ABOUT THE EPISODE 

Guest Clint Johnson, the vice president of the Louisiana Trappers and Alligator Hunters Association, joins hosts Brady and Anna on Louisiana’s Playground to discuss how the fur and wildlife industry affects Southwest Louisiana. Johnson dishes on how professional trappers help the state’s economy as well as maintain its eroding coastline. In addition, find out some of the best spots to hunt, fish and crab in the area! 

ABOUT THE GUEST 

Clint Johnson is the vice president of the Louisiana Trappers and Alligator Hunters Association and a Member of the Louisiana Fur Advisory Council. He’s a Louisiana native and he’s been an avid outdoorsman since childhood. He enjoys hunting, fishing, and trapping and has even been featured in The Louisiana Sportsmen Magazine

ENVIE EATS

Botsky’s has been serving premium hotdogs and burgers in downtown Lake Charles since 2013. The restaurant prides itself on serving high-quality ingredients along with build-your-own creativity to offer you a unique dining experience. Botsky’s serves dogs made from Kobe beef, turkey, pork, duck, Beyond Sausage, and even alligator! With over 35 different toppings offering virtually an unlimited number of combinations, you can always try something new.  

RESOURCES MENTIONED 

TRANSCRIPT

 

Clint Johnson:           [00:00:02] There's a little bit of everything here. You want to go out in the marsh, catch redfish, catch alligators or if you want to go shoot wood ducks, in the trees. You have it all of it.

 

Brady Renard:           [00:00:17] Thanks for joining us on Louisiana's Playground Podcast, Your roadmap to all things. Lake Charles Louisiana. I'm Brady Renard.

 

Anna Strider: [00:00:24] And I'm Anna Strider. We are here to bring you Episode 7 of Louisiana's Playground where we are discussing the many different ways to play here in Southwest Louisiana.

 

Brady Renard:           [00:00:33] Our guest today: Clint Johnson. He's on the Fur and Wildlife for Advisory Council as well as serving on big-time seats on other different associations involving the industry and with the Fur and Wildlife Festival upcoming in January. We thought it was a good time to bring him on and really discuss all of the aspects of the industry and how it plays into Louisiana, Louisiana culture and Southwest Louisiana as a whole. Before we get to him, as we do each week, our Envie Eats segment.

 

Anna Strider: [00:01:06] The segment where Brady and I head out to a local restaurant in the area and we order up the most delicious food on the menu and then we share it with you all, what it's about where you can find it and why you need to go.

 

Brady Renard:           [00:01:19] We call it a taste of Southwest Louisiana. And this week we head downtown Lake Charles for the first time really deep in the heart of downtown. We go to Botsky’s.

 

Anna Strider: [00:01:29] And Botsky’s is a premium hotdog restaurant serving many different types of dogs right there in the heart of downtown they are located inside the former Charleston Hotel parking garage. So the atmosphere when you walk in is kind of this hip almost hole in the wall. You have the exposed brick and an open kitchen area where you can watch the extreme hotdogs be prepared.

 

Brady Renard:           [00:01:53] Extreme hotdogs.

 

Anna Strider: [00:01:55] That's what they are. They're loaded to the top with all sorts of goodies.

 

Brady Renard:           [00:02:00] There are seven types of different hotdogs to get from your classic beef dog to Kobe beef. There's turkey, alligator, smoked pork, smoked duck and even the beyond sausage. And then from there is when the options really open up over 25 types of toppings or sauces from bacon to eggs, chili, mac and cheese, cream cheese. There's other types of cheese, like Swiss, feta and pepper Jack. I'm running out of breath talking about all the different toppings. Then you get to like the veggie section, right? So you could really make this hotdog into something almost unrecognizable to a hotdog because it's piled a mile high.

 

Anna Strider: [00:02:44] It really makes for a unique dining experience. But if you're someone like myself, I like to try one of the ones they've already put together. So I went into my German roots and chose the Dixie and that has an alligator sausage on it, which I know we've talked about. I do love alligator and this hit the spot. It was topped with Swiss cheese and Cajun kraut. So it was a sauerkraut with a little bit of a kick to it, grilled onions and a strong rich creole mustard and just overflowing on the sides. It was absolutely phenomenal.

