Spring is in full bloom. The love bugs will be swarming and the caterpillars will be falling from the trees. That only means one thing to me…..the fish are biting.

One of my all time favorite pastimes is fishing. We used to go fishing at Bayou Corne with Pa-Joe Montero when my daddy worked on the ferry. We would spend Saturday afternoons fishing from his pier at his camp. I still remember the day I caught my first choupic and a garfish. They can really put up a fight and the garfish is a very scary looking fish. I also remember the first eel I caught. Of course I thought it was a snake.

We would return to Bayou Carne on Sundays. Then I had to divide my time between fishing off of the pier or playing Bingo.

I purchased a fishing trip with Bob Scarce and J.B. Salter at an auction. I invited a friend to come along. The trip began with a slight delay because “the old beachcomber’s” wife had a spell under the hair dryer. She bounced back and managed to get her hair done so he made the trip.

In the 80’s I dated a guy that lived at False River. He worked for the Post Office in Baton Rouge and left for work at 4:00AM. I would get up and go straight to the pier. As long as I didn’t run out of worms I was happy. He’d come home from work and I’d show him my catch.

I am not limited to fresh water fishing. I maintain a fresh water and salt water license. I was spending a long weekend in Grand Isle and got to go fishing for speckled trout with a friend. We left out of Leesville in his big boat. He had all of his expensive rods with the golden reels standing up in the holders. I broke out my brand new open faced reel still with the Wal-Mart tag. I caught the first fish.

After that the song “I’m so excited I Just Can’t Hide It.” stuck in my head. I kind of kept singing that and he kind of got annoyed. To top it off I had him put my rod next to his golden rods on the way back home.

I will also fish in the surf. I’m not crazy about it because you never know what lurks in the depths. I was fishing in the surf in Orange Beach when a mullet flew out of the water and smacked me in the chest. That was enough fishing for that day. That scared the daylights out of me. Surf fishing can be a workout if the waves are rough and the Vodka is smooth.

On a recent weekend trip to Toledo Bend the aging process snuck up on me. I needed bifocals to put a cricket on my hook. Of course we were using very small hooks to catch bream.

Retirement will find me at the bayou bank waiting for that big one.

The Follies of Market Timing

Many investors try to “time” the market by “buying low and selling high.” In theory, that’s a great strategy - but it’s almost impossible to follow.

If you try to outguess the market, you run the substantial risk of guessing wrong - of buying stocks too soon, before they get even cheaper, or of selling stocks too late, after they’ve fallen from their highs.

Furthermore, if you are always buying and selling to catch the lows and the highs of the market, you could end up with a portfolio that doesn’t really meet your individual needs or match your tolerance for risk. And you’ll likely rack up some big transaction costs, too.

Make your investment decisions carefully. But until a crystal ball arrives, don’t try to stay one step ahead of the market - or you could fall far behind.

Just when it feels like the days are going by slow, May creeps up on you, almost -half the year is gone. The month of May brings us so many wonderful things, most importantly, Mother’s Day. Take time to thank your mom if you are lucky enough to still have them around. If that is not possible, my thoughts and prayers go out to you as Mother’s Day comes and goes. May also brings us the end of the high school athletic season, the beginning of NFL mini-camps, the NBA playoffs, College Baseball Postseason, Major League baseball, I could go on and on.

Congrats to LSU football for four first round draft picks during last months’ NFL draft. QB Jamarcus Russell to the Raiders with the first pick, DB Laron Landry to the Redskins with pick #5, followed by receivers Dwayne Bowe and Buster Davis to the Chiefs and the Chargers respectively. The Tigers also had 12-13 more guys signed as free agents; you think this team was talented. The Saints picked wide receiver Robert Meachem from the Tennessee Volunteers with the intent of having him replace the ever popular Joe Horn who has moved on the Falcons. The Saints picked up some unknowns in this years’ draft, but who am I to question Coach Payton and staff…remember Marques Colston in the seventh round last year? Stay tuned.

As I mentioned earlier, high school seasons have come and gone. The DHS track teams did really well winning district and regionals and placing well in State. The ACHS track team did well at the district and regional level and sent a couple of athletes to the State Meet. The ACHS baseball team placed second in district and lost a tough first round game to Oberlin 15-11. The ACHS softball team advanced to the second round of the playoffs before losing to Oberlin as well. Spring football is going on in early May and the Tigers will be playing the West St. John Rams in Edgard, whereas the Bulldogs will be squaring off with Gueydan. Both teams will be going through an offseason of weight training in preparation for the 2007 season.

The LSU baseball team continues to surprise some folks by winning 2 of 3 from #3 Arkansas on the road. I think this team, currently in 4th in the West, has a good chance to make a Regional as a three seed. Not bad for a team that starts five freshmen under first year head coach Paul Maneri.

I want to take this opportunity to say goodbye to a friend and coworker, Harry Hoyler of KKAY Radio. Harry will be leaving us in early June to move closer to his family. I have known Harry for nearly five years and he has given me the opportunity to stay in the game by broadcasting the greatest sports of all, high school that is. Thanks for everything Harry, we will miss you. Please rest assured that KKAY 1590 AM will continue its tradition of covering local sports and news. Harry is still only a phone call away when I press a wrong button or can’t figure out why our listeners can’t hear me. Thanks to all of our advertisers. Please help us keep it going as Harry would if he were here.

I can be reached at troyleboeuf@hotmail.com for stories on news.
led by Champlain Babin and Roy Sam. Troy LeBoeuf can be reached at troyleboeuf@hotmail.com for comments or stories of interest.

Website Keywords

Keywords are a list of words that are included in the code of your website, people type these word into the search engine to find your site. These words are highly relevant to the content of your web pages.

Knowing which keywords to use and how to use them in your website are critical steps to getting your website found by visitors using search engines. If your keywords and the content of your site do not contain related keywords, your potential customers may not find your website but will find your competitions when they do online searches.

So what words to use? Well that’s the million-dollar question. It can be a bit confusing but basically you need to choose words that are popular and relevant to your site. The ideal terms in a site should be terms that a potential customer would use when searching for your type of website. In order to achieve success your website should have terms and phrases that are descriptive, related to your content, and which receive a significant amount of searches. In addition and the biggest challenge is that you want to find terms and phrases where there is little competition, so you quickly achieve high ranking in the important search engines.

The first step to determining keywords is brainstorming a list of logical terms and phrases that relate to your type of business or service. The idea is to get a group of people to give their choices for your type of website so that you get a good overall public representation. There are a number of free and low-cost tools available online and for download that will allow you to expand and research terms that have been brainstormed. The results typically vary with the tools but overall the tools will assist you in determining where to focus your keyword efforts.

So how do you know if they are working? Which words might need to be changed?

That is where your web stat software comes in. Most web companies offer some sort of traffic monitoring software that comes with your hosting package. In this software you want to find the section that has top referring keywords or top referring search engines with the keywords used.

As you monitor this over a few months, make notes as to which words get the most use and which don’t. Then you simply go back to your list make adjustments and substitutions and modify your words.

Does it take time? Yes. Is it important? That answer depends on how much traffic you want your site to get from the search engines.

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