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Wade Fishing

A true Trout Challenge

June 25, 2014
Fishing, Kayak Fishing, Saltwater, Tournaments, Wade Fishing
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In years past the Trout Challenge was a tournament I didn’t attend.  Not because I didn’t want to, but typically by the time it rolled around I was out of contention for the BCKFC tournament series and it didn’t make any sense, being a redfish guy, to drive all the way out to Big Lake to fish for trout.  This year has been a little different – the series is still wide open, I’ve had a couple decent finishes in the first two events and the Trout Challenge became a “go anywhere” event, meaning the entire state was fair game – you just needed to catch five trout and bring them back to Cabela’s in Gonzales for weigh-in.  With the tournament being in June it seemed like a no brainer that my best bet would be fishing in the surf, more specifically the Grand Isle surf.  The added bonus was that Gonzales was on the way home from Grand Isle, so I really wouldn’t have to go out of the way to fish.

With all this in mind I left work on Friday at lunchtime hoping to get a little bit of scouting in.  I was so confident fish were in the surf that I hit a marsh spot that holds trout in the Spring, just to see if they were still around.  I figured they wouldn’t be, but it was worth a shot to eliminate a spot.  I was on the water around 2pm and the first thing I noticed was the water clarity was not very good, which doesn’t normally bode well for trout fishing.  It was a bit high too, but all that aside it was still fishable.  It didn’t take long to paddle to my spot and within minutes there was activity.  It wasn’t trout, but redfish, they were wreaking havoc on the bait in the pond, specifically crashing crabs on the shoreline.  The amount of bait was unbelievable, shrimp popping out the water, fiddler crabs lined the shore of the marsh and blue crab worked the fringes of the oyster beds – it was a veritable redfish smorgasbord and they couldn’t help themselves.

I picked off a couple rat reds with a Matrix shad and was blind casting around some oyster beds when I got hung up.  Of course just at that same time a better redfish crashed a shore line within casting range.  I had two other rods handy, a popping cork and a topwater.  Opting for the topwater I bombed a perfect cast to the fish and before I could even work it the topwater got sucked under.  I’ve got to admit – it felt pretty good when that cast met it’s mark and the fish obliged. It was a slot red of around 21″ and proved to be the biggest on the day.  I caught one more red then decided that I should probably move on and locate trout since it wasn’t a redfish tournament I was scouting for.

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I moved on to the surf at Elmer’s and met up with my friend Jeff.  He had just made it out there and hadn’t caught anything yet.  We tried for awhile in the kayaks, but there wasn’t much doing.  The water off the beach wasn’t the prettiest and the beach itself was covered in sargassum – something that rarely happens down there so I’m told.  The beach was smelly and full of gnats as a result.  I parked the boat and started wade fishing.  The action was inconsistent but I was able to boat a couple keeper trout and threw back a couple more undersized fish.  I wasn’t convinced this was where I needed to fish in the morning so I had to come up with a different plan.

The plan I hatched wasn’t very creative, it just involved moving further down and trying the surf out front of Grand Isle in the morning.  I was sticking to my guns – the surf in June is the place to be.  Jeff decided to tag along and we met before sunrise the next day.  Dragging the kayak a long way from the public access, over a dune, through the sargassum, and into the water I really hoped the work would pay off.  We started working the rocks in front of the beach and as the sun came up every spot you could wade and fish was occupied by a body, most of the them with live bait.  We were reduced to throwing artificials only, but that didn’t matter as no one was catching fish.  The shrimp were thick behind the rocks, the wade fishers had no idea but they were popping all over the place.  If I had a cast net I could have filled my ice chest and gone home happy – I’ve never seen shrimp so thick.  I’m not sure that the fish weren’t there or that they just had enough food already, but we didn’t have any luck. After a few hours work we picked up and went to get a biscuit at Jo-Bob’s.  We had caught a few trout at Elmer’s yesterday so we may as well head over there to try our luck.