 

Brady Renard:           [00:03:18] And just because they are so versatile, I actually didn't go with the hotdog. I decided to go with their burgers, which I typically do because I really, really like their spicy bacon burger. It's a beef patty of course, Pepper Jack cheese, fried jalapenos, some bacon. Then the real thing that ties it all together, a chipotle ketchup that tastes a little like ketchup and a lot like flavor as I kind of like to say. So it all puts it together really well and it's a nice burger with a bunch of different textures and flavors to it and it all really comes together and they have good hand-cut fries there on the side that pairs well with typical ketchup, I feel like. It's overall just a really fun meal. The type of place where you have to kind of pull out your camera just because you want to show other people what you ended up having to eat.

 

Anna Strider: [00:04:03] Their menu has different nods to the area. One of our team members who dined with us she got the Flamethrower, which is one of the local bands here and that's a nod to the band and that had smoked sausage, avocado, pickle spears, jalapeno, pepper jelly, just so many different things and her hotdog was literally coming out both sides of the bun and just expanded out. It was rich over top. And just another great aspect when you walk into the restaurant. It's a great quick spot to grab a meal, whether that's lunch or dinner and you're just steps away from the heart of downtown. They're shopping right in there as well as if you head south towards the lakefront, there's Millennium Park right there so you can go and stretch your feet a little bit after having such a great meal. The Civic Center, if you're in town for a local event and of course our beloved lakefront Boardwalk area. So just a really great location in downtown for a place to indulge in a premium hotdog.

 

Brady Renard:           [00:05:00] Yeah, I really feel like it's one of those no-strings-attached places like you just come in and it's just fun. It's just a nice, relaxed, cool environment to eat something a little bit out of the ordinary. Not many places you can get an alligator hotdog.

 

Anna Strider: [00:05:13] So head on into Botsky’s. Give them a try and let us know what you think.

 

Brady Renard:           [00:05:17] From a great meal to a great guest, we welcome on Clint Johnson on the podcast. He's the Vice President of the Louisiana Trappers and Alligator Hunters Association. He's also a member of the Louisiana for Advisory Council. He's a Louisiana native and has been an avid outdoorsman since childhood. He enjoys hunting, fishing and trapping and he's even been featured in the Louisiana Sportsman Magazine. Welcome to the show, Clint.

 

Clint Johnson:           [00:05:41] Appreciate you having me.

 

Anna Strider: [00:05:42] We know that Southwest Louisiana has so many great things to offer as far as our culinary experiences and our cultural experiences and our outdoors experiences, which is what we're really going to be talking about today. Before we get started, we're going to ask you a few questions to get to know you a little bit better. Are you ready?

 

Clint Johnson:           [00:05:58] I reckon.

 

Anna Strider: [00:05:59] Alrighty. First one crawfish or gumbo?

 

Clint Johnson:           [00:06:02] Crawfish.

 

Anna Strider: [00:06:03] I choose crawfish too.

 

Brady Renard:           [00:06:04] Why? What is up with the not-gumbo love? Why crawfish?

 

Clint Johnson:           [00:06:09] I just prefer the crawfish. I'm not big on rice actually.

 

Brady Renard:           [00:06:13] That's a big hurdle to get to the gumbo if you're not eating the rice.

 

Anna Strider: [00:06:18] Alright, poolside or beachside?

 

Clint Johnson:           [00:06:21] Pool.

 

Anna Strider: [00:06:22] I was thinking you were going to say beachside was more the outdoors.

 

Clint Johnson:           [00:06:26] Not big on the whole sand everywhere.

 

Brady Renard:           [00:06:28] Once again rice and sand, two big hurdles to enjoy the other two.

 

Anna Strider: [00:06:33] Concert or comedy show?

 

Clint Johnson:           [00:06:36] Comedy show.

 

Brady Renard:           [00:06:37] Why comedy show then?

 

Clint Johnson:           [00:06:38] Because I follow a lot of comedians online and that's just kind of what I like. I like to laugh.

