Capt. Danos’ style offbeat but productive at this ol’ fishing hole
In the nine years since Hurricane Katrina, forays into one of my favorite fishing holes, Pointe a la Hache, have been few and far between, mainly due to a lack of fishing guides.
Pre-Katrina, I enjoyed the area for decades with guides like Capt. Dan Lambert and Capt. Robin Patti. We made many trips, produced a lot of stories and created wonderful memories.
Guides continued to operate out of the Westbank area, crossing the river to fish at Pointe a la Hache, and I’ve even made the haul out of Delacroix Island to reach some of the great winter spots out there.
But I kept seeking a guide that based out of Pointe a la Hache, and recently found one operating out of Beshel’s Marina. I arranged a trip, not knowing I’d be climbing aboard the boat of a fishing heretic.
Meet Capt. Chris Danos, who I found standing beside his 22-foot Predator Bay Boat, while the 200HP Mercury outboard puttered at idle. We’d never met, but I knew it was him because his was the only boat unoccupied at the dock.
A couple of other fishermen were attempting to pry some information out of him before they headed out in pursuit of speckled trout, and after we exchanged introductions I loaded my considerable gear aboard the boat.
“Sorry I’m a bit late,” I said apologetically, “I forgot just how far down the road the marina is from the ferry.”
It was 27.5 miles to be exact, from the Belle Chasse Ferry on the east side to the the marina. It’s all good road, albeit narrow — all two-lane but with no shoulder on either side.
It was good to see Beshel’s Marina was open and doing business. A small store has reopened upstairs, and fuel, live shrimp and dead bait was available. A double ramp is currently the only way to launch. There’s a hoist, but it is inoperable.
“So what’s the game plan for today,” I asked the captain, as we pulled away from the dock.
“I have a simple plan, find fish, and keep hunting until we do,” he said, as he turned into the Back Levee Canal and headed towards bigger water.
Scarcity of summer specks
Like most of Southeast Louisiana, the Pointe area experienced a scarcity of speckled trout this summer. Most of the spots that historically you could count on to produce specks, didn’t. Decent catches of speckled trout were hard to find.
Danos said he was definitely counting on a good fall and winter run of specks, and for all the usual haunts to be productive.
“By October the speckled trout transition into the inside is well underway and we’ll be catching plenty trout in the fringe bays,” he said. “The weather is cooler, the river won’t affect us as much and the action should be outstanding. And we don’t have to run far to find the fish.”
All of which is certainly true on a normal year, but this year has been the antithesis of normal.
And, this wasn’t fall, so we couldn’t really test the theory to see if a fall pattern developed. This was the very tail-end of summer, which stretches through September, as sweaty Louisiana residents know.
“I’ve been fishing the inside to see if anything has shown up yet, but so far it’s just been some juvenile trout,” Danos said. “Today we’ll have to make the run to bigger water to hopefully find some trout.”
Danos brought the boat to idle as we neared an unnamed island in American Bay. The captain dropped the trolling motor we moved close enough to make a long cast toward a point where current was moving.
“This has been a pretty productive spot for me this season, and I’ve put some decent trout in the boat right here,” he said, dipping into the bait well for a live shrimp.
And that’s when I discovered that Danos was a heretic.
The Frankenstein bait
Now, before anyone thinks of “burn him at the stake” type fanaticism, let me explain. I’m not accusing him of religious heresy, but fishing heresy.
You see, according to Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, “Heresy is any provocative belief or theory that is strongly at variance with established beliefs or customs. A heretic is a proponent of such claims or beliefs.”
In religion, heresy deviates from what is firmly held as acceptable doctrine. Elsewhere, heresy just deviates from what others believe to be normal, accepted practices or theories.
So a fishing heretic is one who operates outside the realm of what most consider normal. Simply put, they do weird stuff.
Case in point: In the great tradition of catching speckled trout, you either use live shrimp (or croaker, minnows, pogies, etc.), or you cast plastic. Most of the guides I’ve fished with over the years like to use black and chartreuse H&H soft plastics in this area, either tightlined or under a cork. Or, they use live shrimp. Naturally, subsurface plugs, topwaters, swim baits, etc., are also acceptable practice.
