in line, meaning us, and we filled our cooler with thirty pounds of sixteen-twenties, (this means that there are 16-20 shrimp per pound costing $5.50 per pound). The next step is to hurry home and then break heads before placing shrimp for two into vacuum bags and then the freezer.

So now our freezers are full and hopefully we have enough shrimp and fish to keep us living the high life during our summer season in Wyoming. Who knows, if you stop by and visit, and we haven’t eaten all the shrimp, we might even make, “po’boys”! If we have eaten them we can always make you cornbread. Clear skies

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