(Published as the “Red Spread” in the Winter 2016 issue of The Drake Magazine.)
It was early March and I was out on the edge, making one last bull run. In the Louisiana Marsh the prime season for targeting truly large redfish in shallow water is fall through winter. This year a couple of late cold fronts extended what passes for winter in South Louisiana beyond Mardi Gras and into early March, keeping the big fish inshore for a few extra weeks.
Targeting bulls in the winter is a wholly different game than fishing for their juvenile counterparts in spring through early fall. Those summertime juvenile fish are usually found in great numbers in marshy backwaters and grass filled duck ponds, often most abundant where fresh water blends with salt, making a rich brackish soup that vibrates with life. Winter bulls on the other hand, are most often found on the jagged edge of the marsh where the last remnants of land push against the Gulf of Mexico. Sadly, the Gulf is winning this tug of war, beating the land into an ever more hasty retreat. Everything is ephemeral in the marsh.
I poled a shoreline of marsh grass and scrubby black mangroves creased with tidal creeks, the push pole softly crunching against the oysters that blanket the bottom. The shoreline was on my left, and out to my right was the open expanse of the Gulf of Mexico. It wasn’t always a clear line of sight to the horizon from there; in my youth I camped on islands where there is now only open water. The shoreline I’m working is being re-shaped, noticeable changes occurring each year. Noticing the rapid loss of land, I’m tempted to turn an ear to the wind to listen for the sound of a bugler blowing the retreat.
As I neared a point on the shoreline where a tiny drain comes out of the marsh I saw a bit of a glow moving up the shoreline, really not much more than a slight blur of color in the water, but enough to know that it was a fish. I snapped the push pole into a holster on my belt and grabbed the fly rod I had standing up in a stripping bucket secured to the front left corner of my poling platform. By the time my line was in the air on the back cast, the fish had moved into clearer view, it was a toad, marsh donkey, bull or whatever other term you’d like to apply to a big mature redfish. I dropped the fly 2 feet in front of the fish, and before the fly could sink the fish angled upward, accelerated and inhaled the fly.
It’s at this point that fishing solo gets interesting, standing on top of the platform trying to clear line without it getting hung on the platform, the push pole hanging off of my belt, or anything else. Once the fish is on the reel I’ve got to drop my marsh anchor to secure the boat, then move the push pole from the holster on my belt to a clip on top of my platform and work my way down to the deck without falling or losing my grip on the rod. While I was nowhere near graceful doing them, I managed to execute all of these task quickly and was soon fighting the fish from the front deck of the boat. A few minutes later a 45 inch long redfish slid into my net.
After releasing the fish I sat on the deck of my boat looking at the marsh around me with mixed feelings. The very reason the area I was in is so attractive to fish, and to me as an angler, is the very thing that’s destroying it.
Not so many years ago this flat I was floating on was solid marsh, this shallow shelf was a solid point of mangroves and marsh grass that extended out off of the large marsh island, but it’s wearing away quickly. Some years ago I discovered that redfish love areas that were recently solid marsh but are now open water. Generally those areas weren’t opened up by gradual erosion, but rather were opened quickly and catastrophically by a storm or series of storms. Left behind below the open water are remnants of root masses and plant stubble that provides the basis of a food chain that attracts redfish and other predatory fish in great numbers. That’s my secret weapon, I fish the vanishing. I look at old aerial imagery, compare it to new and find those areas of “new” water. It’s also what distresses me.
Louisiana is losing around 30 square miles of wetlands every year. Erosion of our wetlands has been accelerated by pipelines and oilfield canals cut through the marsh, and the marsh has lost the ability to rebuild and repair itself because the supply of land building sediment carried by the Mississippi River has been choked off by levees meant to protect the state from flooding. The Coastal Preservation and Restoration Authority has developed a “Coastal Master Plan” that includes rebuilding barrier islands, closing channels and creating diversions to allow fresh water and sediment from the Mississippi to once again flow into the marsh. None of these efforts will ever rebuild our coast to what it once was, in fact they won’t even stop the loss of wetlands, the best that can be hoped for is that it will slow the process somewhat. We hold our breath and hope that it’s more than just Band Aids on bullet holes.
As I looked around the marsh I reminded myself that I need to take my daughter fishing as soon as it warms up a bit. I need to take her fishing often so that she can enjoy the amazing estuaries of our state while they are still here. I’ll keep enjoying them while I can, and with mixed feelings I’ll keep finding the fish by fishing the vanishing.