LEEVILLE, La. – The new $1.5 million public boat launch below the Leeville Toll Bridge is a convenient spot for fishing guides to take sporting tourists to catch redfish, speckled trout, flounder and even out to the open Gulf to catch yellowfin tuna.
There are infinite fishing holes and thousands of routes to get to them. Just a few hundred yards east of the boat launch, porpoises dive by in a tidal bay that stretches for miles. But looks can be deceiving. The state says this expanse south of Lake Jesse is not a public waterway. According to state maps, it’s all private, except for a sliver that used to be the East Canal.
“If you launch here at this public launch, you better stay straight south or straight north in Bayou Lafourche,” fishing guide Nick Cheramie says. “Because when you go east or west, according to a lot of the law enforcement and leasers down here… you're in trouble.”
As Louisiana’s marshes wash away at the rate of a football field an hour, fishery-rich estuaries are creeping northward into more privately owned areas – areas that used to be closed off to the ebb and flow of the tides and where landowners could easily limit public access.
It’s an overlooked consequence of Louisiana’s coastal erosion problem. And the longstanding fight between property owners and anglers appears to be intensifying now after years of simmering just under the surface.
Former LSU and NFL quarterback Bert Jones, who sits on the state Wildlife and Fisheries Foundation that supports many fishing tournaments, has recently sent emails to tournament organizers warning them not to let their competitors come into the delicate duck ponds he leases for hunting and fishing.
Jones is relatively laissez-faire about letting individual anglers fish for free in the waters that he pays a pretty penny to use exclusively. But he says he has a right to set limits and a responsibility to protect the delicate marsh from destructive air boats. That’s why he stands by other leaseholders’ and property owners’ rights to be more restrictive than he is.
“I certainly understand somebody who wants to control their marsh and not have a lot of people intruding on it,” Jones said. “They’ve been paying their property taxes, they purchased the property, they have the rights as a property owner to be able to do this.”
On the other side, charter boat captains say trespassing complaints by landowners and leaseholders have become overly aggressive. Grand Isle-based captain Daryl Carpenter said he recently came home to find sheriff’s deputies warning him to stay out of what a landowner claimed as his private waters. He and others have received letters from oil companies that lay claim to some of their favorite fishing holes, threatening legal action if they’re spotted on those waters again.
“ANY lessee, family members, relatives or guests reported trespassing upon another lessee’s lease without permission will automatically have their lease terminated and the area turned over to another individual,” Louisiana Land and Exploration Co. attorney Phillip Precht wrote to a leaseholder last month. “There will be NO second chance in this matter.”
LL&E’s parent company, ConocoPhillips, says there are major safety and liability concerns with the pipes, structures and other oilfield equipment that can be found in the water.
“Our main concern is for the safety of the people who lease our land, as well as the protection of the sensitive wetlands,” ConocoPhillips said in an email to WWL-TV. “Unauthorized access and a trespasser having an accident, for example, can lead to a lawsuit, even if there is no property owner liability. As any property owner, it is prudent for us to control access and to know who is on the property.”
Precht’s letter in June went to Bobby Gros, who runs a charter and guide service out of Golden Meadow. He also got a cease and desist letter from Apache Louisiana Minerals, another major property owner in lower Lafourche Parish.
“We don't want to go in the marsh,” Gros said. “We just want to fish in the water. And they're taking the water away from us, which should be public access.”
Last week, Cheramie was found guilty of trespassing in a large tidal basin near Golden Meadow. He was out with customers, bow-fishing at night, when the Lafourche Parish water patrol told him he was on a private lease. He argued with the deputy and got one of the 13 trespassing summonses issued by the sheriff’s office in 2015. He’s vowing to appeal the case to the Louisiana Supreme Court if necessary.
“And I feel like I'm not only fighting it for myself and my family, but for all these guides' families, and all these boats under these boat lifts,” Cheramie said.
A new group called the Louisiana Sportsmen’s Coalition has been collecting $20 from hundreds of fishermen to mount a lobbying campaign to change fishing access laws, which they say are confusing and contradictory.
“It's a critical time for us. I mean, we either have to get something changed, or there will be no more professional guide business in Terrebonne, Lafourche and Jefferson Parish,” Carpenter said.
Their main argument for open access is that the national Public Trust Doctrine ensures fishing rights in navigable waterways. But there are also state laws that override that. Because Louisiana’s delicate and ill-defined coastal zone is unique, the state Legislature has instituted a number of laws to protect property owners if their marshland becomes water.
“If a person or entity holds title to property, they don't lose title to the property merely because its character changes from vegetation to water,” ConocoPhillips said.
The company’s forerunner, Phillips Petroleum, was involved in a major U.S. Supreme Court decision on the Public Trust Doctrine in 1988. The high court held that states can claim the beds and bottoms of navigable waters. But it also held that states have a right to determine which waters they do or don’t claim. The Louisiana Legislature passed a law in 1992 making it clear that the Supreme Court decision wouldn’t take away anyone’s title to submerged land.
The big difference in Louisiana is that the state has the burden of declaring a waterway “navigable” if it wasn’t established as such when Louisiana first became a state, in 1812. And the state has rarely done that, in spite of the massive changes to the coastline over the last 204 years.
Lafourche Parish Sheriff Craig Webre believes the law is clear that it’s trespassing to fish without permission on waters that are within the bounds of private property. Still, his water patrol tries to work with anglers, by giving them warnings before issuing summonses, because he acknowledges the legal issues are confusing.
“Somewhere in there, the Legislature and or the courts need to reevaluate this issue. We're a long way from 1812,” Webre said.
State Rep. Jerry "Truck" Gisclair of Larose said it's time for the Legislature to step in again, this time to expand public access, rather than limit it.
“We're going to have to write legislation that is going to address the issue,” he said.
But Jones says that any changes that lead to the taking of private property for public use would require the state to pay for the property, just as he must pay for the water acreage on his lease.
“Had you not put levees up on the Mississippi River and had you not stopped the continuous flow, this would all be property I could still be running cows on,” he said.