FISH PENDANTS

They say we don’t have seasons in Louisiana, but locals know better.

Deer season, duck season, alligator season, and a year-round fishing season, broken into microseasons within.

If you grew up in a family like mine, the calendar followed the rhythm of those seasons. They dictated everything from when your dad would be gone for the weekend to what you’d be eating for dinner.

Those kills and catches are quite literally what we’re made of.

Just like the weather, each season comes with its own gear, and maybe even its own camp. Fishing camps, huntin’ camps… camps where you heard tall tales over late-night card games, long after a fresh meal of whatever the Louisiana wild had gifted you that day.

My stepdad growing up was a boat mechanic, a busy business in Sportsman’s Paradise. ;) When he wasn’t working on boats, he was likely fishing from one; a lot of those times, we kids were in tow.

Some of my best memories are drenched in the scent of muddy river water mixed with oil and gas, and the sound of an old fishing boat engine puttering on a hot aluminum skiff packed with kids and ice chests full of False River fish.

This little collection of Louisiana fish is my homage to the fish in our bones, the ones caught in mud-brown rivers, backwater swamps, and pasture ponds.

• The sac-a-lait – the first one most of us remember catching ourselves
• The largemouth bass – the first of our “big fish” stories
• The catfish – the slimiest, with those wild, long whiskers and terrifying spines
• The redfish – the one on the best menus in town
• The speckled trout – the ones almost too pretty to eat
• The garfish – the not-so-scary river monster
• The flounder – the too-weird-to-be-real, one-sided mystery
• The blenny – the quirky obsession of my favorite fish biologist

Click [here] to discover the full story behind this meaningful design in our blog.