Truth be known, I don’t even like fishing tournaments. The thing I like best about kayak fishing is the peace and solitude of a long day in the marsh. Watching the birds, fishing at my own pace and enjoying my time in the boat without any kind of competitive pressure. The only reason that I fish tournaments is the camaraderie that exists in the kayak fishing community.
Routine took over on Saturday morning. My thought was to hit the marsh to try for some upper slot reds that can commonly be found in the Sabine National Wildlife Refuge. This little piece of kayak fishing paradise is located adjacent to the canal that connects the West Cove launch with West Cove on Calcasieu Lake in Southwest Louisiana. Not only does it boast a huge amount of productive marsh, but this area is also closed to motorized boat traffic. Best of all, hungry redfish, trout, flounder and drum prowl this marsh making it one of my favorite destinations.
My confidence wasn’t high as I paddled out towards the area I wanted to fish. This was only made worse by getting no hits for the first hour and a half of fishing. As I worked up a grass line throwing a 1/4 oz jig with a black and chartreuse cocahoe, I finally felt the thump I was looking for. Redfish on! Then it wasn’t on. Hope was draining out of me as I suffered through another hour without a bite.
I worked my way through the marsh and heard that distinctive sound that I can only describe as a sucking/splashing noise on the other side of a small marsh island I was near. Redfish. A few paddle strokes brought me silently around the island where I could plainly see a redfish crawling up the grass line. A quick toss of the cocahoe and the fight was on. A couple of minutes later, the redfish was in the boat and my confidence began to rise.
There are times when redfish are lone wolves working off of points, in pockets and at the mouths of trenasses. Then there are times when they gang up like Hells Angels and go marauding through the marsh plowing up the mud eating everything in sight. I don’t know of a bigger thrill in kayak fishing than locating one of these groups, chasing them down and picking off the fish one by one. After I got that first red in the boat, I heard some splashing in the distance and began to look around.
There were three birds hovering over a small bit of marsh and below it I could see a telltale splash. A small school! I sprinted the 200 yards of water in my yak and made the cast at the front of the group. The hit was immediate and solid. I tried to work the fish quickly out of the group so as not to spook the others, but this turned out to be futile as I was linked up to a 34” redfish that wanted nothing to do with me. While it was fun to catch the fish, I needed a redfish as close to the slot limit of 27” without going over. By the time I released the bull, the school was not in sight. A quick scan showed two or three hovering birds a few hundred yards to the west. The chase was on again!
Over the next 4 hours, I chased down school after school of over-slot redfish in about 12 inches of water. After catching a number of over slot fish, the smart “tournament decision” would have been to change up locations to try to get a fish inside the slot. I decided “to heck with the tournament, this is too much fun” and continued chasing these schools. Somewhere in that time, I managed to get my second slot red—a perfect 26 3/4 inch fish with big wide shoulders. Then another large in-slot fish came over the gunnels of my kayak.
I had read somewhere that many times trout will follow schools of redfish and eat the leftovers so I began to throw my lure behind the schools hoping to get back in the game for the tournament. It wasn’t long before I had a nice 18” trout in the boat. The closest I came to getting that second trout was one that bounced off the edge of my net. With time running out on the weigh in, I headed back with some hope of a decent placing.
My turn at the scales came up—and amazingly the total weight put me in first place. While if was exciting to win, the memories of the day will always be the excitement of battling big fish in my small kayak and of the friendship and camaraderie of my fishing buddies at the weigh in. I always say that kayak fishing has something for everyone.
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