 

Brady Renard:           [00:06:45] 100% agree. So now that we know you a little bit better and we get to see how you enjoy Louisiana and you enjoy Louisiana's Playground more specifically, let's talk the fur and wildlife industry, which I know encompasses a lot more than maybe even the name kind of indicates what all is under that umbrella?

 

Clint Johnson:           [00:07:06] So when you talk about the Louisiana wildlife and fur industry, you have everything from commercial fishing to basically commercial trapping where you're trapping for the fur. You have nuisance trappers where if say you have an animal in your house, that's still considered a commercial activity to have some like, professional trapper come out and remove that animal from your house.

 

Anna Strider: [00:07:33] Like if I had a raccoon under my porch or something.

 

Clint Johnson:           [00:07:35] Correct.

 

Anna Strider: [00:07:36] Interesting.

 

Brady Renard:           [00:07:37] And so with that it makes sense why there's so many partnerships then with the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries. And when I mean partnerships, I'm talking from the Fur Council to the LTAHA which as we mentioned earlier you were VP of.

 

Clint Johnson:           [00:07:52] Correct. There's also an Alligator Advisory Council. And the purpose of the Fur Council and the Alligator Advisory Council is anytime a law is introduced that pertains to either fur or alligators, the council for either one makes suggestions on how is this law going to affect whether it's the commercial trappers, the commercial alligator hunters, the recreational trappers or the recreational alligator hunters. How is this going to affect them in a negative or positive way? How is it going to affect the actual population of the animals that were going after?

 

Brady Renard:           [00:08:35] And on those councils, is it mostly commercial trappers, hunters, fishers? Or is it a mix of both commercial and recreational?

 

Clint Johnson:           [00:08:45] So on the Fur Advisory Council, it's a mixture of landowners, coastal landowners, there's a House and Senate designee and then there's trappers from throughout the state. You have north, south, central because every part of the state is different. You have people from those different sections to represent those different sets of trappers or alligator hunters.

 

Anna Strider: [00:09:12] I find it really important that you all are considering all the different components and that these advisory councils are in place to make sure that those lawmakers are educated about what the industry is and how it's impacted and that that communication from the law is also getting back down to those who are actually out there performing the hunts.

 

Clint Johnson:           [00:09:35] Right.

 

Brady Renard:           [00:09:36] For a state called Sportsman's Paradise, can you put into words how important the industry is to the state?

 

Clint Johnson:           [00:09:43] It's very important. There's a huge economic impact. If you look at just the neutral program itself for the coastal restoration program, it's funded federally. But the state puts it on, there's over $1 million paid out to these trappers and hunters every year to remove these nutria through the bounty system to remove in the nutria. It’s $6 a tail or something like that. But they pay all this money to save our coastline from the new track but you go to every different species that's harvested for the fur and everything has a numerical value. And since inception, up until about two years ago, every fur that was shipped out of the state, the trapper or fur dealer that shifted out of the state had to pay a severance tax to the state. That creates an income for the state.

 

Anna Strider: [00:10:41] That's huge.

 

Brady Renard:           [00:10:42] Yeah. And something that I find really interesting you had mentioned the nutria an invasive species not native to Louisiana was brought over and is really damaging our coastline. And so obviously those conservation efforts to save the coastline, a lot of it goes with trying to control the population of the nutria, and on another instance alligator. At one point, the people of Louisiana had hunted them nearly to extinction. But conservation efforts there brought the population back to being the number one population density in the entire country.

 

          So those are two conservation efforts that we've kind of seen that have become more successful over time.

 

Clint Johnson:           [00:11:20] Right? So when the alligators went so far down to where there was hardly any left, the state decided that, okay, it's time to do something about it. We can't keep going like this. They're dinosaurs. If you don't have alligators, that's a predator that's going to allow other things to start overpopulating and there's a lot of things we can talk about population control from different species and how they interact.

 

          So that's one of the things the state has done is they created the alligator farms were these farmers they take certain eggs from the wild, incubate them, they're allowed to keep a percentage of them and then the rest after their hatch has to be returned to the wild. So it ensures that these alligators that these eggs can hatch and go back to the wild and not have nest predators eat all the eggs up.

