• By Greg Watts
Venice Redfish Bounty
Bryan was hooked up again, three in a row! I made a long cast just off the mark I was shooting for, but not to worry, it’s Louisiana and catching Venice Redfish is easy!
We were in Venice, La., the undisputed redfish capital of the world! We’ve caught reds from the Rio Grande to Chesapeake Bay, but nowhere is the redfishing better than Louisiana’s Mississippi River delta.
Red Pass, South Pass, Southwest Pass and East Pass are all corridors to destinations we have fished many, many times over the years. From the passes to the inner bays, redfish are very abundant just depending on the size we’re looking for. In tournament situations, the back bays and inner bays most always get looked at first for under 27-inch fat slot reds, the ones we’ve won on many times.
For tackle-busting reds over the 27-inch mark and up to 4 feet long, we go ahead and get outside the passes on the beaches. This is where these beasts lurk. We can fill a limit and the cooler quickly on slot fish. Only one over slot can be kept per day. But these big ones are more fun to catch than to keep.
In the bays we load up on 4-inch Berkley Gulp! Shrimp and Gulp! Jerk Shads with a quarter-ounce jighead. We rig our reels with 50-pound Spiderwire braid and use a 40-pound Berkley 100% Fluorocarbon leader on a 7- to 7 ½-foot medium-heavy casting rod. Spotting these reds from the casting platform is easy, and they readily eat these offerings. Casting directly on their heads will put a hurt in your arm rather quickly.
On the outside is another story. We get on the outside of the passes and work the edges of the canes or beaches using the trolling motor. The reel on our 7 ½-foot heavy-action rod will have 50-pound Spiderwire. Under our popping cork will be a 50-pound Berkley 100% fluorocarbon leader then a quarter- to half-ounce jig head rigged with a 4-inch Gulp Shrimp. Now it’s time for battle.
The tackle sounds extreme, but we want to land these Venice Redfish quickly and not cause them too much stress for too long. We need them to be relatively strong when released.
Making long casts with this rig, we pop the cork two or three times and let sit for a few seconds then repeat.
These are not new techniques and will work in a lot of areas around the country. There are days when we tire of fish after fish here, and my brother Bryan and I pull out the 9-weight fly rod and bet dollars the rest of the day. What a place!
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