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Saltwater

A Labor Day fishing report

September 10, 2015
Fish, Fishing, Fly Fishing, Gear Review, Kayak Fishing, Saltwater
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Had a chance to get out and fish on Monday thanks to the Labor Day holiday.  The weather ended up being very nice; light winds in the morning, picking up throughout the day, partly cloudy skies.  It was hot, but it’s always hot down here in summer so you get used to it.  Conditions would have been ideal for sight fishing had water clarity been a bit improved.  The closer I got to the Gulf though, the better the water looked.  The tide fell throughout the day and by the time I picked up it was too low to paddle in some spots.

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It couldn’t have been better timing to finally get back on the water as I had just received the new Power-Pole Micro battery pack in the mail this past week.  I have been stubbornly waiting on this battery pack to come out for probably around two years now.  That’s about how long the Power-Pole Micro has been sitting on a shelf in my garage.  I’m not big on electronics in kayaks as I’ve never needed to run them or wanted to fool with batteries or wires, so I initially passed on the Micro.  It looked like it would be a great tool for my style of fishing though and was something that could make things a bit easier for me on the water so when I was told that a battery pack was in development for the Micro, I jumped on the opportunity to get one.  Little did I know that the folks at Power-Pole still had a lot of hurdles to jump before they could distribute their battery pack.

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I got to a familiar spot just before sun up and started to rig up.  The plan was to hit some familiar bull red and big trout water and hope for the best.  Every trip out is an opportunity to upgrade my fish in the year-long Massey’s Fish Pics tournament run through Bayou Coast Kayak Fishing Club so I wanted to hit some potential big fish water that would give me a good shot at an upgrade.  I caught a red fairly early on, in the first big pond I went in.  He was cruising a shoreline and I was able to intercept his path with a Matrix shad.  It is always a good feeling to get that first fish on the board.  I tagged him, took a pic, and then we parted ways.

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While in that same pond I posted up by the outlet and began to fish a spot where the tide was pulling water out into a canal.  I noticed something yellow up under the mangroves not too far from where I anchored and after watching it for awhile I noticed it was alive and moving.  It was a small tripletail floating on his side!  They aren’t unheard of to be in the marsh, but it is pretty rare.  So I re-rigged my fly rod with a smaller shrimp imitation and tried my best to convince him to eat, only he wasn’t having it.  I finally got hung on the mangrove and he spooked as I tried to retrieve my fly.  A pretty neat experience though I was a little bummed to not catch him, but I pressed on.

As I said earlier the closer I got toward the Gulf the better the water looked and when I got out to some rocks I started working the Matrix shad and suspending baits looking for trout.  A few ladyfish and a catfish later I changed it up and started throwing the topwater.  Don’t let anyone tell you a topwater is only for first light.  I ended catching a handful of keeper trout and had a blast doing it.  Shoot, it was a hoot to watch the ladyfish blast the topwater out of the water.

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I was really hoping to luck into a bull red on topwater, but unfortunately they weren’t anywhere to be found.  I headed back into the marsh after things slowed down and shifted my focus to sight fishing.  The falling tide was a pretty big one and it had the water clarity even worse than in the morning, so things were tough.  Plus the wind picked up and made things that much tougher.  Luckily for me there were still a fair amount of active reds patrolling the shoreline and I caught a few reds by sound more than sight.  They were crashing crabs around exposed oyster beds with reckless abandon and as long as you got your lure right in front of their face they would eat it.

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I had made my way back to that first big pond I went in and decided to go see if that tripletail was still around.  Sure enough, I could spot that yellow fish from across the pond.  I tossed that same shrimp fly in his direction and he wasn’t interested.  Eventually I had floated close enough to where I just assume net him, so I grabbed my landing net, calmly slid it under him, then scooped up and just like that I had caught a tripletail.  He didn’t move much while in the water which had me thinking he wasn’t 100%, but once that net hit him he definitely livened up.

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A bizarre way to land a fish, but it’s actually not the first time I’ve done it.  I caught a black drum like that once in the kayak.  Only when I went to net the drum he launched himself out of the water and onto the shore.  That’s what I love about kayaks, we can get right on top of these fish at times and they have no idea.

All in all it was a good trip, caught a few trout and a few reds and had an interesting tripletail experience to boot.  I wasn’t able to upgrade any fish for the Massey’s tournament, but that’s what is great about year-long tournaments, there is still plenty of time for that.

A quick word on the Micro after the first trip out.  It worked well, loved having the ability to press a button to drop anchor or pick up when I needed to.  It does take a little bit of time to get use to it while standing.  I found the extra weight on the back end of the kayak and the 8′ pole sticking in the air increased the wobble you feel when standing up  That wobble increased camera shake on the GoPro – which I actually used for the first time in a long time – but it also threw the boat’s stability off.  I was in the Cuda 14 – I’m interested to get it mounted on the Kilroy and see how it reacts.  With the Cuda 14 mount from YakAttack, it is actually the Micro is actually off to the side of the back end of the boat and not over center – that may have something to do with that increased wobble.  The Micro does come with a quick release mount, which is nice because it came in handy while sightfishing, but I really did not need it while I was fishing for trout.  With a boat like the Cuda the 8′ pole stores in the hull without a problem – so if I needed to I could have set it up while out on the water, parked on the shore.  I look forward to using it more and being able to give a better review of it down the road.

