The net.

For a long time I have wanted to learn how to throw a cast net. The hills and vales of central Virginia, the high plains of Wyoming, and rock desert of Utah were not the places to learn but now that I am in St. Augustine there’s no room for excuse. Last night was a grand opportunity since I was invited to join a group of people going shrimping on the St. Johns River. Let me tell you, there’s no better motivation to learn how to properly throw a net than if you see people next to you catching big, tasty shrimp.

The invitation came from a new and good friend, Janice, whom I met at a shrimp dinner over the Labor Day weekend. We met two of her friends, Ed and Donna, and motored to the ‘spot’. The location, part of the old Shands Bridge over the St. Johns River, provides nice public access from both sides of the river as well as a scenic view of Green Cove Springs. The river here is quite wide and a cool evening breeze kept the bugs away as we set up our operation.

Setting up on the pier with Ed, Donna, and Janice.

If you ask locals how to catch shrimp with a cast net they’ll give you the basics: you need a net, a bucket to put the shrimp in, and lots of time to throw the net. Beyond this opinions run rampant as to the best tricks one can use to catch tons of shrimp. Some folks chum the waters with a bait ball made from an obnoxious admixture, others use lanterns hung low to the surface of the water to attract shrimp, others use rock salt thrown in the water as an attractant, and some pull from some or all of these techniques. We deployed the full battery and scattered bait, salt, and light to achieve the maximum effect.

Ed throwing a nice net.

Shrimping on piers, like we were doing, is mainly a night objective since the shrimp stay in the depths of the water during the daylight hours and then advance on the shallows at dusk. As shadows began to lengthen and the sun set over Green Cove Springs the shrimp slowly began to come in. Fellows around us with much bigger nets were hauling in shrimp left and right, although regulars noted the evening as slower than the last week.

Sunset over Green Cove Springs. The shrimp come thundering in.

I had spent the time prior to sunset learning how to bundle, hold, grip, and throw the net to create the beautiful arc a cast net can produce. My circles, while not totally flat or perfectly circular, were passable and soon I had my first shrimp in the net. My next catch was by far the biggest since I hauled in a large mullet. A neighbor decided to keep some of this ‘bacon’. After the sun went down the gig was up on the shrimp and I began hauling in more and more.

Averaging 2-4 shrimp per haul, with plenty of empty hauls, our buckets began to fill. The night, certainly no banner evening according to locals, ended around 11:30 when we packed up and left for home with a collective five-or-so gallons of fresh shrimp. All in all, it was a great experience to get some practical experience with a net as well as fill the pot with some fine seafood!