Shrimping On The St. Johns River

As I hoped, shrimping was on the menu yesterday. It seemed that everybody except Katie had something they had to do, so it was just the two of us that headed to the Palatka area in pursuit of shrimp. The ride over is nice, mostly through woods and rural scenery and the September weather was just cool enough to ride with the breeze instead of AC. It was a pleasant ride, made more so by Buffett's "Beaches" album, and good Katie conversation.




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We arrived at the Riverdale boat ramp on the St. Johns River after lunch just as my cousin Rick and my Uncle Richard (expert shrimpers) were pulling in to launch their boat. Serendipity. It wasn't long before we were zipping across the river (about a mile wide at this point) to a cluster of boats that marked the shrimp's position.

The net I'm holding in the photo above is a specially modified castnet that is different from all of my other castnets. It is designed specifically for deep water shrimping. It has a much longer rope than your average castnet and a ribbon of clear plastic running just above the leadline. Both of these modifications are adaptations for deep water. The ribbon helps to keep the net open all the way to the bottom where the shrimp are.

















To use a castnet, you attach (loosely) the net line to your weak hand and throw the net in a spinning motion that causes the net to open as it flies. The lead line is loaded with lead weights that pull the net to the bottom. A net like this will weigh about 30 pounds, bigger nets weigh even more.
Once the net has reached the bottom, you pull the line in which closes the net into a bag full of (hopefully!) tastey shrimp.

















When the St. Johns shrimp come up in the net, they are very dark from being 20-30 feet down in the tannin stained river. Along the way, we caught a few small fish, but mostly it was shrimp, shrimp, and more shrimp.

If we had gotten on the water earlier, we would have caught even more, as everyone we talked to said they were even thicker early in the day. We didn't mind though, because we caught plenty and had a good time.

Katie and I worked out a little system where she was the shrimp gatherer and I the caster. It went something like this ...

She stands aft while I heave the net into the river. (This avoids whacking her in the head with the heavy net leadline)

Then I pull the net back in from the depths and "shuck" the shrimp out by shaking the net up and down over a tub.

The shrimp jump all over the place. Katie chases them down and tosses them in a 5 gallon bucket of water.

The shrimp jump out of the bucket. She rounds them back up.

Then she ducks aft again and I toss the net again.

Over and over ...

We shrimped steady from about 2:00 pm until 6:30 pm. I don't know how many casts that works out to be, but today it feels like about a hundred.

Towards the end of the day, a sinking sun and a sleeping first mate told me it was time to go, even though I was pulling up a dozen nice shrimp per cast .


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(above: a sample, already headed and ready for the freezer)


The drive home was long and dark, but we had an ice chest loaded with fresh shrimp. That helped to ease the tired muscles and I was pretty stoked over our nice haul.

We got home late, about 10:30 pm. I could hear the bed calling my name at that point, but there were 500 shrimp to head. So Mrs. FC and I sat around the kitchen pinching their little heads off and then bagging them for the freezer.

It was a long day, but it was a good one.

Now, let's see ...Tuesday is fried shrimp, Wednesday sounds like blackened shrimp, Thursday maybe shrimp creole, Friday feels like boiled shrimp and an ice cold beer, Saturday ...