HOWW: The Mystery of the Louisiana Marsh

July 31, 2015
Conservation, Fishing, Kayak Fishing, Multimedia, Saltwater, Video
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HOWW_Louisiana

I’ve been really enjoying Drew’s web series, Hooked on Wild Waters, this year and wanted to share an episode I was able to help with that was filmed down here in Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana.  It went live on the Hooked on Wild Waters website this week.  I was only able to fish with Drew on the first day they were filming and I can tell you they did a great job with the edit because conditions were tough that day.  Big thanks to Casey Brunning for camera boat duty and helpful advice – couldn’t have done it without him.  I can’t embed the video here, so be sure to go to the Hooked on Wild Waters website and check it out and the rest of the great webisodes in the series.

Always learning

May 4, 2015
Exploring, Fishing, Fly Fishing, Kayak Fishing, Saltwater
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Last weekends weather forecast was too juicy to pass up.  Friday, Saturday and Sunday all looked good on paper for the kayak fisher.  I managed to get away on Saturday and fish with my buddy Steve – the 2014 Hobie Fishing Worlds champion who lives right down the road in Prairieville.  Steve had big trout on his mind and I was listening.  I can readily admit that I don’t know enough about catching trout, so getting the opportunity to fish with Steve and learn a bit about trout was worth it.

We had a plan of attack before heading down, but a slight change in the wind direction made Steve call an audible.  I was game for the change, it meant more paddling, but the forecast allowed for it and I didn’t have a deadline to be home so I was uniquely prepared for a long day.  I didn’t know it would be a 12 hours on the water type day, but it ended up being well worth it.

We set out from the launch at sunrise and were hardly out of sight before Steve spots the first redfish working some bait out in front of a cut.  He made a perfect cast with a topwater plug and soon we got to see what happens when a redfish sucks down a floating lure.  It was a great start to what would be an incredible day.

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Redfish weren’t really a morning target for us, partly because we were focused on trout, but also because the tide was high and incoming, we thought it would be better to wait until the afternoon to target reds, but when an opportunity presents itself you take advantage.  No sane kayak fisher can pass up a tailing redfish.

We pushed on to speckled trout water, ignoring cuts into the marsh that no doubt led to redfish Valhalla.  Not really, but sometimes it feels that way when passing good water to hopefully get to better water.  On the way we see gulls working some bait.  Some of the birds are sitting on the water, Steve mentions that can be a good sign, so I head over to investigate, while he checks out another spot.  After a few boils under a topwater I finally hook a 12″ trout.  The birds dispersed shortly after and I moved on – it was worth investigating, but we were after a better quality trout.

I met back up with Steve as he was fishing around a small island.  We met up at the back side of the island where water was being swept around and converged.  A few casts into the moving water and my She Dog was nailed.  A fat 17″ trout joined me in the Kilroy.  We caught a few more trout behind that island and missed a few more we should have caught as well.

We moved on after the action cooled.  Steve had no shortage of places to try and at each stop we ended up catching at least one trout, sometimes we’d catch more than that.  We were catching them a variety of ways too.  Topwater plugs worked, so did suspending lures, shrimp imitations under a popping cork, and even my trusty Matrix shad were producing the occasional trout.

By mid morning I was ready to change it up so I started sight fishing for reds along the shore.  The tide was still up and the water was high way up into the grass.  It was making things tough, but eventually one red gave up the ghost.

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While I wasted my time looking for reds, Steve was busy fishing points and pockets for trout and having some success.  It caught my attention when he landed one that was near 20″.  I joined him and was rewarded shortly with a solid fish as well.  Steve was keenly aware of what has happening beneath the water and I was starting to pick up on it.  He was seeing things that I just didn’t notice, or had never really thought to notice until that day.  We had a blast for the next hour or so, leapfrogging each other fishing points and pockets in the marsh with topwater lures and catching quality trout.

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The action slowed down and eventually Steve and I parted ways.  I wanted to try and sightfish reds on the falling tide in some of the areas we had passed up heading to fish trout.  I’m a sucker for exploring new territory and I spotted some ponds I had never fished before that were calling my name.  The action was slow at first, but as that tide kept dropping and the shoreline kept receding the redfish began getting more aggressive and you began to hear them crushing bait on shorelines.  One bayou I entered had redfish cruising the shoreline like ants in a line.  Me, being the glutton I am, couldn’t help myself and I had to attempt to double up.  I had a popper tied up on the fly rod, thinking I might fool a speck with it, but I never really committed to using it while speck fishing.  It wasn’t ideal for reds, but I put a good cast in front of the first fish and he crushed it.  I laid a solid hookset on him, tightened my drag and put my fly rod between my legs, picked up the Matrix shad (I typically have both rods ready in front of me when sightfishing) and put a cast on the second fish.  It was a terrible cast and he paid no attention to it, no big deal, I’ll try again with the third red.  This time my aim was true and he pounced on the lure – the double was on.

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What I didn’t realize at the time was that the first fish I hooked was a good 24.5″, a fair fight in his own right.  The second fish though ended up being 27.5″, I couldn’t help but laugh out loud as I fought a fish in each hand.  I’ve caught doubles before but I had not caught one with two mid-upper slot reds like this.  It was a riot!  As you could imagine, both lines tangled in each other, I missed netting the fish once or twice, just a massive cluster.  I did get them in the boat once they wore down though and decided I didn’t have to do that again that day.

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The hot and heavy redfish action continued as they continued to cruise the shoreline with backs out of the water.  That is exciting in itself, throw in getting to watch them eat a popper fly and you’ve got some Ebert & Roeper approved action.  Gotta love redfish!

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As you can imagine it was hard to call it a day I was having so much fun.  It is gonna be really hard to top a day like that, but that certainly won’t stop me from trying.  Big thanks to Steve for letting me tag along and teaching me a good bit about trout fishing.  Hopefully I’ll be able to better spot productive water and establish reliable patterns to catching more fish.  I’ve still got a long way to go to become a good trout fisherman, but I think it is safe to say he helped shorten the learning curve.