Cookin’ on Hwy. 1

When I was little, my dad started me out fishing on Lake Boeuf, which is a big shallow lake near Raceland that is surrounded by freshwater marsh. The lure of Lake Boeuf was probably how close it was to our house, but it’s also easy to catch bass, perch and sac-au-lait in Lake Boeuf (sac-au-lait, or “sack of milk,” is the Cajun French name for crappie, or white perch). And it spills into all of these little canals and bayous and swamps, and eventually into Lake Des Allemands, the Catfish Capital of the Universe.

I think of those days every time I pass the Theriot Canal Boat Launch on Hwy. 308.

You don’t need to following fishing reports to know when the fish are biting in Lake Boeuf. You just need to look at how many vehicles are in the parking lot at the launch. March to June — even early July — the lot is almost always full.

When my boys were little, my wife, Cindy, and I took them to Grand Isle. My fatherin-law, Mr. Anthony Rouse Sr., had a camp down Apple Lane. We’d go out in the boat to fish by the rocks in the Gulf of Mexico, or run down to the passes of Four Bayous and Coup Abel; we also fished north of the island in Barataria Bay as well. My buddy Phil and I used to take his kids and mine fishing to Dularge and Cocodrie, just south of Houma. It was easy for the kids to reach their limits there. Some days we’d have to run out pretty far to find clear water, though. My oldest, Nick, would complain that Phil and I just wanted to run our boats…well, that may have been a little bit true... Those were some good times we had, for sure!

I ran into Phil in the parking lot at one of our stores in Thibodaux a few months back. His boat was hitched to his truck. Phil had been fishing but not catching, and he complained about spending the whole day out there around Dularge just burning gas.

I told him I was going inside to catch my limit in our Seafood Department.

There’s always something fresh and local on ice at the store — drum, catfish, tuna — all caught in the deep waters of the Gulf. We buy as much fish out of the Gulf of Mexico as we can get our hands on, and we always have. And we don’t just have the best local Gulf seafood in our stores; you can catch salmon and flounder from Alaska, and steelhead from Idaho. Our certified seafood experts will gut, scale and dress any whole fish for you. They can even fillet it for you.

I caught the red snapper on our cover in the Seafood Department at our Rouses Market on Baronne Street in New Orleans. We cooked it whole with the head intact, which keeps the fish full of flavor. You can use a fork or spoon to scrape the flesh off a whole roasted fish, and the bone will peel right off. Or you can use your hands, like our art director, Eliza, did. She picked the fish on our cover clean as soon as we finished the photo shoot. It was like a cat got ahold of it.