re: Speaking of CHristmas Freezes! 1983 and 1989.

In 83 our crawfish pond completely froze over. My older brothers cut about a 2’x2’ square of ice out and set it on top. I sat on the square and they were pushing me all over the ice. Best Louisiana sledding ever.

'83 had Cross Lake and Red River freeze over in Shreveport. Never seen that before or since. Not even with the zero degree shite a couple years ago.

Went fishing at Empire with my dad in ‘83. It was 14 degrees went we left. I know, we were crazy but a lot younger. We were excited to go because we always killed the redfish in a dead end canal right off the Empire Canal when it was cold. We couldn’t get in the canal because the ice was so thick. Hard to believe but true.
We had to settle on netting fish that were stunned on top of the water and called it an early day.
I am afraid to think what would have happened to us if we had motor problems!

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How so, boat failures?

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Wind blew out the water in the marsh. Creating mud flats that stranded people.

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Also what killed everyone, getting wet and hypothermia?

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My friend who died was frozen to the floor of the pirogue. I'm always a little sad this time of the year and that was 39 years ago.

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Then I jumped on one piece and right when my feet hit the ice “ KABOOOOM!!!” I felt it in my chest and we looked up and saw black smoke on the horizon. Exxon had blew up

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I was in Baton Rouge for some reason. Saw the smoke. Went to our apartment off Brightside, and water was pouring over all the second floor balconies. Ours was the first call to the water dept.

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83 or 89 freeze don't rememebr, redfish and trout were stunned and floating in Myrtle Grove canal. People were scooping them all up, game wardens was issuing over limit fines.

Fun times

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happened in both, but no fines or tickets in 83 no limits yet then - 89 people were indeed ticketed there and st bernard

Yep, that was all at our place back there. I need to scan all these old pictures. Got some duck hunting pictures and stories from back there that are hard to believe.
That's how I cut my teeth in the aluminum boat building, my ole man, coco and ole man Wall were building boats in our back yard long before the first go devil hull was ever built.

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CaptJJ

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Cool pics. My question is: what caused that area to become permanently flooded, or was it? Did it used to be periodically/seasonally flooded and dry up. Had to be dry at some time to get those trees started.

That swamp was logged/clear cut at the turn of the century. Think the last of the logging wrapped up in the 20s. It was all done by steam power pull line rail. If you know where to look back there, there is still rail artifacts all out in that swamp. You can even see the old pull line runs that would sort of spider out from a central point on current aerial photos once you are aware of what you are looking at.

Yes, it would on most average year dry up. Dredging of oil field location canals and pipelines was the leading cause of it not being allowed to dry up seasonally, combined with different levee projects. That combined with the invasive aquatics, it went from some of the best duck hunting that existed on planet earth, to not being able to kill a duck in a few years.