Reflecting Back, Looking Ahead

It’s a simple life.  As the dew drips off the camp windows as a result of the thick humid air, you hear the gentle beep of a coffee pot finishing its brew. However, before you pour a cup, you walk outside

"The NACK" - Port Sulphur, LA

and feel the thick heavy air sitting over the marsh like its snuggling tight after it just hit the snooze for the third time.  Immediately, you get excited because for once the weatherman got it right and the light and variable winds forecasted should be perfect on the beach, especially with a nice incoming tide.  As you begin to collect your gear and load the boat, your buddy makes his way out of his room at the camp and asks, “What’s the verdict?”  Your response isn’t even spoken, instead it’s a simple head nod that has an unspoken definition, understood by only the fraternity of fisherman that have wadefished the surf in South Louisiana.  Its early August and the full moon, which is the last spawning full moon for trout in the surf, shows the way to the bounty that awaits, like an Army Ranger shooting an azimuth through the hills of Ecuador.

Sunrise on Grand Bayou

As they make their way downstairs to the boat that sits in a hoist centered under the camp, the air is so quiet you can hear the water dripping off the siding and hitting the rocks below.  As a result, the anticipation grows and the captain quickly fires up the 90hp Yamaha Four Stroke to get idling down Martins canal. During their 10 minute idle, they make small talk, say a quick prayer and thank God for the raw beauty they are allowed to be a part of.  In addition, they say a quick hello to the local charter fleet, preparing for a day of catching with their clients, and make quick/corny jokes about the limp flag that sits atop the boat shed. In short, it’s going be a good day.

As they reach the end of the canal, the ambient light fades from the row of camps behind, and all that’s aiding the journey south is the reflection of the full moon off of Grand Bayou and the port and

Forging bonds to last a lifetime

starboard lights reflecting off the bow.  It’s a 30 minute ride, and despite the attention of a few crab traps, it’s a fairly straightforward quest to Eddies pass at the mouth.  During the journey, everyone remains quiet and ponders a variety of topics ranging from girlfriends, deciding whether to throw a 1/4oz or a 3/8oz jig-head or repenting for any wrongdoings that are sitting on the heart.  All are good, because the marsh doesn’t just sustain with its bounty, it sustains the heart and whispers comfort to the soul at 35mph…it’s a grassy cathedral with no stain glass or pews, but slumped over cypress trees and the dawn of a new day. When the boat comes off plane at the destination, it’s a mixture of leaving a confessional and preparing for the decent on a double black diamond trail at Tahoe…it’s the adrenaline rush all anglers seek to encounter.

My Pops doing what he loved

Me and my best bud, 50 trout

Once the boat is secure, the two anglers walk a short distance over the beach to the marginally present breakers on the Gulf Side of the pass, and as suspected the tide is slightly incoming and the water, emerald green.  At this point, the light over the horizon provides just enough visibility to see where the bait hits the water, and good thing, because as soon as it does, it immediately gets engulfed by a 20” trout.  After a short fight, an adequate net job, and a successful attempt to put him in the fish basket, you make another cast to the same result.  At this point, it’s one after another and both anglers bow up after every cast until they field their limit in less than an hour. Its magical, however this story doesn’t have a happy ending...yet. 

As a 33 year old father with 2 young boys (5 and 2), my children will never witness being alone in the marsh with one of their best friends to catch trout, drink a beer while fileting a box of fish or taking a nap on the couch at the camp, between trips, during the heat of the day, unless we preserve it.  Since the early 2000’s, all of the passes from the Shell Island pass to Four bayou pass in Grand Isle have been filled in due to storm protection endeavors and the marsh behind the beach is left to starve.  Not only is it cut off from the flowing tides of the Gulf, but it’s deprived of its nourishment by 30’ high levee walls, guiding all of the rich river sediment out of the passes of Venice off the continental shelf.  In short, if you enjoyed these days and hope they will one day return, be part of the solution and do your part to restore Coastal Louisiana.  Educate yourself on the State’s Master plan to restore the Delta and get behind grassroots organizations like Vanishing Paradise and the like, who diligently seek that funding authorized from oil companies and the federal government, go toward sustainable efforts to restore our coast.




As stated above, this is a special place, not only to me, but too many across the nation and certainly South Louisiana.  Again, I urge you to be part of the solution and safeguard these memories for generations to come.

God bless and Tight lines.

