Winter Fishing in Fourchon

There were three separate day trips I took down to Fourchon in January and February of this year. These weren’t extremely productive trips, which is probably why I didn’t bother to write about them, but like the Bayou Fountain trip, they were very instrumental in helping me win the fly division of the BCKFC/Massey’s kayak CPR tourney last year.

In late January I went for the homerun and made a long-ass paddle to some proven big redfish flats, but when I got out there the bulls were not there. I did manage to fool a slot red and then followed that up with a nice black drum so at least I had something to show for my long paddle.

It was a little disheartening failing to upgrade my redfish for the contest, especially because the weather cooperated for me. It just meant that I’d have to give it another shot in February and hope for the best.

I watched the weather until I saw another window to make a decent paddle in and when it came I jumped at the opportunity. This time it didn’t take long to get the upgrade I was looking for, but at 33.5″ it still left room for me to target an even bigger red.

I kept at it, but sightfishing was proving to be tough. The winds were light and favorable, but there was so much fog that it made seeing anything just about impossible. I landed one more redfish on the day coming in at 29″ and decided I’d call it a day and hope for the best with the tourney.

It was late February and I was checking the leaderboard the night before the last day of the tourney. I was sitting in first place the last time I had checked, but now I currently was not. I needed to upgrade my trout as someone had knocked me down a spot and lowered my point total. I was already planning on fishing the next day, but where I was planning to head was not known for trout so I had to hatch a new plan while laying in bed.

The wind was not as calm as the previous time I’d fished, but I had arrived at a spot that I had in mind to cover. I knew it held trout in the winter, I just hoped they were still there. After a bit of blind casting my rod came tight and after the seeing the familiar headshake of a trout I knew I had my upgrade.

It didn’t take much to best my previous trout, but it was enough to bump me back up a spot and into a tie for points, so long as other folks weren’t upgrading fish on the leaderboard.

I kept fishing hoping to run into more trout and improve my chances, but that was the only one I came across. I caught one more slot red before calling it a day. The wind was getting pretty brutal so it was getting tough to fish spots effectively.

Thankfully the one trout proved to be enough and I was able to win the fly division of the tourney. It was a pretty awesome feeling to be able to catch three upgrade fish in four trips right at the end to sneak out the W. I had fished the fly division of the CPR tourney for several years now and always come up just short so to finally win one was nice. I’ve got nothing but love for BCKFC and Massey’s for continuing to put on a tourney for us fly rodding kayak fishermen.