Anyone here ever catch river shrimp back in the day?

quote:

---

With either a wooden "shrimp box" or a wire mesh "shrimp trap"?

Used to do that with my dad as a kid. Was all kinds of fun and the shrimp were pretty tasty back then. You had to watch out for the drop offs in the river but it was good times.

I'm not sure I'd eat anything out of the river in this area now.

*Thought about putting this on the Outdoor Board but it felt like mostly a nostalgia thing. Plus I very rarely go there. If it belongs better there, mods feel free to move it or let me know and I will.

---

We had catfish lines and shrimp boxes in a couple of different places in Belle Chasse, I can remember going with my Dad to the old Purina Store on Lafayette St. in Gretna to get cottonseed meal for the shrimp boxes...

my first job was as a 3 year old bailing out the boat (which MIGHT have passed a Coast Guard inspection on the day it was built)...

our lines were fairly heavy gauge wire tied to the bank with a piece of broken concrete on the other end thrown into the middle of the river...had a 3 or 4 foot piece of nylon twine with a Pfluger fishhook about every 10 feet of wire line...

I think the last year we ran the lines was 1963 or 4...wouldn't go anywhere near the river now

I use to go down to a ditch down the road from my house.. With some thick string and a piece of bacon I would catch a few crawfish and there was a local fish store that would buy blue crawfish... I would catch them every once in awhile and go get $1 for it..

The Mississippi is a lot cleaner these days. I've seen guys catch Striped Bass (the saltwater estuarine kind) at Plaquemine.

My grandfather dos it. He had 5 daughters and they all helped him as kids. He would sell river shrimp and pecans

I used to watch a man do it years ago. I think more people have sense enough not to try it these days. People took more risks in the 60's. So much easier just to buy shrimp even though they are not river shrimp.

Whats the difference in River shrimp VS Gulf or Bay shrimp?

No but I used to catch a lot of mountain oysters

quote:

---

Whats the difference in River shrimp VS Gulf or Bay shrimp?

---

River shrimp are a little smaller than lake or gulf shrimp. And they were brown, probably from living in the muddy Mississippi River water (any white articles of clothing you had on wouldn't stay white very long in the river).

I think the "dried shrimp" you can still find in small bags in some stores may be small river shrimp.