 

Brady Renard:           [00:12:20] Yeah. And I think it's important. I've learned a little bit about alligators recently having gone to Gator Chateau and Jennings, there's a couple of different interesting tidbits with it. There's a low percentage of actual eggs laid in the wild survive because of those predators. So obviously that is something going in but an interesting tidbit with it as well is that there is no negative impact on an alligator raised in captivity up to about two years old. Put it back in the wild. Its instincts kick in and it doesn't have negative repercussions for introducing them back in the wild which is why the conservation efforts have worked so well.

 

Anna Strider: [00:12:59] It's a true natural cycle of life here and just the aiding on both sides of it that there is the component where there's a conservation and also the control aspect of it.

 

Brady Renard:           [00:13:11] We've seen how it's affected both the land and a few of the animals. How does it affect the people here?

 

Clint Johnson:           [00:13:18] To give you an example of, I've got the number of licensed trappers in this state. So in 2020-21 season, there was 3,127 trappers. So each one of these trappers they're out there they pay a license fee and all that goes back into education. The trapper's license fee goes to the fur council, the Fur Advisory Council to be used for education purposes and fees from the over 3000 people. You're giving it back to the state to be used to educate whether it's children in elementary school about Louisiana, Louisiana fur, Louisiana alligators to actual new trappers. There's a joint venture between the trapping association and the Fur Advisory Council to host free workshops. It doesn't cost anything to go to them. You can learn how to trap, why to trap, as well as get a kit to get you started to do it safely and humanely.

 

Anna Strider: [00:14:31] That's so important to have and for the community to know that we have and those interested or even you said you have been doing this as a child. If you don't have that legacy to kind of show you the ropes, but you are interested because you are from here or maybe you've moved here and it is something that's really unique to Louisiana especially Southwest Louisiana.

 

Clint Johnson:           [00:14:55] Right, they have lots of nutria here, lots of otter. It's one of the last places in Louisiana that you can still find decent populations of muskrat, the nutria rat being an invasive species. For the most part, they've run out the muskrat. A muskrat is a lot smaller than the nutria and they're eating the same things so they can't compete. Southwest Louisiana is one of the last places you can really get on a good muskrat population.

 

Anna Strider: [00:15:23] And is that due to the control aspect of the nutria?

 

Clint Johnson:           [00:15:27] The nutria just hasn't got that stronghold in some of the spots yet, but they are here and I don't see it being a whole lot longer before they run that muskrat completely out.

 

Brady Renard:           [00:15:40] You had mentioned how Southwest Louisiana was different in terms of the muskrat. How else is Southwest Louisiana different than other parts of the state? I think one thing to kind of look at is the abundance of opportunities for us. We have fresh water, we have brackish water, we have saltwater, we have wooded areas. It seems like every habitat to fish hunt trap we have it.

 

Clint Johnson:           [00:16:05] There's a little bit of everything here, whether you're looking for a, you want to go out in the marsh, catch redfish, catch alligators or if you want to go shoot wood ducks in a swamp, in the trees, you have it all over here. There's a lot of opportunity for a lot of different things in Southwest Louisiana.

 

Brady Renard:           [00:16:27] Is it the most diverse in the state?

 

Clint Johnson:           [00:16:29] If it's not, it's close. There's pretty much everything here. About the only place that would really compare it to be the Atchafalaya Basin. But most of that's floodplain as to where here it kind of stays the same for the most part year round.

 

Brady Renard:           [00:16:46] And I wanted to ask too you had mentioned the education, why is that such a focus of the councils of the associations and basically anyone with any type of authority there in the industry?

 

Clint Johnson:           [00:17:03] Well trapping is we call it a dying art. It affects so many people whether they realize it or not. Kind of like we were saying earlier, animals if they're not controlled in some manner, whether it's hunting, trapping, either way, they start to become overpopulated. Well, if nature takes its course and animals are overpopulated, nature's way of population control is diseases.

 

Anna Strider: [00:17:36] That's definitely not something that we want in the air.

