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Tag Archives: Sunfish

Local Park Diversity

October 14, 2023
Fish, Fishing, Fly Fishing, Freshwater, Outdoors
1 Comment

When things start to warm up in the Spring, I get the itch to start fishing the creeks again. One lunch break in late February of this year I got out and had a pretty fun time catching a variety of different fish – none of which were the original target fish. Early Spring is when the sacalait start to move shallow and I had it in my mind they may be doing that in this creek that runs through a park not far from my old workplace. It seems all the other species were active however and I’m pretty good at making lemons from lemonade.

The white woolly bugger was my sacalait fly of choice, but I soon switched to a smaller fly that David Rogers had given me, a golden retriever. Very similar to a woolly bugger, this one was a bit smaller though than what I had been throwing and I think that size turned out to be just the ticket. Or maybe it was the pattern, I don’t know, either way I was knocking out Jambalaya Challenge species early with a green sunfish, redspotted sunfish, warmouth, and longear sunfish turning up. I’d soon have the opportunity to level up so to speak when I caught a glimpse of a big largemouth cruising the same waters as the other fish. I made a few casts into the depths of a deep spot hoping he’d chase my fly and eat or at least come into a position where I could sight fish him. It just so happened that after one of my casts he appeared in a perfect position for me to strip my fly in a fleeing run away from him and that triggered a lunging strike! After a short fight I slipped down the creek bank and dragged him to my feet – it was the nicest creek bass I’ve caught in a while and a great fish to start the Spring fishing season!

Maurepas Swamp WMA Exploring

October 13, 2023
Exploring, Fish, Fishing, Fly Fishing, Freshwater, Outdoors, Scouting, Warmwater
3 Comments

For someone living in south Louisiana I spend quite a bit of time fishing away from the blackwater swamps that occur in our lowlands. Targeting different species, especially our native sunfish, has made fishing these types of locales an absolute necessity and I’m grateful for it! Swamps are awesome! My issue with them is I don’t have a lot of experience with them so I don’t always know the best places to go to target the fish I want to catch and my only means of exploiting these places is on foot or via a kayak, which is limiting. Back in late April I decided to take an exploratory trip, on foot, to an area of the Maurepas Swamp WMA where I had heard a good bit of dollar sunfish were located at. Obviously the dollars were a target species, but I was honestly down for whatever I came across – in fact I brought three fly rods with me from a 1wt to a 7wt just in case.

The Maurepas Swamp WMA is nearly 62,000 acres of public land an hour southeast of Baton Rouge that is as far down in the Amite River basin as you can get. It’s got all the swamp critters and whether you fish or hunt, it’s a good place to spend some time. The water I wanted to target required a short hike in – all the better.

It didn’t take long to start catching fish with the ever-aggressive goggle-eye (warmouth) showing up first. I was surprised by the next species that showed up though and it was a pleasant surprise at the, flier! I had only previously caught these in the Bayou Lacombe watershed so this was a pretty cool find!

It actually turned out that the flier were the dominate species for me on the day. Dollar sunfish never made an appearance. I wasn’t in the same exact place where I had heard they were prevalent, but I figured I was close enough. I also caught a couple smaller largemouth bass that I didn’t bother to take a picture of and saw choupique, but didn’t come away with any. It turned out to be quite the scouting trip and I walked away pretty excited by my local public land find – always great to have those types of places in the rolodex in my mind!

The FFI Gulf Coast Council Sweetwater Classic – Big Bream Contest

August 23, 2022
Exploring, Fish, Fishing, Fly Fishing, Freshwater, Kayak Fishing, Outdoors, Scouting, Tournaments, Travel, Warmwater
1 Comment

I made it to Percy Quin and Lake Tangipahoa in time for the start of the big bream contest. Catch Cormier was running the show and, as I suspected, it was a very laid back, no pressure affair – just my style. “Go out and catch some bream, take some pics, and we’ll see who’s got what and afterwards there will be some prizes.”

I took off for the northern part of the lake and found shallow water with lilies and vegetation and loads of grass carp. I spent a little bit of time trying to fool one and had a rod at the ready, but I wasn’t really all that prepared for carp so I focused more on targeting bream. I started with a popper-dropper setup and things were pretty slow early on in the lake. I caught my first bluegill off some vegetation closer to the river channel and decided maybe it was best I stick to the deeper water if I wasn’t having any luck in the shallows.

I took the popper off and put on a bobber so I could fish the dropper even deeper and continued to target the vegetation and structure closer to deep water and I then started catching more fish. I had heard there were some big redear in the lake and I was really hoping to run into one, thinking I’d need at least 9″ to compete in any sort of big bream contest, but the best I could muster was a 7.75″ bluegill. Oh well, let’s go see what everyone else caught. As it turned out that 7.75″ bluegill was good enough to tie for first place, lol. The sunfish gods had rewarded me for the many years of targeting these fish!

I met up with Brian, my cabin bunkmate for the next two nights, and really enjoyed his company over the weekend. Be sure to check out his blog over at Down South Fly Fishing, he’s been putting out some great content this year. He made some bomb fajitas that night with limited resources (I totally dropped the ball on food or any cookware for the weekend) and we discussed a wide variety of things. Strategy for the next day’s big bass tourney was anyone’s best guess. The wind was howling through the chimney of that old cabin as temps began to plummet. Fish were going to be put off, there was no way around it. I had some 7wt sinking line and some streamers that I figured I’d dredge through the deepest parts of the lake to say I gave it my best shot. Being a mostly fair-weather fisherman had me pretty unprepared for the next day’s event.