October speckled trout fall fishing season is getting started right on time. Had a group come down this weekend from Little Rock Arkansas and they had a fantastic time on the water catching some beautiful speckled trout and red fish. They arrived on Thursday and charted a fishing trip with me on Friday morning. With all the weather we been having this week regarding the east wind coupled with the hurricane Nate passing through tonight I really didn’t think we were going to catch much of anything. I tried to talk them in to re-scheduling the trip but they would not hear of it. One of the girls was getting married and this was what she wanted to do for her bachelorette party. I picked them up from one of the log cabins at safe light Friday morning and we headed south towards Barataria Bay where we been catching some nice trout. We had a stiff wind out of the east north east at about fifteen mph. The water was rough and dirty but we ducked in behind a couple of islands and found some clean water and those girls went to work. We ended up with thirty-eight speckled trout and the wind was picking up to the point where it was getting a little too rough to fish the open water where we were. One of girls wanted to catch a red fish bad, so we picked up everything and headed into the marsh in a pipe line canal that I know of that has a lot of twenty-foot-high trees along the banks. We were out of the wind and the water was very clean. There was a little over a foot of tide range and the direction was falling when we arrive at the spot. When we first got there, I picked up one of the fishing rods, put a live shrimp on it and threw it out there simply to show them how close I wanted them to fish from the bank. Well as soon as the cork hit the water I was in the process of handing the rod to that girl when the cork went down and she set the hook. The fight was on and she happened to have hung into a twelve-pound redfish. Fighting the red fish on light tackle in the shallow water she could see a lot of the action. It must have taken as least fifteen minutes for her to land that redfish. Now the second part to this story was that I made one of the other girls get the net. So, we had one girl fighting the red fish that had never caught a redfish before and the other girl with the net that had never netted a fish before in her life. Another one of the girls had a cell phone and was trying to take pictures and videos of catching this fish. I kept telling the girl fighting the fish not to let the fishing twin touch the bottom of the boat because it would pop the line. The girl with the net was trying to net the fish before he was ready to be netted while the girl with the cell phone kept getting in the way of the girl fighting the fish. By the time they got that red fish in the boat my side was hurting from laughing so much. I have never had so much fun watching someone catch a redfish as I did this one. Of course, they were high fiving each other and taking photos and just appreciated being on the water and experiencing catching some nice fish. We ended up with a box of fish both speckled trout and red fish. When we got back to the fishing village and I dropped them off at their log cabin I pulled over to my place and started to clean the fish. Before I knew it, they were there helping me clean the fish. We had an assembly line going with me taking the slabs off the bone while the first girl was cutting the bellies off the rib cage and the other two girls was washing the fish meat and bagging them up. And of course, the fourth girl was there with her cell phone taking pictures of the whole operation. I fish lots of folks from all over north America and I can tell you that fishing with people who appreciate what we have down here is when I have the best time entertaining customers.
That night we had an air boat swamp tour scheduled for them. Capt. Blane arrived at a perfect time about an hour and a half before dark. The girls loaded up in his air boat and headed out to see some alligators as well as other animal life that begins to stir right before dark. He took them back to an area that it is just about impossible to get to by boat and the sights were fantastic. They did a little island hopping to get to some land lock duck ponds that you cannot get to unless you have an air boat or you walk to. Very little human pressure on the animal life in this area because nobody ever goes there. While on the air boat tour he always stops and explains how this land was built from the Mississippi river flooding before the levees were built. He also takes them to areas that we are losing land very fast due to coastal erosion from the levees being there. The swamp tour gives everyone a magnificent view of how this area came to be as well as why we are losing it at a fast past. Every time I wright about a group coming down to enjoy a weekend at Bayou Log Cabins Fishing Lodge I always talk a little bit about building memories. This is something we see every day and we sometimes forget the beauty we live in but it is when we have folks from out of town that we remember the fantastic place we call home.
