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Massey’s BCKFC Fish Pics Tourney

January 13, 2017
Fish, Fishing, Fly Fishing, Kayak Fishing, Retail, Tournaments
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For the last few years the Bayou Coast Kayak Fishing Club and Massey’s Outfitters have gotten together and offered one of my favorite kayak fishing events, the Massey’s BCKFC Fish Pics Tournament.  It’s an 11 month long CPR style (catch-photo-release) tournament that starts on Jan 1st of each year and is free to members of the BCKFC.  It has two divisions, one for conventional tackle and one for fly fishermen, and each division winner is awarded a kayak at the end of the year.  You heard that right, a tournament with essentially free entry awards two kayaks!  Other awards are also given out for the biggest fish in each category – redfish, trout, bass, and flounder.  I love this style of tournament because now every trip becomes a potential winning trip.

Last year I started off hot, catching some big redfish in January.  This 42.25″ red was good enough to land me the award for biggest redfish in the conventional tackle division.

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In the fly division, I took home 2nd place overall with the help of a 35.5″ redfish also caught that same day in January.

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My bass and my trout weren’t the biggest, but they were enough to eek out a 2nd place finish.  They were both caught during my week long stay in St. Bernard in October.

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This past year was the most participation that the tournament has ever seen, which was around  40 people total, so as you can tell, it didn’t take much for me to place.  It’s a shock to me that more BCKFC members aren’t taking advantage of this opportunity and submitting fish from their trips.  Maybe this year the tournament will see even more growth.

For more information on the Massey’s BCKFC Fish Pics tournament or to start competing, sign up to become a member at www.BCKFC.org.

Fourchon Fun

November 27, 2016
Fish, Fishing, Kayak Fishing, Saltwater
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Following my trip with Blake I met up with the Bama boys, who were in Grand Isle that weekend.  That gave me another opportunity to fish with my buddy James, the idiot lawyer as he’s affectionately known in our circle.  The weather forecast had me scratching my head on where I thought we could do best that morning, Fourchon was what I came up with, a spot we’ve fished together in the past.  When winds are stiff I tend to lean on fishing in Fourchon due to the greater presence of mangroves, which seem to provide more of a wind block than your standard marsh grass.

We made our way to the ponds we’d fish and at my first stop I ended up catching a nice upper slot red on topwater.

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A great start to the day, however, things were pretty slow going immediately after that.  We fished a few tried and true areas and had little luck, but finally there were signs of life.  I heard some crashing on a far bank and instead of being one redfish raising hell, it was a school!  Nothing gets your adrenaline pumping more than running down a school of reds.  I hollered at James that we needed to head that way and followed them as they went through a small cut onto a flat on the other side of some islands.  As I’m sitting in the cut I see them swim right in front of me – 4, 5, 6, 8, 12, damn, they just keep coming!  Not sure how many reds were in that school, but it was an awesome sight.  I threw a fly in the mix and immediately got a hookup.  While waiting on James to make his way over I decided it was a good idea to throw my Matrix shad in there too and soon I doubled up, bent rods in each hand!  Utter gluttony I know, but I couldn’t help myself.  Meanwhile those two fish kicked up enough sediment that James had a hard time spotting anything and was never able to pull another fish out.  He was left with a rod in hand as I was giggling like a schoolgirl, he got a pretty good screenshot of it from his GoPro.

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We lost the school after that and split up again.  I set up on a point for trout, and caught a few that were undersize, but kept getting distracted by reds that were crashing the shoreline at a nearby cut.  Of course I had to pull anchor and chase them down.

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After the reds things slowed down through the mid-afternoon, they weren’t crashing bait like they had been earlier and everything went quiet for a while.  James and I eventually met back up and instead of heading out we decided to fish some marsh at the far end of a big pond. That marsh led to a cut that went from the big pond to a canal.  I worked each point in that cut and finally caught a decent fish, a nearly 19″ trout.

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While I was hauling in that trout I hear James hooked up back in the cut, his reel peeling drag.  It was a big bull red and the fight was on!

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Earlier in the day James had landed his personal best redfish at 29″, this beast was about to eclipse that, if he could get it in the boat.  The red had hit a topwater that James was throwing and it came from a bank in a cut that I had just worked – right place, right time.  After some good forearm pumping runs the red had given up and James was able to slide him over the bow for a brief photo op.

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What a great way to end the day!  It always feels good when you’re not sure where to head in the morning and by the evening you know that you ended up making a pretty good decision because of the results. We paddled out as the sun was setting and made our way back to camp to meet up with the rest of the crew.  Jameson and Brooks from JK Media House would be getting in later that night, giving me an opportunity to paddle the new Cuda HD the next two days.   After the first two successful days of fishing I was hoping the action would stay hot as they were prepared to do a good bit of filming over the course of an entire week.

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Bull reds and trout limits

November 21, 2016
Fish, Fishing, Saltwater
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Trout wasn’t what Blake and I were originally targeting, but sightfishing conditions just never presented themselves so we adjusted  our gameplan and proceeded to wax the trout.  Trout fishing in the marsh is insane right now.  Just find moving water with bait and they will be there.  It’s been like this for a few weeks now.

The view of the sunrise on 308 was pretty spectacular until the sun got high enough to be hidden by the clouds, where it stayed hidden the rest of the day.

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We started the day on a flat that I knew has held bull reds in the past.  It didn’t take long to get a follow from a good red and then an eat on my She-Dog, unfortunately for me none of the six hooks that bait carried penetrated flesh and Blake was there with a quick follow up cast and subsequent hookset.  After a strong fight with a fish in tidal current we boated the first bull red of the day.

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It was a very distinct fish, one I’d seen before.  I even remarked to Blake during the fight that if we catch a bull red with a big dent in his head at this spot, there is a good possibility he’s been caught before.  This is the same fish Hays caught on one of our trips back in January.  He’s still sitting on the same flat, some ten months later.

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I kept throwing the topwater after that and began getting hits from keeper trout fairly regularly.  Knowing I’d be fishing with the boys from Alabama the next few days I decided to start keeping fish, just in case the rest of the weekend was unproductive for us.  Since we couldn’t really effectively sightfish, catching trout was not a bad consolation.

We drifted a shoreline picking up trout here and there, then had an unsuccessful effort in a shallow pond for reds,  at the outlet of that pond we stumbled onto a trout gold mine.  It wasn’t all keeper speckled trout, there were plenty of white trout too, but it was a fish every cast and that’s hard to beat.

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Blake was catching them on a double rig and I was wearing them out on a Matrix shad, I think you could have thrown anything though and had the same results.  That bite did eventually slow down and we drifted on down the shoreline.  Things were kind of quiet for a little bit then Blake had another big red inhale his bait.

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Almost the same size as the first red, this one, however, was much prettier, it was another fantastic fish.  We continued our drift and eventually moved into another bay.  This bay had a little island in the middle of it and water was being blown around it.  The water was pretty shallow throughout, but that didn’t matter much to the trout.  We were on them again and decided it was time to stop and count our fish.

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We needed less than 20 to finish off a two man limit and we weren’t leaving until we did that – this sightfishing trip had turned into a meat haul.  The good news was that it really didn’t take long to accomplish that.

It was a great day on the water with Blake and the start to what would be a great weekend.