FROM LOUISIANA SEAFOOD NEWS | Nov 4, 2012
by Ed Lallo/Newsroom Ink
At times Douglas Olander feels he has built a living from the Rodney Dangerfield of the fish world, Black Drum– it just get no respect. Thirty years ago the Louisiana Black Drum, a fish that is found in near shore coastal waters, couldn’t be given away, let alone sold. Even when his wife Chrystel and he founded their fledging business in 2001, the market price for black drum was only around a half dollar a pound.
The Olander’s Big D Seafood wholesale and retail business has come a long way from those early beginnings.
“We started out with hardly nothing,” said the tall lanky fisherman dressed in white rubber boots and red rubber bib overalls. “In the beginning we worked as a “mom and pop” operation out of a pickup truck. We had to trailer our boat 25 miles to a Chevron station in Burns Point – all so we could go fish for a product not a lot of people wanted.”
Sitting 15 miles south of New Iberia just north of the Intercostal Canal at the Port of West St. Mary, Big D Seafood has evolved from the pickup truck into a full service commercial marina; with boat launch, crab and shrimp dockside sales, fuel, a small marina for commercial fishing boats, and of course the black drum landing operations.
“We are right in the middle of all the good fishing,” Oldander explained. We have Vermilion Bay, Atchafalaya Bay and the East and West Cote Blanche Bays all within easy reach of our boats.”
“Ninety-five percent of the fish that we catch and market is the black drum. It is a ground fish that feeds on oysters, clams and other shellfish.”
He admits that during the past 12 years he has come along ways with black drum. It is a firm fish almost identical to a red fish in texture and taste.
“A lot of people go boogaloo about the red fish,” Olander explained. “You would be surprised about the taste and texture of the black drum, it is almost the same taste, and some say it is even better.”
The black drum lays eggs in the coastal marsh, and can commonly be found within 15 miles of the coast, especially around oyster reefs. It is a menace to the fragile oyster beds.
“Oyster harvesters love to see our boats out fishing,” he said. “Often times they will yell over at me to make sure I fish their lease.”
According to Olander the yield in oyster leases where the black drum is fished is considerably greater because “it has a very strong jaw and heavy pharyngeal teeth in the back of their throat that they use to crush shells.”
Fishing for black drum is a very labor-intensive operation.
Olander and other fishermen use trout lines baited with small pieces of crab claws to hook the fish. These lines have between 75 to 150 hooks – each line baited by hand.
During the course of a year he will import two or more semis laden with crab claws from the east coast. “The love to bite into the crab claws, shell and all – they are just one tough fish.”
Louisiana imposes a 3 million pound quota on black drum, but to date that quota has never been reached. There are approximately 300 to 400 black drum fishermen within the state, 50 of which fish year round. “In the Vermillion Bay to Atchafalaya River area where I am, there are approximately 10 of us,” he said.
Fishing for black drum is a family affair for the Olanders, with son’s Corey and Seth helping in the family business. Big D seafood operates a fleet of three boats, and buys regularly from three to four independent fishermen.
A typical day’s catch is between 700 to 800 pounds per boat on an average day. The dock as devised a unique system for unloading onto scales.
Fishing boats are pulled from the water are trailered and with fish still onboard. The trailer is then towed by a John Deere tractor to the unloading dock where fish are sorted by size and tossed from the boat onto scales.
They are then loaded into heavy-duty cardboard packs that can hold up to 1500 lbs, covered with ice and wrapped in plastic. These packs are then shipped to processors around the state where they are filleted and sold to restaurants and consumers.
Size is everything for black drum. But unlike shrimp, smaller is better.
“We sell three sizes of fish,” he explained. “The most valuable is three to six pounds in size. Fishermen call them “blackie blacks”, but they are also known as “puppy drum.” These are the fish that end up on plates at New Orleans white cloth restaurants.”
During the course of the year price fluxuate greatly, partly because of what Olander sees as questionable practices by eastern Louisiana shrimpers. As the shrimp season slows during the winter months, a number of shrimpers around the mouth of the Mississippi use their nets to troll for black drum.
“Shrimpers using nets, that’s not really right,” he said a little perturbed. “We haven’t addressed this issue yet, but we definitely don’t like it.”
East Louisiana shrimpers can land as much as 30,000lbs within one day. This slammed the market for drum, dropping prices as much as $.30lb overnight. “If Big D Seafood would put one of these fishing trolls on one of our boats, it would be outlawed within one week,” he said.
Olander is looking closer to home for new opportunities for the fish he has built his business upon.
He is impressed with the new Louisiana Wild Caught certification program recently announced by the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries.
The Delcambre Direct Seafood program has also caught his attention.
He is current exploring the possibility of direct local marketing of the fish through the program ran by the Port of Delcambre in cooperation with the Louisiana State University (LSU) Agricultural Center (AgCenter) and Louisiana Sea Grant.
“I think fish offers some great opportunity for the local market, because you get to sell the weight of the entire fish, said Thomas Hymel, of LSU AgCenter and Sea Grant. “Black drum is one of the only finfish in the Louisiana near coastal waters that is fished exclusively by commercial fishermen.”
“With the great job Delcambre Direect is doing with the shrimp, I think this is a natural next step for the program,” said Olander. “We need to step this up to the next level. There is not much advertising or marketing, so a lot of people are unfamiliar with the quality of this fish.”
Olander is already equipped and licensed to sell fresh off the docks. He has a processing room that is permitted to prepare the fish to customer’s specifications.
“My fish have a great shelve life, the eyes are shiny and the taste superb.”
“We are going to profile his operations on Delcambre Direct,” said Hymel. “Our interest is there is a definite demand for red fish here in the region. I feel that his operation and the fish is somewhat unknown. When we can make this fish easily available, I think there is a lot that can happen.”
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