Archive

Kayaking

The FFI Gulf Coast Council Sweetwater Classic

August 24, 2022
Exploring, Fish, Fishing, Fly Fishing, Fly Tying, Freshwater, Kayak Fishing, Kayaking, Outdoors, Scouting, Tournaments, Travel, Warmwater
1 Comment

We woke up to frost on our vehicles the next morning; it was cold as hell for Southern Mississippi. We met up with fellow Red Stick Fly Fisher and blogger Chris, the Fat Fingered Fly Tyer, and came up with a plan of attack that involved fishing the deepest parts of the southern end of the lake. The wind and the bitter cold made executing that plan difficult. We fished and gave it our best in a sheltered cove, but eventually decided that wasn’t working. It was starting to look like the morning was a complete bust, which wasn’t unexpected. There was enough time to try one more spot and I had at least caught fish in the upper part of the lake yesterday so I told them that’s where I was planning to head and Chris decided to come with.

We launched our kayaks at the northern end of the lake and fought the wind, paddling across to where the river dumps in. There the trees were tall enough to protect us from the wind and the channel was pretty deep too, so if the bass were holding on the bottom we could at least target them in the deep channel. The temps were starting to increase to the point of being comfortable, but the wind was non-stop.

Things were looking up once we got in the river. It wasn’t too long after we made it to the river when I was slowly stripping a Clouser minnow with my 7wt sinking line around some standing timber and felt an eat with some solid resistance. When I strip set the line started moving and I got excited. Not long after a fish comes rocketing out of the water! It clearly wasn’t the target fish though, too long and skinny, no this wasn’t a largemouth, it was a bigass chain pickerel! It bulldogged after the jump and put up a really nice fight before I was able to slip my net under it. No points were awarded for big pickerel so I decided to let it go. Chris had mentioned I may want to keep it as it could be a state fly rod record, and I contemplated it, but in the end I let it swim.

It was a great fish that put up a great fight, a really good representative of our southern species of Esox. I was thrilled with the catch and relieved to not skunk on this tough day. A day when I thought for sure that no one was going to catch anything in this crappy weather. Just as soon as I release my fish back in the water Chris hooks into a bass. At 11″ it wasn’t the monster we were hoping for, but any bass on this day was better than none. I was happy to see our change in location had paid off and we both avoided the skunk, and now Chris was at least on the leaderboard.

The rest of our trip was pretty uneventful, I don’t know that I caught another fish. We did explore up the river a ways and found a lot of really good looking water that would probably be worth fishing at a later date, much like on my scouting trip the day before. It was eventually time to head back to the “weigh-in” and see what everyone else had caught.

Fly tying was in full swing by the time we got back and shortly after we arrived back an awards presentation was held for the big bass contest. As I suspected Chris did make it on the leaderboard as there were only two fish submitted. His 11″ bass was good enough for 2nd, while Roger Apperley turned in a 12″ bass minutes before the end of the contest. After the awards came the silent auction and then the raffle prizes. I was lucky enough to have my named called for a Fred Hannie watercolor of a largemouth bass, which now sits in my office at work.

The Sweetwater Classic was the first event I attended put on by the FFI Gulf Coast Council and I really did enjoy it. I thought they did a great job curating an event that catered to area fly fishermen. It was great spending time on and off the water with Brian and Chris, and meeting all the other folks who made the trip up to Percy Quin for the event.

I think the plan next year is for the Classic to be held in early May at Gulf State Park in Gulf Shores, Alabama. More details can be found on the FFI GCC site, and it already looks like it will be bigger and better than this year’s event. If you’re a fly fisher-person in the South you may want to consider making the trip and booking your lodging now.

Brian and I stayed one more night at the cabin and left the next morning to make the drive back down to Baton Rouge. Music was one of the wide variety of things we discussed and we both figured that no trip to this part of Mississippi was complete without a stop at the Lynyrd Skynyrd memorial site. There are a lot of Skynyrd songs I like, but one of my favorite fishing related lyrics from any song comes at the end of “Don’t Ask Me No Questions”

“I said don’t ask no stupid questions and I won’t send you away
If you want to talk fishin, well I guess that’ll be OK”

I chuckle every time I hear it, because it’s so relatable.

