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Sightfishing

Evacuating Hurricane Ida

December 15, 2021
Adventure, Exploring, Family, Fish, Fishing, Fly Fishing, Freshwater, Hiking, Outdoors, Scouting, Sightfishing, Wade Fishing, Warmwater
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After driving home from fishing north of Lake Pontchartrain, we ultimately decided it was in our best interest to pack up that night and head north with the kids in the morning, far out of the cone of uncertainty that surrounded Hurricane Ida. We ended up booking a cabin in Oklahoma, near Hochatown, Beavers Bend State Park, and the Ouachita National Forest. There were several cabins available and after Blake and I had visited and fished last year up that way I commented how that would be a fun place for the whole family. It seemed like now was as good a time as any to head back. We turned it into an impromptu vacation that I think we all enjoyed.

While we were up there I did find a little bit of time to sneak away and fish. I fished the Lower Mountain Fork in Beavers Bend last year in early Fall and remember the fishing being tough. This time around I decided to explore a bit of the Ouachita NF backcountry and find a creek where I could target some native fish. After a lengthy drive down numerous dirt roads I arrived at a creek crossing and decided to check it out.

The water was beautiful, some of the clearest water I’ve ever seen. There were lots of baitfish swimming around too. I decided this was as good a spot as any to string up the 3wt and explore it further. It did not take long to catch fish.

The longear were timid, but eventually obliged and ate up my offering. The longear were nice, beautiful fish, but I was really looking for a smallmouth, which were proving to be elusive.

The water was so low and still that fishing was tough, especially for the larger predators. I saw a few smaller smallmouth, a fish I would normally consider aggressive for their size, but they were extremely wary. I may have had one mouth a bait and I pulled it from him before he could get hooked. I didn’t want to be gone from the family too long either so eventually I had to call it a day without the smallmouth I was after, which was a little disappointing, but I was happy to have gotten out.

The next afternoon I was able to get out again, this time I had Marin along for the ride, so it was less of a fishing trip and more of an exploratory one. I went a different route and ended up on a different creek. I knew she probably just wanted to play in a creek, but I brought along a 1wt, just in case she wanted to see what lived in said creek.

I wasn’t so certain I’d find a fish big enough to hit my flies in a creek this small, but I did when this creek chub sucked down my dry. There were a lot of creek chub in the creek, this one just happened to be big enough to get hooked.

We had fun playing on the slippery rocks in the creek and checking out a part of Oklahoma I’m sure not many people know about. The Ouachita’s are beautiful with some of the prettiest creeks I’ve come across, I definitely recommend checking them out if you ever get a chance. Next time I’ll hit some bigger water though and give myself a better chance to locate the smallmouth.

We headed back to Baton Rouge on Tuesday not really knowing the hornet’s nest we were driving into. We knew that things were bad back home, but to what extent was unknown. We knew our home was fine and that power had actually been restored that day, but much of area was severely impacted. I was really glad we made the decision to head elsewhere during the worst of the storm and that my kids didn’t have to live through the experience of riding that one out.

Winter Fishing in Fourchon

December 8, 2021
Exploring, Fish, Fishing, Fly Fishing, Kayak Fishing, Kayaking, Outdoors, Saltwater, Sightfishing, Tournaments, Wade Fishing
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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.

A long walk on the beach

August 19, 2021
Exploring, Fish, Fishing, Fly Fishing, Outdoors, Saltwater, Scouting, Sightfishing, Travel, Wade Fishing
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I made it back out to Johnson Beach a few days later and this time I decided to put some miles under my feet before I wet a line. There’s about 7 miles of beach I could cover in this section of the Gulf Islands National Seashore and so far I’d only fished the bay side. On this morning I decided I’d try and cover both the bay and the surf.

I got out there a little later than I probably should have as people were already beginning to line the side of the road, but I was still early enough to catch the sunrise and greet a fellow angler of the avian variety. He was a local so I didn’t have any beef with him being there before me.

I walked a couple of miles down the beach, stopping and casting around anything that broke up the homogenous sand flat. There really wasn’t much action going on in the surf. That’s not to say there wasn’t fish there, it just wasn’t happening for me. I decided to move to the bay side and try my luck on the grass flats there.

Eventually I made my way into a bay off of Big Lagoon proper and it was there that I began catching fish. The pinfish were in abundance at this spot and I caught several of them, this was one of the bigger ones I caught. It was also here that I saw a few different redfish. I never got a good cast off to any of them, but at least I saw some Florida redfish.

I waded along the edge of the bay and into a very shallow inlet tucked away that looked fishy and figured if I was going to catch a red it would be here. I did catch a fish along the edge of the spartina, but it was small, a longnose killifish as I’d come to learn.

I was still throwing a charlie with a nymph trailer as there were a lot of smaller fish around. In the back of this inlet though was a big fish lying still on the bottom, a nice sized gar. I had no idea the species as I was in brackish water and the only gar I knew that liked brackish water in Louisiana were alligator gar. This was no alligator gar as his snout was way to narrow. With research I found out that longnose gar are common in Perdido Bay so that’s what I assume this was. I made several casts running my charlie along the length of his body and finally managed to get him to follow and then swipe at it. Surprisingly I was hooked up!

The fight wasn’t all that glamorous, he made a few strong runs, but was easy to wear down with my drag. As he got closer I could see that there was some trauma to his upper mandible as the top part of his snout was missing! That may have played into the fight and why it was so easy to make a solid hookset. I brought him to hand, thanked him for coming in easily, popped my fly out, and sent him on his way. It was definitely a cool experience to catch a gar while wading a sand flat. The close combat fight was a thrill.

I exited the inlet and kept covering water in this bay, making sure to fish all the grass edges, deep troughs, and deeper shoreline spots I came across. This tactic landed me a pretty good sized cocahoe minnow (Gulf killifish), more pinfish, and the juvenile pigfish showed up again.

It was starting to get close to lunch time so I made my way back toward the surf to make some casts there while walking back to my car. While walking the beach I came across a massive conch (I assume) shell that was partially buried in the swash zone. It was the biggest I’ve ever seen.

It was a hell of a find and really made the day that much cooler. Not long after that I noticed a school of fish in the surf and after a few missed eats I got a solid hookup. After the first jump it was clear it was another ladyfish.

After a fun fight with some aerial acrobatics I got him to hand. The ladyfish was really the cherry on top of a pretty stellar morning! I kept walking and casting at fishy looking spots down the beach, but never hooked up with anything else or came across another solid school of fish like that.

After two mornings I had quite the mixed bag on Perdido Key and came away really enjoying the experience of fishing both the grass flats and the surf. It was totally different than the style of saltwater fishing I do in Louisiana which is typically from a kayak, purely out of necessity. If I could wade fish for reds in Louisiana I would absolutely prefer it to the kayak. There is something about covering ground and catching fish on my own two feet that I really appreciate.