Redfish, giant speck boated despite strong winds, rapidly-rising tides
Four guys completely out of their element, all Mississippians, chasing redfish in an area of the Louisiana marsh none had ever seen, were already behind in the count before Mother Nature got involved.
And, boy, did she throw us a wicked curve, one of those off-speed pitches that is oh-so-enticing before it dives low and outside, much too late for the batter to stop his swing.
But like a good hitter, we managed to get a piece of the pitch, maybe enough to foul it off to keep the at-bat alive.
We not only stayed in the game against her wicked pitches but we managed to score enough redfish to consider our trip to Golden Meadow and Catfish Lake a victory.
Even if it was one of those wins critics call ugly.
Through strong winds, a full moon and a fast rising tide that lasted most of our daylight hours, we were able to catch enough redfish and one surprise whopper to enjoy our three-day stay.
The never-ending west wind was our toughest test, pushing our fishing skills to the limit and draining our trolling motor batteries to the minimum.
“All we were able to do was find some ponds that had had long west to east runs, motor up as far west as we could and let the wind push us back and fish our way out,” said Joe Watts of Canton, who teamed with Tommy Sutton of Columbia. “That at least gave us a chance, even though we were being pushed along so quickly that we couldn’t hit every spot we needed to hit.
“We caught fish, but we were never really able to set up a pattern that we could target. That’s the only choice we had.”
It did produce a limit of reds for Sutton two of the three days.
Out of the 24 keeper reds the four of us caught in a half day of fishing on Sunday, a full day Monday and a half day Tuesday, Sutton caught 12 of them, all on a Strike King Redfish Magic spinnerbait.
“Only thing I could get them to bite,” Sutton said. “That first afternoon, Joe caught two reds right away, a keeper and a short fish, on that spinnerbait with a red head, a black minnow body with red flakes and a chartreuse tail. I told him if he had another one, I wanted it.
“He did have one more like it, and he gave it to me. I fished it and kept worrying that the minnow would tear, but it never did. I did lose it one time when a redfish hit on the other side of some grass. I hooked the fish and when I tried to reel him over and through the grass, my line broke. I immediately put the trolling motor on high and went around and found my spinnerbait. I was so happy.”
Good thing, too. The same spinnerbait produced the catch of the trip. Early Sunday morning, in the same backwater area off Bayou Blue about a mile south of Catfish Lake, Sutton tossed the lure along a grass line.
“I was running it along the grass, keeping it as close as I could because that’s where all the redfish were holding, and I got a bite,” Sutton said. “It slammed my lure as hard as I’ve ever had a spinnerbait hit and when I set the hook it immediately made a strong run.”
Said Watts: “All of a sudden Tommy was yelling ‘I got a big one! I got a big one!’ His reel was giving line pretty good. We knew it was a big red.”
Wrong!
“All of a sudden the fish starting fighting on the surface like a speckled trout, but I have never seen a trout that shallow in the middle of the summer,” Watts said. “I mean, it was 90 degrees at 7:30 in the morning and the heat index was supposed to reach 107 that day.
“But when Tommy reeled that fish in, we saw it was a speck, a big speck, a giant speck. I grabbed the net and we went nuts when we got him in the boat. It was huge.”
The fish, at least six pounds, was Sutton’s largest speck ever by more than two pounds. It was so big that the trout fishermen in the cabin next to ours at Boudreaux’s Condeaux (I use the name because I just love to type it), came over and posed for photos holding Tommy’s speck.
As for my partner, Ron Garavelli, and me, we finally found a pattern that worked on our last morning. Instead of trying to beat the wind, we decided to use it to our advantage.
I found an area of backwater full of bait fish and then looked for an exposed bank where the wind was pushing the bait against the grass. When I found it, we found redfish stacked along the shoreline.
It produced six fish, including three good keepers, in a 200-yard stretch. We looked for similar spots, found a few, but by then our trolling motor battery was beaten down by the relentless wind and my big motor started beeping — not a good sign when you’re 15 miles out in a marsh you don’t know that well.
It was tough fishing, but we had fun. Thanks to modern cell phones my mechanic talked me through the motor problem and got me in safely.
It didn’t hurt that we found a restaurant near Boudreaux’s that had all you could eat boiled crabs for lunch on Monday.
Yeah buddy, we knocked that fat pitch out of the park.
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