The full moon glows like the flesh of a Crenshaw melon, pink-orange and succulent. It rises fast, humping above the tin porch roof of our rented log cabin. Once it clears the horizon, it seems to pause as if the swelter and weight of Louisiana's air restrains it from rising any faster. Despite the late hour, the air is still thick and palpable, like that in a sauna.

Photos By: Jack Popowich

We have just arrived here, at the far end of the Venice Marina, the terminus of Route 23 and the farthest point south you can travel by road in Louisiana. Beyond is delta country and the open Gulf of Mexico. We are here to fish a myriad of species, but you do not spend time at the mouth of the Mississippi River without indulging in the sensory delights of New Orleans.

One of my fishing partners, Jeff, is unloading gear that includes 40 lbs. of tackle. He slips into bayou character. "Heard a 'gator gruntin' back there in the swamp," he drawls. Jack, the third in our group, is a professional photographer. He is mesmerized by the moon. He scales the deck and roof of the porch with the skill of a childhood free climber to get shots, dodging a huge black and yellow spider in the process. Jack will do just about anything in pursuit of the ultimate image.

There are hundreds of tortuous miles of bass water—canals, rivers, bayous—from Lake Pontchartrain, where New Orleans sits, south to Venice and the delta. In the more saline areas, closer to the gulf, marine species like red fish and spotted sea trout (specks) appear. The lower delta is one of the premiere locations to sight-fish for reds with fly, light spinning or casting tackle. Out the delta the near-shore gas rigs host bigger reds, specks, Spanish mackerel, blues, jacks and cobia. As you move farther to the deeper water rigs and open water beyond, tarpon, big bull reds, triple tail, bonito, jack crevalle, red snapper, marlin, little tunny and tuna appear. In winter, a natural population of striped bass moves through close to shore. In summer's calm conditions, talented visiting anglers can find fish on their own, but the danger is in navigating the crazy quilt of passes, channels and canals without getting lost. Given time constraints, a guide is the way to go.

Along the blue highway backways of rural Louisianayou can still mark distances by widely spaced juke joint signs. Between them are stretches of brooding, densely vegetated land cut by black water bayous, canals, unlabeled back roads of the you'd-best-know-where-you're-going ilk. Many of them stand a good chance of terminating in some alligator swamp or neighborhood in which you'd rather not linger. A pungent sense of mystery touches everything in this country: Two hundred and fifty years ago it was the perfect breeding ground for the African Dahomey religion called voodoo: beliefs in multiple spirits that occasionally assumed the bodies of believers and were welcomed as inspiration, as power-givers. Laymen call it possession.

Captain Anthony Randazzo is explaining in his rich Louisiana patois that the brown water we see in the marina is an algae bloom caused by weeks of hot, stagnant weather. Anthony is one of the best for bass and near-shore sport fishing. A licensed CPA whose fishing got the best of him, he grew up fishing this country in little Jon boats. The delta country map in his head beats a GPS.

The shores running downriver toward the delta are industrialized by shipping. There are old dying boats and others in use that don't look much better. Rounding a bend, a rush of vegetation—huge elephant ears, willows and flowering aquatics—renders the shipyards a quick memory. As salinity increases, Roseau cane takes over, tall, pale and rattling in the breeze, skeletal fingers groping for the sun.

The delta is a living, breathing creature, and we are in its arterial system, a labyrinth of creeks and passes. Hawks spiral overhead. A flock of ibis with their bills down glitters past. The land drops away and we are out in green water, heading into the rising sun and a ghost city of gas rigs and pilings.

Trout to five pounds eat our jigs as we drift. Then Anthony hitches to a gas rig. He wants to fish deeper, and to do it we tie on two jigs in tandem. You cannot let your rigs crawl to bottom, though, as the web-like network of interconnecting pipes eats tackle like Pac Man in his prime. Now, bigger fish hit. Jeff sticks something that runs for a neighboring rig. He works it away skillfully, then it dives. For several more minutes there's a bullying give-and-take. We see the big red flash once, then something catches in his reel and the line cracks.

Then Anthony hooks up, and this time, it's much different. "Mr. Jerry, start that engine," he says to me. "We got to follow." The fish zigzags between gas rigs and circles around the boat. I jockey the motor in and out of gear, moving ahead slowly as needed. Half an hour later the fish begins to scribe small circles nearer the boat. Twice we see it flash—just a matter of time now. Then a sudden jerk and throb. Anthony reels in a Spanish mackerel! A big school of Spanish passed through, one taking a liking to the second unoccupied jig on Anthony's line and another cutting off the huge red. We breathe a sigh of disappointment and remember the old explanation: "That's fishing."