 

Clint Johnson:           [00:17:39] It's not because those same diseases that are in wild animals start going getting into your pets. Then if you have the predators when they get overpopulated because there are places where there is no trapping anymore it's been outlawed and they have predators that are going in people's backyards and taking their pets, they're attacking people. So we want to prevent that. We want to keep that balance.

 

Anna Strider: [00:18:06] Imbalance is difficult in many different aspects. But especially with something that is truly the cycle of life in so many different components of dealing with people, dealing with wildlife, and dealing with so many different types. I think that's really what makes it unique. I say that all the time though, everything's unique around here.

 

Brady Renard:           [00:18:27] Well it is and that's what I think makes Southwest Louisiana so special and so different than other parts of the state because we're so unique in so many different aspects. The Fur and Wildlife industry obviously included with that. We mentioned education, but beyond education, it seems like there's also a focus for safety and that we talked about the conservation. Then with that you kind of touched on permits. But how many different types of permits are there within both kind of the hunting and the fishing realm?

 

Clint Johnson:           [00:18:57] So hunting there's a lifetime hunting and fishing which covers you for everything except for commercial license. When you get into the commercial license, there's hundreds of different licenses that are available. But for the basic recreational stuff for fishing, you're going to have a separate saltwater license as well as your basic fishing for freshwater. There's different gear licenses whether you want to use hoop nets or crab traps, hunting licenses, there's archery licenses, there's trapping license, there's a primitive license.

 

Anna Strider: [00:19:41] What is a primitive license?

 

Clint Johnson:           [00:19:43] So primitive license is what we used to consider muzzleloader. But with some of the newer regulations, it's not true muzzle loaders anymore, but it's they still consider primitive because it's single shot, but it can be straight wall cartridges.

 

Brady Renard:           [00:19:57] And there's different seasons obviously for each summer or strictly primitive season where for certain weeks are booked just for primitive hunting.

 

Clint Johnson:           [00:20:05] Right. You have certain just like archery only, where you can only use archery equipment. With archery only in some areas, the state is divided into different areas for deer hunting. Certain areas will allow you to shoot bucks and does during the archery season without any kind of restriction. So there's different regulations for different areas. If somebody wants to get into the hunting and stuff, they really need to look at their area and call the Wildlife and Fisheries office to make sure that you're doing it right.

 

Anna Strider: [00:20:44] With so many different types of permits that one can acquire, what is the purpose of so many of them?

 

Clint Johnson:           [00:20:52] One thing having these different permits allows the state to do is keep track of how many people in the state are actually commercial turtle trapping and that allows them to set the regulations. So there's no overharvest. We want to keep that balance. By keeping tight records on who's doing what, what's being taken from the wild, what needs to be put back to the wild, what do we need to stop harvesting, what do we need to put these more restrictions on, what can we lessen restrictions on.

 

Anna Strider: [00:21:26] That's so important like you were saying with the conservation component education being such a focus of the industry as a whole to be able to truly keep tabs on what's happening to make informed decisions about how to best impact the state and all of the wildlife and the people too because I think that's really important. When you're talking about some of these different aspects, there's so many times that we've been talking about some of the food on the menus and how it is turtle, alligator, duck, these different components that make our menus that people love so much so unique. This is how those different meats are able to be served.

 

Brady Renard:           [00:22:08] Yeah. And it's obviously shaped our entire cuisine here. That this industry people talk about how good Louisiana food is. Well, a lot of it has come from our ability to be hunters and trappers. The Nova Scotia's that came down that became Cajuns had to adapt to the land and so it's kind of a nice symbiotic relationship almost that we've tried our best to create it seems like with the different laws and regulations to try and keep the balance there.

 

Clint Johnson:           [00:22:40] Right and it keeps things from going to waste. If you can harvest an animal, say for the fur like a nutria rat, it's an invasive species. We can harvest him for the fur, we can also using this table fare. So nothing's going to waste there.

 

Brady Renard:           [00:22:57] Speaking of how diverse and how unique our area is, it really makes the most sense that the fur and wildlife festival, a celebration of the industry that takes place the second week of January every year happens right here in Southwest Louisiana in Cameron Parish. And after not being here last year, it's nice to be back I'm sure.

