Hardhats and tape and other hardware items have replaced fishing tackle that filled the shelves and counters inside Bridge Side Marina at Grand Isle.

There are 65 boat slips at the marina. A few weeks ago only three of the slips were occupied at a time of year when people fight for a place to dock their boat. Two of those three boats belong to Buggy Vegas, owner of one of the most popular and familiar recreational fishing marinas along the coast.

“Usually, we’ve got to turn people back (away). It’s crazy now,” Vegas said Wednesday afternoon.

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Vegas had fielded a telephone call, ostensibly for a weekly fishing report that appears regularly on Thursdays in The Daily Iberian. Really, I wanted to stay in touch and see how him, his business and the island are faring during one of the worst catastrophes ever.

Vegas has provided fishing reports to the newspaper for several years, thus keeping Teche Area residents up-to-date on what the fish are biting on and where. He is always affable and knowledgeable when he talks about the saltwater fishing.

Of course, there is no saltwater fishing over there now. The beach and the prime speckled trout and redfish waters around the island have been closed since mid-May because of the oil spill after the deadly April 20 explosion on the oil rig Deepwater Horizon about 40 miles south of Venice. Grand Isle is west of Venice and eventually was threatened by hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil gushing out of the Gulf of Mexico floor.

“Everything’s closed. No marsh. No nothing. All the bait tanks are shut down. The coolers are off. We’re not selling much ice. We’re mostly upstairs, like a convenience store in New Orleans. That’s it,” Vegas said. “I’m not used to staying in air conditioning at home. I feel like a beagle in a cage. I guess I’m learning how to cope with it. It is tough.”

Cope and cry. There is a new game in town and it doesn’t involve saltwater fishing. There are cleanup crews and others replacing the beach-goers and saltwater fishermen who flock to the place in the summer.

“It’s a different people we’re dealing with than fishermen. It’s beautiful fishing weather, too. It’s been beautiful for two weeks. Clear and calm. It’s killing us,” Vegas said.

“To try to make it work,” as he said �” in other words, to make a living in a godawful time �” he has replaced fishing tackle with hardware. Vegas and his wife Dodie, whose family owned the marina 18 years before she and her husband took over in 1985, watched their 21-year-old daughter and 19-year-old son empty the fishing tackle shelves recently to make room for hardware.

“They were picking up the tackle and all that. Dodie and I wear tearing up watching them,” Vegas said, his voice cracking at the memory.

“Well, we’ve got, I’m looking at little red buoys, 1-inch rope we’ve never sold, fuel filters, lots of anchors, big anchors that we don’t usually sell, a lot of life jackets and vests. We’ve got tape and knives. It’s coming along,” he said with an unconvincing sigh.

“We’ve even got hardhats in here. It’s getting bad. But when they tell us we can fish, I’m going to take that down so fast it won’t be funny. We’ll be working late at night.”

Will that time come in the near future?

“Some days we feel like it will. I don’t know. It don’t look good,” he said.

The fish are there, big time, despite the disaster, he said. He walks along the bridge every morning. Wednesday morning on his stroll he saw approximately 100 redfish, all 5- and 6-pounders, under one well-lit area. At the next light there were beau coup speckled trout.

“There are shrimp all over. During the day you see birds diving,” he said. “Them fish aren’t hurting. The fish are all right. They’re getting away from it. You don’t see no dead fish.

“Caminada Pass is not bad. Actually, we’re trying to get this end open. It got hit one time �” Fourchon and Elmer’s Island,” he said, noting the same can’t be said for oil-stricken areas Four Bayous, Coup Abel and the Barataria area (Grand Lake).

Vegas longs to see the boats taking off in the predawn darkness full of anxious saltwater fishermen who love to feel the waves slapping under the boat and the salt spray in their face, and those anglers who prefer to stand on their own two legs and try their luck in the surf.

He misses the many children, too, who help the island’s population grow tenfold and more at times during that summer

“That’s what we miss. You don’t see no kids at all ... going to the beach ... going to get ice cream,” he said.

DON SHOOPMAN is outdoors editor of The Daily Iberian.