Later, I watch Jeff working through his impressive selection of tackle. I think that the beautifully crafted imported crankbaits, their little eyes and faces turned to the sky, would have made kill-for amulets and charms for the voodoo queens who ruled their cult worshipers around New Orleans. The weather turns for the worst as the wind builds and the sky goes purple, then indigo. It's time to run, but the eerie light keeps me thinking about voodoo. "Anybody still practice the old voodoo stuff here?" I ask Anthony.

Anthony snorts, "Nah, none of that."

Ask around the French Quarter, though, and you'll hear that voodoo is alive and well. The French Quarter is a feast of bacchanalian revelry, a rich nursery of Creole ethos that spawned a potpourri of art forms. It also nurtured the darker rites and ceremonies that are voodoo.

The polytheistic, snake-worshipping cult of voodoo is traced through the African-Caribbean slave trade and right up to French- and Spanish-ruled Louisiana. By the 1850s, it had reached its height in New Orleans under several powerful practitioners, not the least of whom were a mother-and-daughter pair both named Marie Laveau. The two held reign over worshippers that ranged from lowly workers to many of the New Orleans gentry.

Marie the elder's reign of terror in New Orleans included the dispensing of rival voodoo queens with threats, gris-gris and physical beatings until they fled or agreed to serve her. In the few years before her death she hedged her bets, re-converted to Catholicism, and attended prisoners on death row. Na•ve editorial writers late on the scene described her as saintly, but in her life she was rumored to have danced with snakes, drunk the blood of animal sacrifice, and crept through the streets at night to leave small coffins and conjure balls on the doorsteps of those she cursed. She was even accused of human sacrifice.

In New Orleans, we find a tourist shop called Reverend Zombies. There are wonderful masks, authentic looking gris-gris, and tacky plastic chicken feet for sale. Jack wants pictures. We ask. There is reluctance. A phone call goes to the owner, who operates another shop on St. Ann street, in the old Laveau home. Permission granted, "But no pictures of that," says the store manager, pointing to a dark wooden alter with votive lamps and curious engraving. Voodoo believers found the veneration of saints in Catholicism quite congenial and assimilated many of the trappings of its services. Even though the ceremonies were a far cry from Christian practices, the alter is still no tourist curio.

Jack is climbing up one wall corner, cameras chattering. A Rubenesque young woman sidles over, a reader of futures and fortunes. "You absolutely wouldn't be allowed to photograph in Marie's old place," she tells me. "Something's going on there." I misinterpret, thinking current events. "No, no. I mean both Maries lived there and there's some kind of spiritual conflict going...something." It's believed that Marie the second, one of her mother's 15 illegitimate children, had taken exception to the elder's renunciation of voodoo, and that the two continue a conflict in the nether world.

I have to ask again. "So, you think voodoo is still practiced?"

"Oh my, yes. Plenty. Look, I have an appointment." She indicates several young people waiting for their readings, then flips her business card.

We learn that voodoo still lives, at least in milder forms. The superstitions, the fetishes or gris-gris like small dolls, conjure balls of black wax containing human hair and flesh continue to be used as offerings to "fix" an enemy, change the course of relationships in love, business, even politics. Like any cult, voodoo depends on need, power, failure of conventional wisdom, rebellion, explanation of the unexplainable. And, probably, a fascination with scariness. Those of us immersed in modern ways discount such things as the rubbish of ignorance. Still, how do you explain the potpourri of small superstitions still passed on in contemporary culture?

Jeff has to leave, though he'd rather not, and Jack and I survive a couple nights of industrial-strength partying in New Orleans, threading Bourbon street through the press of wandering bodies, fine restaurants, kids tap dancing for coins and exquisite antique shops. We indulge: First in eating and drinking, then rolling from blues to rock joints, picking up comrades. An undulating female form in silhouette performs a dance behind a screen in one storefront. Revelers in the street request a flash of flesh from ladies on balconies. While I'm waiting for Jack to come down from a balcony at a late hour, a young woman drops her frozen daiquiri, coloring my sandaled feet red.

We need to get out of here, get fishing.