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On the way to our spot at Elmer’s we ran into another buddy, Jason, and stopped to see how he was doing.  The news was bleak, but he had at least caught a couple trout.  The water still looked pretty nasty out there, but we decided to give it a shot.  We moved on to our spot where the water was a little cleaner and started catching fish.  Only problem was the fish we were catching were pogies.  Some foul hooked in the back, others near the mouth. They were big pogies too, pompano sized pogies.  Hopeful that big trout would be under the pogies we kept at it, but the only predator that was hooked was a Jack Crevalle that straightened out the hook on Jason’s bait.  After a few hours a white trout and a ladyfish were the only action I saw that weren’t foul hooked pogies.

It was a disappointing two days in the surf around Grand Isle, but I did get to enjoy fishing in the company of a few friends.  Besides Jeff and Jason, Blake was on the island as well to work on Saturday, he joined me in the surf Friday evening.  I made it up to Cabela’s for the weigh-in, although I had nothing to weigh, I at least got to catch up with a few other friends.  This was my worst outing in a tournament in a while, but I still had a good time and that’s what I love about kayak fishing.  The results of the tournament I’ll post below, but you can expect the usual suspects at the top again.

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Trout Challenge 2014 Top 5

  1. Steve Lessard
  2. Casey Brunning
  3. Brendan Bayard
  4. Denis Soignier
  5. Ty Hibbs

Big thanks to Cabela’s for hosting the weigh-in and donating prizes.  Also a big thanks to Jim Smith who let Blake and I crash at his camp on Friday night.  It was also good catching up with Jim and Bud Friday night, it had been a while since I’ve seen them, I know they did better than we did on Saturday.  I’m hopeful that my lack of success this past weekend was just a fluke and not a sign of something more serious as an article in the Advocate suggests: http://theadvocate.com/sports/9482816-32/veteran-anglers-concerned-about-speckled .  Only time will tell.

The fly rod spotted bass record revisited

June 12, 2014
Fishing, Fly Fishing, Fly Tying, Freshwater, Hiking, Wade Fishing, Warmwater
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Hard to believe it has been almost five years since Blake caught his state record spotted bass.  It’s also hard to believe that back then redfish weren’t our primary focus, it was spotted bass.  We were intent on breaking a record we thought was very attainable – the state record spotted bass on the fly.  Don’t call us record hunters though as it took 2.5 years for one of us to finally land one over 2 lbs, Blake came through and landed two in one day.  I’ve still yet to catch one over 2 lbs on the fly rod.  Shoot, it’s a good day when you catch one over 1 lb!  Thinking about his record and after a short conversation I had with Mike Tringali about the Choctaw bass earlier this week, my interest in our local spotted bass has been restored.  I had to go back to the old Riverbassin’ forum where we relayed our trip reports to each other and read about Blake’s day again.  I think it is worth a share here(I updated links and edited for spelling and grammar from the original):

08-18-2009

Well, August 14th was a good day that was about two casts from being one of the most frustrating days that I have ever had fishing. I had put in a few extra hours at work during the week and decided to take off to the stream, arriving around 2:30 in the afternoon. I started fishing and was doing pretty well on a crease fly catching above average fish in both size and number. I waded all the way to where I normally turn around and decided that I would just go one more bend in the stream just to check out what things looked like. Well, when I got around the bend I saw a deep pool that I figured would hold some nice fish. I was pretty surprised at what was about to happen. First, a little background about the stream, the average fish that we normally catch on the stream is around 9 – 10 oz and maybe 8 – 9 inches (maybe a little smaller). This day, I was getting bites from (not always catching) spotted bass that were ranging anywhere from 3/4 to 1 1/4 pounds on a consistent basis.

Anyway, I started casting in the last deep pool that I was going to fish and caught a pretty nice fish on my first cast.

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On the next cast, I caught a fish that I believe would have surpassed the Louisiana state record spotted bass on a fly rod. So now I have a decision to make. I didn’t have my scale or a stringer and I was 1.75 miles away from my truck and would have to carry the fish all the way back. I decided to just bite the bullet and let the fish go, hoping that I catch it again in the future. This fish far surpassed any fish that I have caught in this stream in the past 2.5 years. Below is the picture that I snapped using the timer feature on my camera before I let it swim…

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After this, I was pretty p.o.’d about not being prepared to catch a fish like this, this far away from the truck. So to pass some of the time on the walk back, I called Ben and told him that I thought I had just released the state record (he and I have been saying that we were gonna break the record and I even said that I would when I introduced myself on a thread on this site). Well, I get pretty close to my truck and it’s still daylight, so I figured I would fish a stretch that I didn’t have much luck at earlier in the day but Ben had caught a good one at on a previous trip. On my second cast I had a huge bite and set the hook. I thought I was caught on a log. Then the fish ran and I realized that I had a fish that was fighting harder than the one that I had released. I ended up landing the fish and in the end, It weighed 2.34 lbs and should be the state record. I’m still getting all the needed info together to send it in. Thought it was a cool story and figured I would share.

