(Published as the “Red Spread” in the Summer 2014 issue of The Drake Magazine)
It was still a bit early in the season for the western part of the state, but I found myself in the marsh on the last Sunday of March searching. I was searching for redfish, but more importantly I was searching for a place. I was trying to find a place to get away from Texans. It’s not that there’s anything particularly wrong with Texans , some of the finest people I know hail from Texas. It’s just that there’s just so damn many of them, and they all live right next to Louisiana.
When I first started fishing the Calcasieu Estuary in extreme Southwest Louisiana it was relatively uncrowded. Anglers fishing Calcasieu Lake had plenty of room to spread out and find some solitude, and making the effort to work your way into the marsh where a push pole is required assured that you wouldn’t see another boat all day. Those days are long past. Crowds on the lake first began to grow when the Coastal Conservation Association introduced their “Star Tournament” which runs from Memorial Day to Labor Day and promises prizes of fully rigged bay boats for the larges speckled trout, then when the Calcasieu Estuary became a regular stop for popular redfish tournaments, attention was drawn to the fantastic fishing available in the marshes surrounding the lake and crowds in the backwater began to grow. Over the last few years the number of boats pulling onto flats that were at one time “my secret” has grown dramatically, and the larger percentage of them bear boat registration numbers that start with “TX”.
So on this day I’m searching, I’m trying to find the T.F.Z. or “Texan Free Zone”. Having spent hours poring over Google Earth I’ve formulated a plan. To reach the area I had been studying required a rather long run across open water, the brisk south wind was creating a light chop on the water and occasionally salt spray blew over the gunwale and across my face. I tasted the salt and smiled, feeling like I was back where I belong. After the open water crossing I entered a relatively small bayou and followed its diminishing course , then a turn into a yet smaller bayou filled with hairpin turns, and finally veering off into an old mud boat trail that had grown up and was now narrower than my skiff, the prop churning mud as I ran, salt grass being pushed aside by my bow. Finally the boat trail became too small and shallow to run and I had to pole the last leg of my journey.
After poling the last few hundred yards of the old boat trail, I reached open marsh, or rather a series of small ponds and flats that formed a maze of fishable water that spread out for nearly 3 miles in front of me, and three quarters of a mile to either side. As my push pole dug deep into the soft mud bottom the smell of methane gas escaping the marsh greeted my nose. As odd as it may sound, I love this smell, because it means I am where I love to be, doing what I love to do. Working my way into the first small pond, it was obvious that it was still well early of prime season. No aquatic vegetation had yet started growing in the ponds, and while I started finding a few fish, they weren’t in the marsh in anything close to the numbers they will reach by early May, and remain through fall.
Pushing further into the series of broken ponds I was surprised to find that in spite of the ponds not being grassed up yet, the water was still extremely clear. I spotted a pair of small redfish cruising, but before I could reach for my rod they were under my bow and spooked, leaving behind a thick cloud of mud. I started spotting muds made by actively feeding fish, and would watch for the fish to move out of the mud and become visible. I took a few shots at redfish this way without ever quite getting the fly in the right spot.
Finally, working a protected bank, I came around a very small point, and moving along the sloping bottom in inches deep water on the back of the point was a very nice redfish. I cast about 6 feet ahead of, and a foot past the path of the fish and waited. As the fish neared my leader I slowly stripped the fly, dragging it along the bottom inches from the nose of the fish. The water was so shallow that the fish had to elevate itself out of the water to come down on top of the fly with its underslung mouth. The fish pinned the fly to the bottom nearly standing on its head, and for a moment didn’t move. The fish tilted back to the horizontal position and began to move, I strip set hard against the fish and it exploded in the shallow water, streaking across the pond, my fly line making the familiar zipping sound as it ripped across the water. The fish got itself on the reel and after another short burst of a run, and some bull dogging at the side of the boat I had it in hand. It was a healthy fish of around 9 pounds. The fish was beautifully colored in a deep copper and the edge of its tail a bright iridescent blue. I removed the hook from the mouth of the fish and gently cradled it in the water until it kicked to show that it was ready to go. I smiled watching it swim off.
I spent a long day exploring as much of this secluded marsh as I could. I caught 3 more fish that day, and while a 4 fish day is really marginal in terms of the numbers of fish the Louisiana marsh normally produces, it was a very good day. I got to explore “new water”, that I am certain will be extremely productive as the season progresses, and I’m reasonably sure that I won’t have any company there. It amazes me that for as many years as I’ve fished and explored the marsh of the Calcasieu Estuary, there are still areas I have not seen yet. Hopefully, neither have the Texans.