It's a rush through the pre-dawn darkness to find Brandon Ballay of the family-owned Venice Marina waiting in his boat, Aw Heck. A small tree frog jumps from the gunwale to the dock and hops away. Brandon laughs, "That's how I keep spiders down. Putta bunch of tree frogs in the boat; no mo spidahs. Then the frogs get hongry an' take off. I see spadawebs, it's time to go to the woods again fo' frogs."

We are after tarpon, maybe other stuff not far offshore. Brandon's mom, Miss Debbie, who once held the tarpon state record, is aboard. It is windy, now, and the seas are a good four feet.

Rolling tarpon do not eat our trolled plugs. We cross currents, move to other areas, and finally a rod goes off. Debbie grabs it. Expertly she fights the fish that in moments shatters the surface, a good king mackerel. Finally aboard, it bares its dagger teeth. Brandon, off the helm, holds it for photos. Unexpectedly, it contorts. Brandon's grip slips and one treble hook point sinks into his bicep past the barb. The big king and Brandon are now joined. Frantically we work at the plug, the fish arcing, tearing flesh. Finally we unscrew the hook and the king is off. The hook is in deep, flesh fibers protruding from the wound. We use the old monofilament loop trick to finally pluck the hook free. Brandon says, "Let's go fishing." Not an auspicious start. My lately over-sensitized brain offers the thought that the voodoo gods haven't taken kindly to Brandon's use of swamp. The day brings no tarpon.

By 11:00 a.m. the next day, the wind is down and the heat is building. We stop to drift. No tarpon yet. Our shirts are totally dark with sweat. The heat index is well over 100, and it is hateful to think what a thermometer left in the sun would register. "Sunofabitch," Brandon says suddenly. "I live here but this is hot. Let's start the 'air conditioning.' "

The boat's movement provides some relief but the heat is still terrible. Brandon's mate Chad motions into the distance. "Look there," he says, "breaking fish." First school of the day. We cast jigs and slow troll near the spot. Then the radio cracks alive. Someone is hooked up.

We stop in the action area, drifting. I drop a jig, free-spooling it so there will be enough line out when we again get moving. It is eaten. I slam the reel into gear, strike hard three times, and here she comes, big and bright and slab-sided, nearly six feet of living silver muscle flashing in the sun. Everyone is hollering.

The fish crashes down and is up again in seconds, body twisting, head shaking, gill covers doing the unforgettable rattle. Chad, casting a jig on an ancient spin rod, gets bit. Sudden flashes in the water pass the boat. "Oh no," Brandon says. "Spanish." In moments I feel a sharp pluck, and my line goes limp. Cut off by a mackerel just like Anthony's big bull red. Maybe I've been "fixed," too. But Chad's fish is boat-side, luminous, almost ghostly.

Finally, it is over and we are wrecked, limp-muscled, clothes clinging like soaked crepe paper, and we are ready to crash. Much later, having taken advantage of the Ballay family's courtesy and eaten an incredible Louisiana seafood feast, Jack and I stumble back to the cabin where the waning moon has moved high. There's a small breeze. The air is fragrant, lighter. The swamp sighs, dark and brooding. I think that all this time we've touched only the tangible; there is no real explanation for the element of mystery that lies below so much of this place. Maybe that's just as well: The shifts between long days on the water in brain-frying heat and the excesses of the New Orleans nightlife have sentenced me to a state of mindlessness and physical satiation.

Additional Info:

GUIDES & MARINAS NEAR VENICE
Anthony Randazzo runs a guide service that includes complete lodging packages, (504) 656-9940. If you're just after the fish, try Brandon and Brent Ballay at Venice Marina, (504) 534-9357. Other guide services are Lighthouse Lodge, (504) 534-2522; Mike Frenete, (504) 341-4245; Delta Marina, in Empire, (504) 657-9726. If you're looking for fishing adventure elsewhere in Louisiana, try a booking agent for guides, like Southern Safaris, (800) 966-4868.

MOTELS
Looking for a place to crash? Try the Empire Inn Motel, (504) 657-9726, or the Venice Inn Motel, (504) 534-7424.

RESTAURANTS NEAR VENICE
No, you can't fight a big fish on an empty stomach. Try Tom's Place for the best oysters around, Camp Seafood, or Miljak's. —J.G.

Last Updated: Feb 24th, 2006 - 14:18:11
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