Shell Beach in May

May 31, 2022
Exploring, Fish, Fishing, Fly Fishing, Kayak Fishing, Kayaking, Outdoors, Saltwater, Sightfishing, Tournaments
1 Comment

Earlier this month I had an opportunity to get back out in the still-new-to-me kayak, the Crescent Crew, and settled on fishing down around Shell Beach, over in St. Bernard Parish. The wind forecast on the eastern side of the state looked a little more favorable than that of the central coast, which drove my decision to fish over there. I made it out after sunrise and paddled my way toward some familiar marsh. The water clarity was a little stained in some areas, but crystal clear over the thickly vegetated ponds. I started with one of the bigger Ron Braud stippled poppers I won last year, working it at the usual fishy looking spots – points, cuts, intersections, potholes, and the like. I caught a few cookie cutter 10-12″ largemouth bass and then decided I would start looking for redfish.

The white flowers of the arrowhead were blooming in the marsh, interrupting the sea of green of the Spartina grass. It was pretty cool to see so I stopped to snap a pic of one to help me figure out what plant was actually blooming; that’s when I realized that if I was taking pictures of flowers in the marsh than the fishing was pretty darn slow. Five hours passed, nearly the entire morning, before I caught my next fish. I caught those three bass pretty early and then had very few opportunities at redfish after that. Those opportunities I did get were all botched. Either I messed up the cast, saw the fish late and he spooked, or it just wasn’t a great situation to get a good cast off, nothing went right in that time. I did eventually put it all together and ended up catching three reds on back-to-back-to-back chances.

Those three fish all came after I tied on a new fly. I tried my darnedest to catch a fish on the awful Clouser minnow I tied at the first Flies & Flights, but it was honestly off-putting and scaring them away. I switched to a fly that David Rodgers gave me and it was just what I needed to be throwing. The flash tied in made the fly glow in the water and the slow sink rate was perfect for these grassy ponds. I took the pic above just to give anyone reading an idea of what the water looked like. The 30″ red was big fish on the day and he was one of the smartest fish I’ve ever caught. It was a hell of a fight on my 7wt! He would bulldog himself deep in the grass, I’d then have to paddle over to him and negotiate my rod trying to free him without coming up with pounds of matted grass on the leader, then when I’d get him out, he’d do all over again a little further away. It was a forearm workout for sure. I was thankful that my knot and my tippet held and I had something to post up for the fly rod category of the BCKFC Massey’s Fish Pics tourney. I failed to catch anything else after the stroke of genius I had catching those three redfish in a row. I didn’t stay out long after that, but there were more opportunities that were blown. I slowly made my way back to the launch content to call it a day.

A few observations I had on the day:

  • Gar were all over the place and the spawn was on for some of them. There were mostly spotted gar, but there were a few big alligator gar out there as well. I didn’t fool with them too much, but that’s as good a place as any to target gar.
  • I still need to figure out a better way to sight fish from the Crew. My paddle clip belt has worn itself out to the point where the paddle falls out unless it’s perfectly situated. As soon as the paddle falls out it makes a loud bang on the deck and you may as well be playing death metal underwater when that happens. Nothing will eat at that point. It seems like a long way down to drop a paddle and that deck is loud.
  • Speaking of long way down, I need to shorten the distance between the fly rod and myself while standing. In most of my Jacksons, I don’t remember that ever being an issue, but in the Crew it just seems so far away. The seat riser helps, but I’ve got to figure out how to raise up my rod without impeding my paddle stroke.

I’ve got a fix on the way, or at least ideas, for both of those situations, so hopefully I can hammer it down and be totally comfortable sight fishing out of this boat. I like it, it paddles great, but it needs a little help to turn it into a fishing machine.

One of Those Days

March 5, 2022
Exploring, Fish, Fishing, Fly Fishing, Kayak Fishing, Kayaking, Multimedia, Saltwater, Scouting, Sightfishing, Tournaments, Video
Leave a comment

I had another opportunity to take the new kayak out to the marsh one day last month and man did I hit it right!

The last two trips in the kayak I’ve failed to wake up early enough to make it down there before sunrise, which is not a big deal to someone who sightfishes as much as I do, but it prevented me from making a longer paddle at the beginning of the day last time and I was determined not to do it again this time. It at least gave me an opportunity to see this stranded Ford Ranger, across the canal from the nearest place a vehicle should be, in the daylight. Thanks Ida.

