110 Louisiana Sportsman^ | April 2015
Mangrove Snapper“You see how many people we got? I want that times 10 in
fish,” he said.
There was enough light for me to see that he wasn’t grinning.
“Seventy mangrove snapper,” I thought to myself. “That’s a tall
order; we’ll see.”
Our first stop, at a little after 6 a.m. was not far offshore —
Grand Isle 48. I recognized it as a heavily fished platform.
That didn’t faze Heikamp. Neither did providing the rig num-
ber to an outdoor writer.
Things happened incredibly fast. I still hadn’t connected the
faces in this crowd with names, let alone watched how they
rigged and fished.
At 6:10 a.m., a mangrove snapper came over the rail and
Heikamp called out, “That’s the first one,” as he rolled up the
No. 1 on his handy, dandy little fish counter.
By 6: 20 a.m., six mangroves were on board.
Gradually things began to take shape for me. Two things
quickly stood out: They were all using live bait, and they were
throwing very little chum.
Chumming has almost become de rigeur among mangrove
snapper fishermen. Not on Heikamp’s boat.
“I hate using chum,” he spat. “I believe that with chum you are
feeding the fish you want to catch.”
Then he relented
a bit.
“Sometimes
you have to use
a little to get the
fish worked up,”
Heikamp admitted.
Mangrove snapper
fishing in Louisiana
has evolved into
a process of one
angler tossing bro-
ken or cut pieces
of chum — usually
pogies — toward
one corner of
a platform. As
mangrove snap-
pers dash out from
beneath the plat-
form to grab the chum pieces, other anglers on the boat make
short underhanded flip casts to them with weightless hooks
buried in a piece of chum.
After the hook drifts 10 or so feet away from the platform leg,
the bait is retrieved for another mini-cast.
This is done over and over again, trying to fool a mangrove
snapper into chomping on the chum piece with the hook in it.
It’s sight-fishing and, as such, demands clear water.Snapper fishermen have little trouble separating a man-
grove snapper (properly called gray snapper) from a red snap-
per, since the popularity of mangrove snappers has soared in
recent years.
As red snapper limits have steadily declined down to a mis-
erable two fish, the limit on mangrove snappers has remained
at 10. This limit is an aggregate limit with seven other snapper
species: mutton, yellowtail, cubra, queen, blackfin, silk and
wenchman.
Few of these other species turn up in catches while man-
grove snapper fishing. But one species does, and it’s not all
that unusual — the dog snapper, so named because it has
somewhat prominent teeth.
But its teeth aren’t the best identifica-
tion feature. What is unmistakable is the
bleached-out-looking wedge directly
beneath each of its eyes. It looks for all
the word like tears from the eyes have
washed the pigment away.
Hence my name for the creature: the
“crying dog.”
Being able to identify the fish is of more
than “gee-whiz” value. For some reason, this
fish has been removed from the aggregate
limit and has not had a limit of its own
implemented.
An angler could keep a hundred of
them, if he caught them.
While catching that many is not likely
in any one trip, a surprising number of
them turn up in mangrove fishermen’s
hands. Two of them were brought to the
boat this trip.
Mangrove snapper colors can vary quite a bit, from gray to
strong brick red. So when this fish turns up in their landing
net, most fishermen simply comment on its bright colors and
ice it up as a mangrove snapper.
But in this day of tight limits and closed seasons, every
good-eating fish that can be added to the box is welcome,
especially if it doesn’t count against any limits.
So keep your eyes peeled for the crying dog. ■The crying dog
On the way out the pass, Heikamp
peered at me in the semi-darkness.
PAGE 108-109: Richard Waller fishes for man-
grove snappers almost every weekend during
the summer out of Bridge Side Marina, where
Capt. Kenny Heikamp is based. BELOW: Tre y
Waller shows off a dog snapper he caught.>