 

Clint Johnson:           [00:23:23] The Fur Festival has been around since the ‘50s. And some people say even before the ‘50s. At the Fur festival, there's all these different events that go through the different ways of life for the region all packed into one festival.

 

Anna Strider: [00:23:41] With it being kind of known as one of the oldest and coldest festivals because it is in January, there's so many different pieces of the festival that go on from a gumbo cook-off. I know we're talking about food and we love food here in Southwest Louisiana. But also there's a duck and goose calling I've heard about. I'm sure that's fun to listen to. Then there's the pageants of course Louisiana is really known for the pageants that we have here in different representation across the state in different industries. Then is there an oyster shucking contest?

 

Clint Johnson:           [00:24:15] Yes, they have an oyster shucking contest. They have muskrat and nutria skinning speed competitions, which is really cool to watch. Some of them guys they can take that for off pretty quick.

 

Brady Renard:           [00:24:30] Do you participate in any of the contests?

 

Clint Johnson:           [00:24:31] I do not.

 

Anna Strider: [00:24:32] You’re there for the entertainment portion.

 

Clint Johnson:           [00:24:35] I’ll go for the entertainment.

 

Brady Renard:           [00:24:36] I had read that some of the history of the Fur and Wildlife Festival started because a Louisiana resident had finished, like, top five in the entire country in a skinning contest that they had to kind of a national thing and they came back and was like, why don't we have –

 

Anna Strider: [00:24:52] Our own version of it?

 

Brady Renard:           [00:24:52] – our own basic version of this? Am I right there?

 

Clint Johnson:           [00:24:56] Yeah, there was a, I believe it was a representative from Maryland they challenged a guy from Louisiana and he skinned -- it was so many muskrats and so many minutes or so many seconds or something like that. They just kind of went from there.

 

Anna Strider: [00:25:15] And came back and started our own Southwest Louisiana tradition. Does this festival have people who are primarily in the industry here? Is it really a time for folks from all around the state to come together and celebrate all the different aspects of the industry?

 

Clint Johnson:           [00:25:33] There’s people from not only all around the state. There’s people from other states that come. In fact, I talked to a guy earlier today that he actually won one of the gumbo contest down there. He told me that you meet a lot of people from Maryland that come down because it's part of their history as well. So they come down to enjoy it. It's just so you meet all kinds of people there.

 

Anna Strider: [00:26:03] That's really cool.

 

Brady Renard:           [00:26:04] For someone that's in the area ever during that second week of January, can one expect while there we kind of see some of the different contests and stuff? What is the experience of going to the Fur and Wildlife Festival like?

 

Clint Johnson:           [00:26:17] You're going to meet some really nice people, eat some really good food and listen to some good music.

 

Anna Strider: [00:26:25] What more could you ask for?

 

Brady Renard:           [00:26:26] That sounds like a pretty good time.

 

Anna Strider: [00:26:27] Put it on your calendar, Brady.

 

Brady Renard:           [00:26:31] It’s me writing.

 

Anna Strider: [00:26:33] So I personally must admit I've been crabbing. I've been fishing but I have yet to go hunting. If I was to choose to go hunting in the area, where would I go?

 

Clint Johnson:           [00:26:44] So if you're new to hunting, in this area there's a lot of waterfowl guides that you could go hook up with. That would be one of the best ways to start. They know the area because you don't want to get lost in the marsh if you've never been out there.

 

Anna Strider: [00:26:59] I certainly do not.

 

Brady Renard:           [00:27:03] Would you say probably that waterfowl is probably our best hunting here in the area?

 

Clint Johnson:           [00:27:08] Yeah, I think waterfowl is probably the number one hunting in the area because there's so much marshland and that's where all the waterfowl come to the winter. They feed in there.

 

Brady Renard:           [00:27:22] From there something that is really exclusive to obviously the salt water and being on the coastline crabbing. It's something that is really become a way of life for everyone in Louisiana almost at some point. And we've got a lot of great spots to go crabbing down here as well, huh?

