Baldone: BP’s attempt to quell future claims is ‘horrible’
July 19, 2011
Floyd Toups
July 21, 2011
There’s a $275,000 fish swimming in Louisiana waters.
The Louisiana Charter Boat Association and BP want you to catch it.
Geaux Fish, a two-month fishing event, begun July 2 and will continue through Sept. 5.
The event’s premise is to promote fishing in state waters in lieu of last year’s Deepwater Horizon oil spill, which halted most of the 2010 fishing season.
“This is basically a tourism promotion to try and get people back on our coast and back fishing,” LCBA President Daryl Carpenter said. “We want people to trust and see that we currently have fish and they are doing well and we’re here to serve them, not just specifically as a charter fishing industry, but also the marinas and everyone else. We’re all ready for them to come back home.”
The way the event’s sponsors seek to have people fall back in love with life on the water is simple: good, ole-fashioned, but fun-natured bribery.
A total of 50 speckled trout have been tagged in Louisiana waters ranging from Lake Calcasieu to the west and Breton Sound to the east.
Those who catch the tagged fish and turn them in are eligible to win a litany or prizes ranging from a new 2011 Ford F-150 Supercab, a 2011 Blazer Bay 2170 boat and also three, separate $5,000 prizes.
The biggest fish, so to speak, is a speckled trout carrying a $250,000 tag, which can be increased 10 percent to $275,000 if the winning angler is fishing with a registered Louisiana charter boat captain when the tagged fish is caught.
“These fish are spread everywhere from the Louisiana-Texas coast to the Louisiana-Mississippi coast,” Carpenter said. “Anyone in the state has an equal chance to get one of these fish and cash in on the prize.”
To sign up for the event, those interested are asked to register at www.geauxfish2011.com.
Anyone above 18 with a valid Louisiana fishing license is eligible to participate in the event.
As of press time, none of the tagged fish have been caught, which means every prize is still out there for anglers looking to win any of the event’s prizes.
But event organizers all agree the event is not about bells and whistles, it’s about reminding people that our state is dubbed Sportsman’s Paradise.
“That’s what we’re hoping for and that’s what was the purpose of this, tourism promotion,” Carpenter said. “Initially, we saw a very large bump in website traffic in people who were interested and of course, all of our customers who were already booked with trips are interested in registering, so they could potentially be eligible to catch one of these fish. Time will tell what all it will bring to the coast, but it looks like it’s being successful at this point.”
The need for that reminder came after the oil spill dumped millions of barrels of crude into the Gulf of Mexico and virtually ruined the 2010 recreational fishing season.
Dozens of rodeos in the Tri-parish area and hundreds more statewide were halted as fishing waters were battered with oil and closed to fishing.
Carpenter said as soon as the spill occurred, BP expressed interest in “doing whatever they could” to help promote fishing again once waters were deemed safe for fishing.
“They came to us early as soon as the well was capped wanting to do a promotional event,” the LCBA president said. “We feel like this is a great first step for our coast.”
But the oil conglomerate’s help hasn’t restored fishing to its pre-spill levels and Carpenter said charter fishing was still nearly slashed in half compared to pre-spill numbers in June, one of the most prosperous fishing months.
Brighter days seem to be ahead, however, as Carpenter said July looks “a little better.”
That, he believes, is attributed to events like Geaux Fish, which are easing people’s nerves about fishing in Louisiana.
The fish seem to be biting, too.
That always helps.
“Inshore, the catch is a little bit down because we’re dealing a little bit with rising waters from the Mississippi River flood and that whole situation,” Carpenter said. “But offshore, the catch has been tremendous and we’ve seen an abundance of fish, no matter what our federal regulators have been telling us.”
So head back out to the water with a fishing pole in hand and your favorite bait in your tackle box.
Who knows, it might be the most profitable fishing trip of your lifetime.
“Why else wouldn’t you come? Money speaks and you’ve got a chance to come out here and win a whole lot of good prizes,” Carpenter said. “We encourage everyone to come to us and we’ll all have a good time.”
An angler hauls in his catch on an offshore charter trip. To boost charter fishing in Louisiana, the LCBA has teamed with BP to host a two-month rodeo where anglers can try and catch 50 tagged speckled trout. The top prize is $275,000 for the most highly sought fish. COURTESY PHOTO