Danos did the unthinkable.
He already had a black/chartreuse cocohoe threaded onto his jighead, but he added a live shrimp, and not a small one. I’m not talking about tipping your plastic with a pinch of market shrimp. I talking about, well, heresy!
He stuck a big live shrimp right on the same hook with the plastic cocohoe. It looked like something a rookie would do. It was a Frankenstein bait. Nothing would eat that, and I was just about to tell him so when his cork vanished beneath the surface!
But the Frankenstein eater turned out to be a big hardhead catfish, and each cast he made thereafter garnered the same results. Any smirk I may have had was erased when my Vudu shrimp and our live shrimp were devoured instantly by hardheads almost as soon as they hit the water. Time to move.
After assuring me that trout will eagerly devour his heretical bait, Danos headed to Iron Banks.
“I’ve had to play hit-and-run all season trying to find speckled trout,” he said. “You catch a few here and there, and once in a while you bump into a good school, but mostly it’s been a few here and a few there and lots of moving around.”
Iron Banks was as calm as I’ve ever seen it, almost glassy, and there was not another boat in sight.
“No other boats here is not a good sign,” Danos said. “This time of year it should be surrounded by boats, even on a weekday. Lack of boats generally means lack of fish.”
He was right. We did catch quite a few undesirables; more hardheads, gaff-tops, a few Spanish and some pesky ladyfish, but no trout.
So we moved again, and then again.
And then we saw birds. A huge flock of birds was screeching while dive bombing the surface. Below them, something was churning up a large school of pogies.
These birds weren’t the laughing gulls all orthodox fishermen fish under. They were terns, the deceptive, crazed liars of the bird world. They dive over anything, and sometimes over nothing at all.
I think they take a fiendish delight in deceiving gullible anglers into fishing under them, and then they fly away hysterically when you do. You’d have to be a novice to fall for their chicanery.
Or a heretic.
“That’s a huge school of reds under those birds,” Danos said as he turned towards them and dropped the trolling motor over the bow.
“Or it’s jacks,” I said, as something big tore through the school of scattering fish. Turns out, it was both. It definitely was a huge school of redfish. We could clearly see them everywhere, even running directly under the boat.
Everything we threw was instantly devoured and just as instantly broken off. We lost line after line to the marauding redfish, and we also saw a lot of jack crevalle in the mix. Our light gear and 30-pound leader line was no match for these beasts, so Danos had to chase them with the trolling motor so they couldn’t peel all our line out.
Using that tactic we managed to land quite a few big reds, ranging between 17 and 24 pounds. Bigger ones straightened our hooks and got away. We also boated a couple jacks in the 25-pound class.
Fun, but not what we were seeking. Once our arms and shoulders were worn out and sore from battle, we resumed our hunt for those elusive specks, but with little avail. The specks remained in hiding, much as they had all season.
The reds, however, were out in full force and feeding aggressively. We caught them at every stop, 15-pounds and up, and they eagerly ate anything we tossed.
Even the Frankenstein bait caught fish!
Looking for a great fall
The trout just didn’t join the party, leaving the captain thinking ahead of what’s to come in October.
“In the fall, I’ll be making very short trips into the marsh, fishing almost within sight of the marina,” Danos said. “Areas like 2nd Bay, 3rd Bay, Wreck Bay, Caquin Bay, Grand Point Bay, Battleground Bay and Bakers Bay should all be very productive.
“Live bait is a good idea. That is, I think it’s usually a good idea to bring some along, but plastics are usually all you’ll need. Any color will produce in the fall as long as it’s chartreuse.”
Danos said he stocks up on chartreuse plastics when he finds them on sale, and Deadly Dudley’s and H&H cocohoes or beetles are his favorites.
“I’ll also fish DOA’s in chartreuse,” he said. “And I fish everything under a cork, all through the fall.”