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08-19-2009

I had the fish weighed on a certified scale witnessed by two others (my wife and Ben), identified by a biologist other than myself, and signed off on by myself. The only thing that I have left to do is print out the pictures and send in the paper work with a 25 dollar check. I also have to send in the fly and leader that I caught the fish with.

I had the fish analyzed at work. Turns out that it was between 5 and 6 yrs old. The upper limit for spotted bass in the area is 7 years old. The fish had a 5 inch longear in it’s gut that helped push it over the edge on the scales.

I got to talking with some of the biologists that are doing spotted bass profiles in the watershed and have been included in the “collection” of fish from the streams that I fish. Looking forward to the next sampling day for sure

10-12-2009

http://laoutdoorwriters.com/louisiana-fish-and-big-game-records/louisiana-fish-records/

Congratulations to Blake on officially making the record books. Scroll down to page 33 – Fly Fishing division, spotted bass.

10-20-2009

Here it is:

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But I’m sure that it will be broken soon with Ben, Barret and I all really getting into the river fly fishing and spotted bass thing. Especially with the kayaks, it opens up a lot more and bigger water to fish. If it wasn’t $25 and I didn’t have to give up my fly and leader, I would fill up that list just to see my name on it nine times.

Blake had an incredible day that day and we followed it up a few days later with another great day.  No 2 lb bass were brought to hand then, but several 1+ lb bass were.  Most were caught on his crease fly which I’m going to go ahead and post that below as it is still an awesome fly to use for spotted bass.  He has also done an articulated version that you can find in the Fly archive, but this is the original, and Blake’s first SBS(Again, I took the liberty of editing the original for spelling and grammar).

Chartreuse baby bass crease fly SBS

Well here goes, my first step by step:

Materials

  • Hook – Size 2 Orvis Bass Bug, Item No. 8810.
  • Tail – Chartreuse and Olive marabou, crystal flash
  • Thread – Danvilles 3/0 waxed monocord
  • Body – 2mm closed cell craft foam
  • Coloring – black and red permanent markers, Roseart metallic marker
  • Googly eyes
  • 5 minute epoxy
  • Superglue
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The first step is to tie in the chartreuse marabou tail and the crystal flash on top of that.
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Next, tie in the olive marabou. I try to wrap the marabou all the way down the shank with thread so that I have something with a little bulk to glue the foam to. Cut the flash to about an inch behind the marabou tips. I leave it a little long as it can always be cut down later on.
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Next would be to cut out the piece of foam using a template. I messed around with different shapes until I found a shape that suited most of my crease flies and then made the template out of card stock.
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Color the foam. The metallic markers don’t dry right away, so I make a pretty heavy line and smear it with my finger to get the faded look from top to bottom. I find it easier to draw the lateral line and add eyes after the fly is glued, but it doesn’t really matter if you do it now or wait until after.
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I glue one side of the foam to the shank leaving enough under the shank so that when I glue the other side of the foam, the ends of the foam are glued together so that the shank doesn’t show through the crack.
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Then glue the other side.
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I then draw the lateral line and add the eyes and the gills(I use both googly eyes and stick-on eyes).
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I cut a hole(using a hole punch) from some red foam and insert it in the end of the fly using my bodkin. I use super glue to secure it in place. The second picture shows the closed ends of the foam on the bottom of the shank and also the red plug in the mouth of the popper.
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The white baby bass is another good pattern. For it, I would substitute white marabou for the chartreuse marabou. I also colored the mouth part red on this fly. No reason why, just thought it looked good.
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I then add a light coat of 5 minute epoxy for durability – finished fly.
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Proof of concept…
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