MANDEVILLE – Bill Hungerford dusted off three brown photo albums and tattered boxes of fishing lures in the back of a Mandeville food mart.
“I wish the dust was off of this collection,” he said, wiping it clean with the palm of his hand. He stumbled through a photo album until he found a picture of himself holding a mounted striped bass, one of the three state-record fish he caught in Lake Pontchartrain.
Hungerford has his record-breaking fish mounted and displayed behind the counter in Band’s, an old food mart he and his wife own three blocks from Mandeville’s lakefront.
He knows how to fish. Hungerford has fished the Mandeville shore since he moved there from New Orleans 40 years ago, and he fished the lake’s southern shore before he moved from New Orleans.
Like Hungerford, many of the lake’s fishermen have seen a decline in fish populations. Many of them blame pollution, which increased after cleanup workers pumped Hurricane Katrina flood waters from New Orleans into the lake.
Others say fishing has not been that bad, and Katrina did not affect the lake’s aquatic populations.
Amid the piles of lures, twine, rods and reels on the glass counter in his old food mart, Hungerford reminisced about the time when the lake had more fish.
But he said it is different now.
“I got three state records before the pollution took over,” Hungerford said.
Since the flush, fish have been hard to catch.
“Before, in three hours I wouldn’t have much trouble getting a limit,” Hungerford said. “Now you can go out there for three hours and not even catch two or three fish.”
Hungerford said the lake used to boast a variety of different fish in abundance.
“You could go anywhere in the lake and catch all of the trophies you wanted to haul, and you could catch shrimp off the sea wall,” Hungerford said, with his back to the counter full of fishing tackle, old maps and a cash register. “You could scoop clams up with a rake too right there.”
With a fossilized oyster shell in his hand the same size as his palm, he said the lake also used to have many more oysters years ago.
“I got oysters like this one that came out of the lake,” Hungerford said as he juggled it between his hands. “But they have been all run out.”
A.J. Cyprus, a 17-year-old Mandeville native, said he has agreed that he had been catching fewer fish in comparison with last year.
“So far this year I haven’t been catching too many fish,” Cyprus said. “But the summer is best, and the fishing might pick up in a couple of weeks.”
Cyprus said he normally catches speckled trout, red fish, flounders, croakers and sharks in the lake.
Hungerford said he first noticed the increase in the lake’s pollution about fifteen years ago when the Army Corps of Engineers stopped dredging in Lake Pontchartrain.
“Pollution is taking over big time,” Hungerford said.
Though Hungerford said the lake does not appear to be polluted, it does not mean there is no pollution in the lake.
“What you see and what is actually there are two different things,” Hungerford said.
Hungerford said much of the pollution is coming from the Baton Rouge region near Gonzales. Hungerford said pollution is a result of sewage leaking through the marshes north of the area into Lake Maurapas, which channels into Lake Pontchartrain via Manchac Pass. Hungerford said the water looks clearer because the lake is no longer dredged, and the lake’s floor is getting harder.
“Crabs are bulked up in mud trying to stay cool,” Hungerford said. He says pollution is not the only cause for the decreased populations of fish in the lake.
Hungerford said the lack of dredging and higher salinity levels have also affected many species of fish.
Aixin Hou, University professor in the School of Renewable Natural Resources, said Katrina moderately affected the lake’s pollution levels, which were concentrated on the south shore where water was pumped out of the city via the London, Industrial and 17 Street canals.
“Our data show that the water discharged into Lake Pontchartrain during the post-Katrina dewatering of New Orleans contained elevated levels of both fecal indicators – E. coli and enterococci – and a few heavy metals,” Hou said.
Hou said the fecal discharge in the lake only presented short-term damage of about one month on the lake’s surface water quality and only affected waters within a kilometer of the merger between the 17 Street Canal and the lake.
However, the metals and fecal elements are not as easily purged from the sediments they have polluted, and Hou said the lake’s sediments have retained high amounts of these pollutants.
“Metals probably have very little chance to be flushed out once they get into sediment,” Hou said. “What is unclear is how long the enterococcous and E. coli remain viable in the sediments and, more importantly, how long pathogens associated with these fecal indicators likewise remain viable.”
Hou said she does not believe the post-Katrina pollution will greatly impair the area’s fishing industry.
“Since the impacts of pollution appeared to be confined within a small area in Lake Pontchartrain, there shouldn’t be any big impact on the fishery industry in the lake,” Hou said.
Tony Lama, a Mandeville Seafood employee, said that after Katrina he saw a drastic increase in crab and finned fish populations such as trout and flounder.
“Right after the storm the fishing was fantastic,” said Lama, who began working at Mandeville Seafood when he lost his New Orleans East seafood shop Louisiana Fried Seafood to Katrina.
Lama said fishing had increased five fold.
Hou said the populations of white shrimp were not affected by the presence of high pollution levels.
“The white shrimp season after Katrina has been more productive than usual in Lake Pontchartrain,” Hou said.
Lama said the overabundance of shrimp flooded the small market and drove the price down because few seafood stores were open in the New Orleans area following the storm.
“The fishermen were limited to what they could do with the shrimp,” Lama said.
And Lama said he predicts another successful shrimp season for next year because of higher levels of salinity.
The smell of fish and the cries of seagulls surround Mandeville’s harbor on Bayou Castine. Commercial and recreational boats sift in and out of the harbor’s brackish water, where Hungerford has launched his lakeboat many times to fish the lake’s waters.
“I caught some real monsters out there,” Hungerford said as he peered up at his trophy fishes mounted up above him on his stool behind the old counter. “But now all of them fish are gone.”
 
 
 
Contact Justin Fritscher at [email protected]