It was near-perfect conditions though and I couldn’t have been happier about it. Apparently the fish were just as thrilled as very shortly after I got to the first flat I wanted to fish I started seeing activity.

After seeing a couple of bigger than average redfish and blowing shots at them the thought began to creep into my mind about my previous trip and how awful I was at making the most of my chances then, somehow I shook that mindset though and was able to connect on the next opportunity. I spotted a big black drum feeding on bottom and what I thought was another black drum with it. I made a cast toward the big drum and he began to track the fly, but the other fish beat him to it and I set the hook. It was a big fish and very soon I could tell it wasn’t a black drum.

This red gave me some good runs and put up a solid fight on the 8wt. I was after a redfish over 30″ for the Massey’s CPR tourney and it had been a while since I eclipsed that mark on the fly from the kayak, but this one was at least 5″ past my 30.5″ board, so goal accomplished for the day.

I didn’t have my 45″ ruler on board because for some reason the 321 ruler wasn’t stated in the rules as an approved measuring device this year for the yearlong Massey’s CPR tourney, so I quit carrying it around. This fish had to be submitted as 30.5″, which tied a previous submission by another participant, so it’ll only be good enough for 2nd place redfish on the fly in that tourney, despite it clearly being longer. I play by the rules and sometimes those rules are pretty dumb. Still I like the Massey’s CPR tourney because I can participate on almost every trip I take in the kayak, there’s a fly rod category, and I don’t have to keep the fish. It’s the only kayak tourney I continually participate in. I’m over the conventional meathaul kayak tourneys. I won one once, I’m happy with that. Sorry for the aside, back to the fishing.

I made the decision to head back to the main canal and fish the flats there on out to the bay, thinking I’d keep seeing big fish out there. The fish weren’t there though, they were on the shallow flats in the marsh. It wasn’t until I made it back into a marsh cut that I started seeing fish again. After that it was on.

One of my favorite catches on the day wasn’t the biggest fish, but the situation was pretty awesome. I got to a pond that was super shallow. Shallow to the point where I commented to myself that no self-respecting redfish would be caught dead in that pond and wouldn’t you know there was one way in the back happily cruising with his back out of the water. There is no shallow that’s too shallow apparently. There was only one way into this pond and I was at the opening so I just waited for him to swim into casting range. I even captured video of him with my phone before I put it down and made a cast to him. I put a fly out in front of him, twitched it a couple times, and he pounced on it, much to my delight! It’s nice when you don’t screw it up!

After catching those two redfish, which were both around 28″, I spotted a little shark crusing around the shallow flats of the marsh. I made a few casts his way, but could never get him to eat. I popped back out into the bay and then made my way to another marsh cut back into the marsh. After traversing that cut I made it to a big flat at an intersection of waterbodies where I could see black drum were actively feeding. They were so focused on whatever it was they were rooting around for on the bottom that I could get real close before casting and it didn’t take long to hook up with one.

I then hooked another.

These weren’t the biggest drum I’ve ever seen, but black drum over 30″ are pretty heavy fish and fun to fight on the fly rod. My 8wt was definitely doubled over as I fought to bring these guys within arm’s reach of the boat. My net was far too small to handle them so the fish grips had to work.

Just up the bank from the black drum I spotted a good redfish working the shallow bank. It gave me a good opportunity at one more redfish over 30″ and I was lucky enough to make my shot count.

It was a pretty fish with bullseye spot on his tail and a great way to end the day. I couldn’t believe the luck I had on the day and the fact that almost every fish I came across was a big fish. There’s something to be said about mild late winter days in the South Louisiana marsh – the big fish just seem to come out this time of year!

This was one of those days that make you remember why you put in all the hard work trying to fly fish from a kayak for bull redfish. It’s not easy. Nothing about the process is easy. It’s a lot of work. It’s downright difficult. It would be much easier to use a boat. It would be much easier to throw conventional tackle. It would be much easier if I could spend an endless amount of time on the water and know exactly where these fish are at all times. When it all comes together like it did on this day it makes it all worth it. This doesn’t happen nearly often enough, but when it does happen I’ve learned to cherish it.