Chris

Paradise

 

Like it was Yesterday

Its 8:15 pm in late January and as one would expect its cold outside, particularly for south Mississippi.  As my wife and I wrap up our meal, bathe our kids and get the boys ready for bed, I take out our trash as the last chore of the day.  However with a content heart, full belly and the warm glow of a comfortable inside I notice the still, cold, quiet air fueling my curiosity of whether or not one of my winter time wade fishing spots has any hungry trout awaiting an easy meal  - after all the tide isn’t supposed to start falling for another 2 hours.  So as I swing open the screen door to confess to my addiction, my wife doesn’t allow me to even mutter a syllable, but instead acutely just says “go!” and shakes her head as if she just saw me doing the chicken dance in a room full of strangers.

As an avid wadefisherman, who is passionate about pursuing big trout, her response was the only word I needed to hear.  In the next 5 minutes I put on 2 base layers, my waders, threw my wading gear, rods and Boga in the bed and made a right at the stop sign 3 blocks away.  By this point, it is around 8:30, I just worked for 10 hours, and am running on pure adrenaline, like a skydiver approaching the door of a perfectly good airplane or a hunter getting ready to squeeze the trigger with his crosshairs spot on the biggest deer they’ve ever seen running perpendicular to end of their muzzle.  

A solid 4lber from my "Giant spot"

To add to the elements, I glance at my truck thermometer on my rear view and it gently reminds me that its 43 degrees.  Its Tuesday, and the few people on Hwy 90 at this point would not believe me that I will be getting in the water on purpose, let along to try to catch a few trout.  In events like this, it is as if you’re looking through an HD lens and DVR’ing your favorite show, so you can impress co –workers with quirky lines you’ve memorized from your favorite comedy.  This particular night is no exception, in the short 10 minute drive it took for me to get to the spot, I listen to Sportstalk with Bobby Hebert and Deke Bellavia, and reflected with them as they analyzed last week’s Saints game-plan of throwing less and running the ball more.  In addition to learning more about next weeks opponent through osmosis, my mind keeps racing trying to guess if anyone is in my spot and as a result, I contemplate cruising through red lights with fear that somebody has beat me out there….luckily this night, I was alone. 

When I finally realized the coast was clear I quickly reminded myself that it isn’t that cold, and the encouraging mental image of me hoisting a Monster trout from the deep rich darkness, allowed the blood to keep flowing as if my hands were encased in waterproof neoprene’s.  Moving forward and before I knew it, I’m walking out to my flat, after somehow putting on my wade belt, like I’ve done many times before. 

I finally made it, with what felt like an hour in all actuality took me 15 minutes from door to flat.  This particular spot I felt has the biggest possibility of containing a really large trout.  I fished it for two solid years almost year round and the slightest intricacies are evident because It’s solid oysters and has a very nice adjacent drop off alongside the flat.  In short, its my big trout spot!  Now that I’m set up my first order of business is determining what the tide is doing, and from what I could tell she’s still inching in, which are indicated by tiny tide bubbles lying on the surface.  Also my stringer validates my claim and I start fishing.

Skelator

My first half hour is uneventful and the self-doubt starts to creep in as to whether I should be lying under my LSU blanket on the couch watching Deadliest Catch, rather than fishing.  However, I decide to press on and switch tactics and throw a slow sinking Black with white bones MirrOdine, that was perfectly named Skelator by my good bud Mr.Sam Davis, who has a quick wit and an even better memory of the HEMAN cartoons him and his two sons would watch on Saturday mornings.  However, after 10 or so cast I catch what I came for...a solid start to my night, a good 23” trout that I slide onto the stringer with visions of it being pecan encrusted and served on a bed of Grits with a sweet potato and a salad on the side.  Now with some confidence under my belt, I heave skelator back out there and retrieved three more trout from the mold the first came out of, and think those will make a fine addition to our meal and maybe have enough for our neighbors to join us.  All of the cold up to this point has gone by the wayside, my fingers no longer hurt, my teeth no longer clinching and my internal temp is enough to make me break into a sweat. In short, all the pain goes away when I’m catching fish….well, maybe not all of it. 

