Crabbing in Pontchartrain Lake

Catching crab by myself was hard to imagine when I was in my country. When one of my friends said, “Let’s go to catch crabs”, I thought he was joking. However, we bought chicken drumsticks, and also brought fishing tools like nets, strings, and an icebox.

We crossed Pontchartrain after driving 45 minutes from New Orleans, and we finally arrived at a swamp nearby. I wondered how I could catch crabs with only these simple tools, but it was so easy: just hanging a chicken drumstick on the string and throwing to the water was all we needed to do. After waiting for a while, it was the time to check that a crab grabbed the bait. I could feel something was pulling the string. I slowly pulled the string so as not to scare the crab. My friend was waiting with a net to catch the crab when the crab could be seen through the water’s surface. Finally, a vague black thing was appearing little by little. My friend immediately swung the net into the water. There was a big blue crab in the net. We were so excited.

We stayed there around three hours to catch more crabs. Before 3 P.M., our icebox was filled with a bunch of crabs. I felt like I became a skilled fisherman. Maybe we can do some business like selling the crabs to an Asian market.

During dinner time, we invited some friends, and cooked the crabs we caught. The crabs were especially delicious because we caught them ourselves. It was an exciting experience for me because I can fish by myself now. After that day, I began to like New Orleans more.