 

Clint Johnson:           [00:27:42] Right. You can go down to Hackberry and just about pick a ditch anywhere and go pick up crabs and certain times the year you can pick them up just crossing the road down there.

 

Brady Renard:           [00:27:52] The best part of crabbing to me is that it requires practically nothing. A string, a net and a piece of meat and you can go crabbing. It doesn't quite have that barrier to entry that hunting or even fishing to some extent has.

 

Anna Strider: [00:28:08] There is a permit that you do need to get to go crabbing. It's still all the different components that make it an easy fun activity down on the Creole Nature Trail there. But again, going back to that, being able to kind of keep track of who's out there and the mountain people who are grabbing.

 

Clint Johnson:           [00:28:25] Right. And that goes back to originally there was no license or anything anybody could just go out there and start catching crabs. There's a limit on crabs so you don't over-harvest. But the state had no idea how many people was going down there and removing these crabs. So now they're able to keep track of that.

 

Brady Renard:           [00:28:48] Finally we've talked fishing on the podcast before. A lot of great spots obviously here in the area with us having all three types of water. Right? The combo, the fresh and the salt water. We have great guide services as well. Places like Big Lake. Where are some places that you'd suggest someone not familiar with the area to go through a pole in the water at?

 

Clint Johnson:           [00:29:10] There's several accesses down around Hackberry, you can park at a boat launch and go and catch redfish and speckled trout just off the bank. There's some docks down there. If you want to take a charter out to Big Lake and go catch redfish or any kind of salt water, there's some guides out in Lacassine to go bass fishing. There's alligator gar in the marsh.

 

Anna Strider: [00:29:38] Those are huge.

 

Brady Renard:           [00:29:39] Those are terrifying creatures.

 

Clint Johnson:           [00:29:42] They are.

 

Brady Renard:           [00:29:46] Uglier than sin too.

 

Anna Strider: [00:29:48] Hey no.

 

Brady Renard:           [00:29:49] Have you seen them?

 

Anna Strider: [00:29:50] I have.

 

Brady Renard:           [00:29:51] Look a garfish is a fish that only a mother fish could love.

 

Anna Strider: [00:29:58] What a compliment to the garfish. I know in the community too, we have a number of bodies of water right here in Lake Charles that you might not be able to catch that redfish but you can cast a line on the lakefront. You can go out to Prien Lake Park.

 

Brady Renard:           [00:30:16] Or go out to my new favorite spot, Riverside Park, North lake Charles. A few great piers and stuff to kind of tall south of. I'm definitely plugging that as often as I can. I love that park.

 

Anna Strider: [00:30:30] But just again, going back to that, the diversity of experiences while still having I want to go fishing. What kind of fishing? There's so many different things that you can do here.

 

Clint Johnson:           [00:30:41] You can also go bow fishing around here. That's a good thing.

 

Anna Strider: [00:30:45] Oh that’s on my bucket list. Do we have charters?

 

Clint Johnson:           [00:30:47] There are lots of charters here especially when you get around Big Lake and into the marsh. There's a lot of bow fishing charters, go get that big alligator gar with bow.

 

Anna Strider: [00:30:57] Well Clinton, it's been an absolute pleasure talking to you. I've learned so much about the industry and why it's so impactful here to Southwest Louisiana and I've got a few things on my bucket list that I'll be working on in 2023. Bow fishing being one of them. Thank you for being here today.

 

Clint Johnson:           [00:31:14] I appreciate y'all having me.

 

Brady Renard:           [00:31:15] Thanks again to Clint for joining us here on the show and thank you for taking time out of your day to join us here on the podcast. If you enjoyed the show, please leave us a rating or review wherever you listen to your podcast.

 

Anna Strider: [00:31:29] Each rating and review helps us be able to grow our audience and further be able to bring you the unique stories of Southwest Louisiana. Go over to visitlakecharles.org/podcast for more episodes, details on where to eat and drink and events happening this weekend. I'm Anna Strider.

 

Brady Renard:           [00:31:46] And I'm Brady Renard. Thanks again for coming to play at Louisiana's Playground. Stay tuned.

 

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