Got an hour to kill? Enjoy this film shared by Joe Tomelleri of the native trout of Mexico. A description of the video reads “Truchas Mexicanas is a bi-national group that has been studying the trout of Mexico since 1997. As many as 12 species of native trout inhabit Mexico’s rugged and forbidding Sierra Madre. This is the saga of her trout, her native people and the struggle to save a dwindling resource.”
Last weekend I wanted to get Marin out of the house so I asked her if she wanted to go see what fish lived in the “creek” at the nearby park. That wasn’t reason enough for her to commit to going, but then I sweetened the pot and told her that we could play on the playground after we fished which got her to immediately put her shoes on and head toward the door.
The “creek” is a drainage ditch that runs through the park near our house. It’s not very long, I’m not even sure it has a name. You can jump across it and not get wet in some places, at bends it slows down and deepens enough to make a pool. Those pools will hold fish. On a hot, cloudy February day those fish were hungry. We caught several species of small sunfish, some on tiny nymphs, but more on dry flies. I brought a 1wt and had fun making bow and arrow casts to the pools and watching fish explode on the surface shortly after the fly landed. Marin had a blast holding the fish and releasing them back into the water.
Dollar sunfish (Lepomis marginatus)
Redspotted sunfish (Lepomis miniatus)
Green sunfish (Lepomis cyanellus)
Longear sunfish (Lepomis megalotis)
Bluegill (Lepomis macrochirus)
I was surprised at the diversity within this tiny trickle of a ditch, but really it shouldn’t come as a surprise as Louisiana is truly a melting pot for Lepomis species. This was borderline microfishing but it was actually pretty entertaining, especially with ultralight fly tackle. Marin loved it too, which is really all that matters.
I saw a good weekend day to go fishing a couple weekends back and pounced on it. The weather looked pretty cooperative and usually if you can catch mild weather in the winter luck will be on your side. I woke up early and got on the water shortly after sunrise.
It was a chilly start, but I knew the day would warm up so I wasn’t too bothered by the cold. Besides, the winds were light and the clouds were nowhere to be seen, it was looking like it could be a pretty good day to sight fish.
The tide was low, which is normally not a bad thing for sight fishing, however this tide was extremely low. This extreme low had the water pretty dirty. I knew it was low when I launched, but I didn’t realize that it would continue to fall throughout the morning. There were entire flats that were exposed that I’ve never seen exposed. The fish were nowhere to be seen and even when I did see them it was too late for me to make a cast. Fishing was tough.
I did manage to avoid a skunk though. Right around lunch I had made my way to a flat where I’ve always found fish. It is off of a deep canal, so even if the flat was mostly exposed, there was still some refuge that could be taken in the canal for the fish. Sure enough that’s where they were. There were a handful of big black drum (they looked white in the water) with their tails up in the canal. I moved into position and dropped my fly in the path of one of them and he vacuumed it up. The fight was on.
It was a hefty fish. It gave me a couple of good strong runs and put a solid bend in the old TFO Mini Mag. The drum was a square, nearly as heavy as it was long (35 lbs, 37 in. long). It was a fun catch and I was glad to have caught something, even if it did slime up the boat and my pants.
After that I tried to make my way through the marsh back to the launch, but without any water it was futile. I headed back the way I came, through the bay, and ran into Scott from Bayou Chronicles and his neighbor on the paddle back. We chatted and fished for a bit. He ended up catching a beast of a redfish later in the day as I was already loading up the boat to head home. The tide was coming back in after lunch and if I were patient enough I probably would have had better opportunities at redfish in the afternoon. It had been a long day on the water for me though and I packed it in. There’s always next time I guess.
Mountains to Marsh 