Against All Odds

     As the sun begins to peak over the cut grass of the Louisiana marsh there are not many words to describe its beauty. The skies transcend from a pale grey to light pink and red into a deep blue and you just know that God is at work painting up yet another masterpiece. As we studied the sky and the wind and began to pull up to our first location, I caught another blast of color out of the corner of my eye. If you have not seen a rainbow at sunrise let me tell you, it is probably one of the most magical sights that a humans eyes could ever realize. With a start like this the mind can only imagine what great adventures are soon to follow.

     We rigged our seven and half foot heavy actions with fresh caught blue crabs as we began our search for back breaking bull redfish. If you have not felt the tug of mature red on the end of your line you should be boarding the next thing smoking to south Louisiana for the fall bite. The fish begin to move up into the shallows and up into the rivers, but as we were about to find out, just because they are there does not always mean that they are hungry. Yet as any experienced angler knows, where there is a will there is a way. Great anglers seem to catch fish no matter what the conditions are.

     The thing that sets these professionals apart from your average weekend warrior is the fact that they stay positive and they stay confident. Most people that were given our situation would have chalked the trip up to a nice day on the water and told people that the fish were not biting. But as I have learned from Luke Fears, a local bass professional that I have been fishing with recently, they are biting on something somewhere, you just have to find out what it is. When Luke suggested that he knew a few ponds 'a good run' from where we were that might hold reds and green trout, it didn't take much convincing to get me on board. I was ready to make whatever run we needed to in order to get on some fish. As we weaved through an endless maze of lilies and switchgrass the water began to dump out of the canals and become ever more clear. By the look of it we were on our way to turning the day around. 

     After just a cast or two I was hooked up to a beautiful marsh largemouth that was such a deep green that it could have easily been mistaken for black drum at first glance. Shortly there after my girlfriend Jill was setting the hook and next thing you know the captain had his pole doubled over. The bass were hitting spinnerbaits at high noon and the  day was about to get exciting. As we worked our way back the narrow channel toward to ponds we were picking up fish left and right. This was when I had one of the most rewarding moments of my brief fishing career. I caught my first redfish on a spinnerbait. As I pitched my quarter ounce Red Fish Magic spinnerbait tight to the bank and began my retrieve I felt one of the hardest thumps I have experienced on the end of my line. The bite and the fight of a largemouth hails in comparison to the pounding that this bait took when this red devil hit the end of my line. I knew immediately what I was hooked up to and it put a smile on my face from ear to ear. They are such a majestic creature and the coloring of these fish cannot be put into words. The open water reds tend to be a pale pinkish color with black spots. But the marsh reds we were catching were a deep auburn color with a blue tipped tale. They were so pretty it was hard to throw them in the cooler, but an empty stomach and a longing for filets prevailed. We trolled around the ponds for several more hours picking up keeper largemouth, searching for that next big redfish bite but it did not come. The reds were scarce but we did come up in with a nice meat haul for the freezer and an itch to get back out there and do it again soon.

     If I have learned anything from my last several redfish excursions it is that you have to stay confident and you cannot give up on the fish. They are there and they will bite you just need to figure them out. So many people give up shortly after the morning bite turns off and they leave thinking the fish just weren't hungry. Next time you go and they do not want to cooperate, keep at it. Throw everything in the tackle box at them. Stay positive and stay out there. If all else fails, bring a couple cold ones and share a few stories about the days when they were biting.

-Good Hunting