You see my very next cast, skelator took two twitches and a 3 second pause to be engulfed by the biggest trout I’ve ever hooked.  When I felt her hit the bait, she shot straight to the right then to the left and made a couple of quick burst stripping small sets of drag.  However, after about 5 minutes or so, she wallowed on the surface in the low ambient light cast by the street lights behind me.  At this point, I can barely make out if it was a trout or a nice slot red, but in the blink of an eye she heads north and lumbers straight toward the knee deep water with which I’m standing.  In an effort to try and keep up, my Revo 7:1:1 went into overdrive and my numb arms and fingers were reeling as fast as they could to keep up.  During that time, I noticed I was having a hard time getting her head to come up to surface and correctly ID and confirm what was on the end of my line.  So after wallowing for a few more moments, she makes her presence known which weakened my knee’s at first glance.  It was confirmed, my biggest trout to date, which easily surpassed my previous personal best which I caught, the same time the year before on the same flat, 7.4lbs.  However, she wasn’t in my grasp….yet.  My next big decision was deciding whether to get her on the boga or grab her, “like the Texans do.” With my mind made up and no time to waste to unhook my boga off my wade belt I decide to grab her with one fair swoop.  So with her pretty tuckered out and me confident in my decision, It was time for me to get it done and take a picture for future Facebook gawkers.  I work her to my left and the back to my right with my rod in my left hand I was going to grab her with my right hand.   “Here we go!” I thought and I dive my right hand into the cold water and slide my hand stretched out as far as it would go around her shoulders, and as I go to pick her up.  She does what any wise old fish would do and makes one last jailbreak.  With all of her wisdom and all of her might she musters enough strength to shake her head valiantly one last time, and as she does so my cold, numb hand can’t keep up. 

"Like Texans Do" I looked just like this before she came unhooked

Additionally, all of my VMC#4 hooks on the belly of Skeletor come right back at me and no sooner as she was there is how fast she was gone.  The image of her long black slender body sliding back into the darkness from the cascading street lights will be an image that I will never forget, as well as, the pain that returned in my fingers from the constant cold wetness of the Gulf.  In addition, it wasn’t until that I could feel the nip of old man winter on my cheeks and my nose, and the lifeless feeing of my face from being numb for so long. And lastly, it wasn’t until that moment that I’ve been so disappointed to lose such a beautiful fish.

Now three years removed from that night, two states away and two bigger fish under my belt, I still remember every intricacy of the events leading up to and after that botched landing attempt.  It was an experience I was able to redeem eventually, but at the time it was the near biggest accomplishment in my trophy trout endeavors.  As I’ve mentioned before, speckled trout have a charm, but big speckled trout have a magic about them, so much so, that three years later I still remember that night like it was yesterday!

God bless and never give up! Tight lines.

Chris

Is fishing just fishing?

Sorry for the delay everyone but my wife and I scooped up the boys and headed to Gulf Shores for the past week and a half to be with her family. In short, it was a great break from the Texas heat and always most excellent to be with family.

Me and Pops, Lafitte, LA - "Slick 50"

Well, during our stay on the beach, we were greeted with superb beach-going weather, and as a result I took advantage to wet a line just about everyday.  During my trips I was able to pattern a nice flounder bite and grossed enough for a family meal of crab and shrimp stuffed flounder with a homemade crab butter…glowing remarks nonetheless, even my wife was impressed.   However on the last morning, I shifted gears and went looking for trout.  I specifically targeted the surf just outside of the little lagoon pass, and I couldn’t ask for a more beautiful morning, with absolutely no wind, a great incoming tide and bait everywhere…the only problem, the trout never showed.  I mention this, because as my wife and I were driving home, she asked me if I had a good time fishing all week, and of course I said yes, but she could sense a little hesitation since I hadn’t caught any trout.  So she asked, “what is it about catching trout that interest you so much?”  “Isn’t fishing, just fishing?”  I got to thinking about her questions during our 13-hour drive back to San Antonio and when I pulled into our drive way, the only word that I could muster was a simple one-word answer, no.  So why is that? For me targeting trout, as I’ve mentioned before, is a mission. When I’m fishing for trout isn’t to just to catch fish to sustain my family with a meal, but an opportunity to catch, photo and release (CPR) a big trout, and to watch and feel  that big girl slide out your hand and lumber back into the unknown, with thoughts of  wondering how big she’ll be if she lets you catch her again.  It isn’t just for the sake of “stretching the string” but to target, pattern, and execute cast after cast the feel of a subtle tap of a mule trout inhaling a bait, and the joy or regret of a trout coming over or coming off right at the gunnel of the boat.  It isn’t just for the sake of being out “on the water” but the growing anticipation of hitting the mother load and filling a limit in no time, when you haven’t had a bite in hours.



"Legendary bite"

You see for most, fishing is fishing, but for me trout fishing is in a class of its own. It has the ability to keep me up the night before with anticipation of a new day, and pop me out of bed before my alarm sounds.  It also has the ability to make an angler push the environmental limits for that “just one more” fish with a storm bearing down on a hot bite with fish every cast, and it has the ability to forge bonds between anglers just like me, to speak about “the best trip you’ve ever been on” and share every intricacy of that legendary bite.  Yes, the more I think about trout fishing, the more excited I get for the cooler days of the fall and winter when I can slip onto a flat and target those monsters, but for now fishing will have to be fishing until I can go trout fishing.

Again, sorry for the delayed post, but tight lines and God bless!

Chris