For more than 40 years, Byron Despaux has fished the waters around Barataria, La., and the open sea of the Gulf of Mexico.
He fished catfish and crab from a flat-bottomed skiff when he was 12. He trawled for shrimp with his uncle on a 50-foot boat along the coastline as a teen. When he graduated from high school, he started working on an 86-foot offshore shrimp boat and not long after the owner made him captain.
He partnered on a 95-foot twin-engine offshore trawler in 1980. He owned and operated it, the Lonely Nights, until the price of fuel and increased regulations forced him to sell in 2005. Now he’s back on the coastal waters in a 35-foot boat fishing for shrimp and crab.
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