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PORT O’CONNOR – Cigar in mouth, one bay shrimper plans to die clenching the wheel of his shrimp boat.

Robert Sanders wakes up every morning at 4 a.m. to head toward his Froggie’s Bait Dock. There, at 5 a.m., while the sun still sleeps, he and his 13-year shrimper companion setoff to the west on the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway.

He jumps on the boat and turns on his Global Positioning System, while 51-year-old Belen Montes, from Mexico, readies the nets and ice chests. He started using the GPS device 10 years ago, before it became popular for cars.

“That’s the best friend a shrimper ever had,” he said, pointing toward the navigational device.

Sanders steers according to the prior day’s path, which is laid out by the GPS. He doesn’t acknowledge the broken radar system that sits beneath the new technology.

He sits back high and steers with his feet, twisting the Backwoods cigar between his teeth as he sails toward Espiritu Santo Bay.

At 5:30 a.m. he readies his “try nets,” which he uses for a few minutes to determine what the water holds beneath. He continues a deliberate path, noting a spot he marked on his GPS where he caught some large white shrimp in the bay on their way back to the Gulf.

He’s hungry for more.

The GPS says the sun will rise at 6:32 a.m. Just a little while longer and he can start 30 minutes before sunrise.

“We’re a little early,” he said, straightening his nets out.

At 6 a.m. he drops the try net for a few minutes. He pulls it up and empties its contents into a hand net. He throws them overboard.

“Not good enough here,” he explains and heads farther southwest.

A few minutes later the try net picks up some goodies. Time to set off.

The men collaborate to drop the big, 32-foot net. They’ll let it drag 20 to 30 minutes.

Sanders relaxes at the wheel, remembering the good ol’ days of shrimping. As a third generation shrimper, he said he was “born on the back of a shrimp boat.”

He sighed at the lack of boats in the bay. Back in the old days, about 20 or 30 boats would be fighting for the shrimp, he said. They would scramble for the shrimp like the sea gulls and brown pelicans chasing his boat down, diving for a taste of unusable fish thrown overboard.

Sanders doesn’t see a future in commercial shrimping anymore, with cheap imports and high fuel prices. That’s why he switched to bait fishing, changing his old Froggie’s Shrimp Company in Seadrift for Froggie’s Bait Dock in Port O’Connor, which opened in 1987.

The key is to keep the bait shrimp, which he calls “brownies,” alive. They sell for $15 a quart alive. The large white table shrimp he hopes on luck to find sell for $4 a pound. When he spends $20 to $30 on fuel an hour, he must sell what reels in the money.

Recreational fishermen and tourists comprise his new market. He meets people from all walks of life at his bait dock: doctors, lawyers, plant workers – people who love fishing the popular redfish and trout.

Nobody really cares where their table shrimp come from anymore, he said. People want to fish.

“It’s an end of an era, for sure,” he said, looking out over the sparkling water.

Asked if he would retire, the 70-year-old replied shrimping is his version of retired. Nothing like it, he said.

“It’s not near as stressful as all that hurry, hurry stuff in the rest of the world,” Sanders said, “It’s a real simple life.”

Time to pull in the nets.

“Let’s see how lucky we were,” he said, jumping out of his seat to the back of the boat.

Eleven big shrimp, countless brownies and some croaker – another type of bait, good for trout, he said. The croaker go for 50 cents each.

Not too bad. He decides to stick around the area, dropping the nets again.

His nets catch just about everything – sea horses, sting rays, crab traps.

“The only thing I haven’t caught is a dead body,” he said. “I don’t think I can handle that.”

Heading back toward Port O’Connor, Sanders grins at his GPS. He’s been saving a spot.

“We’re gonna kill ’em this time,” he said, excitedly.

He opens a white cooler of large, white shrimp. “Now that’s what you call pretty,” he said, turning the cigar between his teeth.

The last net comes up at 9:20 a.m. and Montes starts busily, quietly sorting through the catch.

Sanders’ stomach growls in hunger just thinking about the shrimp. He said to sautee the shrimp, put them on the grill, adding lemon or butter.

“Aw man, there’s nothing like a grilled shrimp,” Sanders said hungrily. “I like fried shrimp. Boy, I like shrimp. I like ’em anyway. I’m like Bubba.”

Finally, he pulls the boat, dubbed “Dodie D” in honor of his daughter, up to his bait dock a little after 10 a.m. The men unload the coolers of fresh, dead shrimp and transfer the buckets of croaker and brownies to the live tanks inside.

It was an average day. Sanders came in early because the choppy waters would bruise his bait. They don’t do well after a beating.

He’ll fix some pumps at the shop, his day not yet over. He looks forward to fulfilling his shrimp-eating fantasies later on.

What’s for dinner?

“Fried shrimp, of course,” he said, grinning.

Tara Bozick is a reporter for the Advocate. Contact her at 361-580-6504 or tbozick@vicad.com.