Shrimpers get ready, but license count down this year

A decade ago, nearly 20,000 people bought shrimp-baiting licenses. Trucks and boat trailers overran the landings and waited in lines up the road. Wildlife officers worried whether the tasty crustaceans would be savored to death.

When the first boat hits the water at noon today, only about 6,000 have been licensed to follow.

It's the opening of the recreational shrimping season, a two-month span when clay and meal bait balls can be dropped around poles set in the water to lure clusters of feeding shrimp under a cast net. In the Lowcountry, few things are more prized than bringing home that brimming, shiny cooler full.

Clay Harper will be out in Bulls Bay with his brother and a friend, after coming home three or four times last year with the maximum catch, a year's worth of shrimp. But times are lean, the fall shrimp forecast is for an average year and early reports are that the critters are small. Fewer people, it seems, are eager to launch.

A cooler of shrimp could cost each of them $100 or more in fees, nets, meal, clay, fuel for the trips and other supplies. They'll spend hours bouncing in the windy chop, setting poles, dropping bait, casting and retrieving the nets in a slow-motion orbit. For a lot of people, that's just not so much fun any more. Not in tight money times with the low price of shrimp at the dock.

Harper, 29, of Mount Pleasant, comes from a Beaufort shrimping family, so for him it's in the blood.

"We just go out there to be in the water and have a good time. To be honest with you, it's cheaper to buy it than it is to catch. If you weigh the enjoyment of doing it against the cost, it's worth it to me," he said.

For others, some of that allure is gone.

"Listen, it's work. It's a lot of recreation, but it's a lot of work. It's cheaper for me to go buy 100 pounds of shrimp," said Kevin Egan, former Recreational Shrimpers of South Carolina president, who for years didn't miss an opening day.

"There's a lot of fun if you like doing it," said Charles Gaddy, of Summerville, "It's a long night and you have to get up the next day. If you caught a cooler every time you went, that would be great. But it doesn't happen that way."

Now, don't misunderstand the two men; they plan to shrimp together sometime this weekend. But Egan and Gaddy say they'll head out fewer times than they used to, and likely won't stay on the water so long. Other shrimpers apparently are waiting to see how full those first coolers come back.

The opening-day license count looks like it's going to be about 1,000 below last year, and last year turned out to be the lowest total count in years. But customers have been coming out for shrimp-baiting demonstrations and business is good, retailers say.

The price of shrimp at the dock, the crowds at the boat landings, the economy -- any number of things contributed to "a dramatic decline" in shrimp baiting, said Robert Boyles, Natural Resources deputy director of marine resources. "You ask anybody, you get a bunch of opinions."

But one thing is for sure.

"Whether the economy is going great guns or its in the toilet, like it is now, people are still going to fish and hunt," Boyles said. "People are passionate enough about the resource they still go out."

Reach Bo Petersen at 937-5744 or bpetersen@postandcourier.com.