Sicily Island Hills

April 8, 2015
Exploring, Hiking, Outdoors, Scouting
5 Comments

While driving home from Monroe I decided to take a short side trip over to the Sicily Island Hills to check out a really unique part of Louisiana – it’s the type of place that makes a Geography major giddy.  The Sicily Island Hills are in the northeastern part of Catahoula Parish, they lie in the Ouachita River Alluvial Plain.  They are a series of chalk hills that are an erosional remnant of Catahoula sandstone, lying east of the Ouachita River.  With elevations rising to 245 ft, these are the only hills you will find west of the Mississippi River and east of the Ouachita.  In that sense they are unique, quite the geographic outlier.  With their uniqueness comes unique flora as well, this is one of the few places I’ve seen wild flowering dogwood in Louisiana.  It was cool to finally get a chance to check the area out for myself.  Accessing the WMA from Hwy 8, a short ride on a gravel rode had me at a trailhead for the Rock Falls Nature Trail and I was up for a short hike.

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Rock Falls itself is not super impressive, until you realize you are looking at a waterfall in Louisiana, with actual boulders/rocks in the creekbed, which is something we don’t see very often down here.  So relatively speaking, it may be impressive to some.  I enjoyed my short side trip to the Sicily Island Hills, next time I’ll explore the northern access off of Hwy 915.  There are more falls on that end, an even longer hiking trail (~7 miles) and I’m sure I could find a few fish in the creek.

Bayou Desiard

March 31, 2015
Freshwater, Kayak Fishing, Kayaking, Warmwater
1 Comment

I had to be up in Monroe for work a few days last week.  With my kayak and all my bass stuff still in the truck from the Yak-a-Bass tournament it became a work during the day, fish during the evening kind of trip.  There is a ton of good looking water in and around the Monroe area and it was all at my disposal but in the interest of getting the most time on the water I stayed local and fished the bayou that runs right through ULM’s campus, Bayou Desiard.

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I fished from a couple different launches, Tuesday had me closer to town.  Bayou Desiard is loaded with cypress trees and submerged vegetation so the water clarity is awesome and there is structure overload.  You can fish anywhere in the bayou and not feel like you’re in a bad spot.  I stuck to pounding the banks (and the trees closest to the banks) as that is what I know best.  With a texas rigged red shad worm (I’m old school) I ended up having a nice day on the water catching lots of small bass up to 13″.

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Wednesday I went a little further out of town and tried a different spot.  Almost immediately I actually saw a male bass near a bed.  I pitched my worm over there and felt some pressure, but I could see that the male hadn’t taken it.  I was hooked up on a fish I didn’t see that came through the grass, a slightly larger bass – a nice surprise.

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That bass went 15″.  An upgrade to my 13″ bass caught yesterday, not a monster by any stretch of the imagination.  That actually ended up being the only bass I caught that day.  The early sight fishing kind of ruined me as I tried to replicate that pattern throughout the day and failed.  That didn’t take away from the paddling though – Bayou Desiard is downright stunning, an amazing resource so close to town.

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Bayou Desiard is a beautiful place to paddle.  Big thanks to looknfishy for throwing a few launch suggestions my way.  I was able to exercise some bass demons and got a nice, scenic paddle in as well – can’t beat that.

Yak-a-Bass

March 30, 2015
Freshwater, Kayak Fishing, Tournaments, Warmwater
1 Comment

BCKFC held their first ever freshwater tourney, Yak-a-Bass, a couple weekends ago.  It was held out of Chicot State Park on beautiful Lake Chicot, near Ville Platte, Louisiana.  This was also BCKFC’s first ever CPR tourney as well, which wasn’t all that different from an IFA event.  Instead of a redfish and a trout combined, an angler’s three biggest bass would be scored as their cumulative digital stringer.  Thirty-eight yak anglers came out to compete in what promised to be tough conditions – rain was forecast at 100% after 10:00am.  Sixteen anglers caught bass and if I’m not mistaken only two filled their three bass stringer.  It was a tough day to say the least, so naturally, I skunked.

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Although the field failed to catch a lot of fish, there were at least a couple of stud fish caught.  Alton Stanford came through with big bass with a fish that was upwards of 21″ and 7 lbs.  Kelly Chacheres had another bass that was near 21″.  Alton’s fish was enough to give him third place, even more impressive I believe it was the first fish he has caught out of his kayak!  The rest of the winners are below:

1. Jason Dixon – 40″

2. Kevin May – 36.75″

3. Alton Stanford – 21″

4. Kelly Chacheres – 20.375″

5. Norman Walker – 15.25″

I hate that I skunked, but it was nice to get out.  I would avenge that skunking this past week on some bass up in North Louisiana, report to follow.