Shun the clean stuff, and catch reds where they live — in Port Sulphur’s no man’s land.
We’d just passed the Blue Angel at the entrance to the Naval base when I finally started dozing off. The truck cab was dark and the radio low.
Fleetwood Mac’s base-line thumped softly from the speakers. Stevie Nicks was purring away, singing me a personal lullaby, it seemed: “Thun-der only hap-pens when it’s RAIN-ing.”
Spring Break, 1977. Some sweet memories indeed. The gals all loved that song.
“Players only love you when they’re play-ing.”
As if chicks on Spring Break aren’t themselves playing, even in 1977. Memo to MTV: You guys didn’t invent fun.
Pelayo was driving, and seemed lost in his own world. Eddie was already sacked out in the back. The low hum of Highway 23 beneath us and the gentle rocking from its dips all added to the irresistible snoozy ambiance. My bunched-up jacket made a nice pillow as I snuggled in.
Hummmmmm … delightful.
“FISHING LICENSE!” came a harsh bellow from behind me. I was jolted awake — and dammit! — just as Stevie in her wet T-shirt had started rubbing the suntan lotion into my back. “I gotta get a fishing license, man!” Eddie blurted.“Calm down, man,” Pelayo said. “You’re having a nightmare. Go back to sleep. You’re driving home, anyway. And I’LL be back there sacked out.”
“No!” Eddie replied. “I’m serious. Mine expired. Noticed it on my last fishing trip. I don’t wanna push my luck again.”
“No problem, Eddie” I said sleepily, without opening my eyes. “We’ll stop a little farther down. Convenience stores all sell them down here. Go back to sleep, will ya.”
“Yeah,” Pelayo added. “We’ll get one. Don’t worry.”
“O.K.,” and Eddie’s head disappeared behind the seat again. Within seconds, Mr. Sandman was back, whispering his beckon into my ear. But — as always in these cases — Stevie never returned.
Then Pelayo roared into the store’s parking lot and jerked the truck into park.
“Let’s go sleeping beauties!” he announced. “Get a move on!”
It took me a while to come fully awake, and when I hobbled into the store, Pelayo and Eddie had finally roused the cashier from the back.
“Oh LAWD!” she wailed. “Oh lawd! Not ANOTHER one! Not another fishing license!”
The woman seemed greatly distressed, shaking her roller-festooned head mournfully as she shuffled to her counter in her pink puffy slippers, and fired up her computer.
“What’s the deal?” Eddie shrugged. “Geezum. Just a fishing license. How hard can it be?”
“Plenty hard,” Pelayo nodded, rolling his eyes. “Watch.”
“Lotsa places stopped selling them.” The lady nodded her head as she hit the keys. “Took too much time. Too much hassle. O.K., here we go,” and she finally got the right screen.
The process was painstaking, and Pelayo and I started wandering the aisles.
“SHEEEESH!” he snorted, and I looked over to see him in front of the magazine rack. “50 tips for when HE has a headache,” he roared, and plenty loud enough for the cashier to look up wide-eyed. “And looky here — ‘Make him your sex slave!’ These women’s magazines are TOO much,” Pelayo blurted as he turned and grabbed a honey bun. “Cosmo, for sure, but even Redbook and Ladies Home Journal have this kinda stuff nowadays!”
“Yeah,” Eddie answered while grabbing a couple of candy bars. “Where the heck ARE these women?”
The poor cashier was trying to keep her mind on her work as I grabbed a few Slim Jims and pickles.
“They’re all home watching Desperate Housewives, that’s where,” Pelayo quipped as he walked toward the back. “Think we need more drinks?”
“Probably wont hurt,” I said while grabbing some potato chips and a coupla candy bars. “Some sandwiches wouldn’t hurt either. Ah, and some dip for the chips,” as I reached for the rack again.
So happened that we had two ice chests crammed with drinks and snacks. But no matter. You walk in a convenience store, you start eyeing the wares, and it’s, to quote the old Robert Palmer song with the chicks playing the instruments and swaying seductively, “simply irresistible.” You start grabbing stuff robotically. Some crazy instinct kicks in. The bill came to $27.45, ON TOP of the fishing license, which was finally hammered out.
“See?” Pelayo remarked to the finally smiling lady as she rang up our provisions. “Not so bad after all, huh?”
She laughed.
“Heck, we always figured it was a conspiracy between you convenience store people and the state.
“While people wait for the fishing license, they’re shopping. We can’t help it. And look at the results. If you’d banged out the license in a few seconds like in the old days, we mighta only had time to grab the 12-pack.”
“You fellas have a good trip,” she waved as we ambled out, lugging our bags.
“That’s an old store,” Eddie remarked as we got back in the truck. He’d been away from Louisiana for almost 20 years. He went off to law school in the Northeast and stayed afterwards. But Louisiana’s siren song finally pulled him back. Now he was trying to make up for lost time.
“Same bunch running the marina too,” he laughed, as we boated up and idled down the Empire Canal and under the big overpass.
We’d gone about a mile down, and I’d been watching Eddie’s face the whole time. He kept swiveling his head around, wide-eyed, furrowing his brow. Finally we idled down.
“There’s NOTHING here!” Eddie yelled. “Where’s the marsh?! I mean, where’s the Phillips Canal? And … and … there’s NOTHING here!”
Eddie looked on the verge of tears. Like I said, it had been almost 20 years since he’d seen this area. When he returned to Louisiana two years ago, he climbed aboard the Delacroix express. You know how that goes.
That’s the only place some people fish. Eddie, like most, got skunked as often as he caught. But no matter. He stuck with the place, until we finally wooed him down here.
“Told ya, Ed,” Pelayo rasped as he turned right into Bay Adams and cranked up the throttle again.
“It’s gone, podnuh. And, sadly, never to return. No English Bay. No Bay Crapaud. No Cyprien or Scofield. Bay Pomme d’ Or starts at the levee and extends to the freakin’ Gulf! It’s heartbreaking. We only motored down here to show you. Now we’ll go catch some fish.”
You could see the heartbreak in Eddie’s face.
“We still catch fish out there, Eddie,” I said. “You can still get into the trout in that open water, chase the birds, ya know. But for redfish, there just ain’t much shoreline left.
“The few little islands and little tufts of banks get hammered pretty good all week by guides. More power to ’em. They’re often taking out-of-state or upstate clients. Those people ain’t dumb. They’re like us. They ain’t hung up on specks. Heck, they want fish that fight. They want reds.
“We’ll find some reds today. You watch. But we gotta go west from here. To find some marsh. You’ll see.”
Soon we were in Grand Bayou, and Eddie’s face was finally brightening.
“This is more like it!” he beamed.
Then we turned into the Seven-Foot Canal, and finally entered another open area of eroded marsh, which basically makes up what used to be the marsh between Lake Washington and Grand Bayou.
Sadly, it’s going fast around here too. But there’s still enough marsh to fish. And the sad — or bittersweet — part is that an eroding marsh is actually GOOD for fishing, especially for reds, whose top food item are crabs, especially the smaller crabs that hide out in the grass and crevices of an eroding marsh.
A high tide lets the reds enter these areas, where they can root around, snatching the little morsels up, along with the cocahoes that hang around in this grassy stuff too. Sadly these places don’t have very long life spans. Well, we say, let’s take advantage of them while they last.
“They call this No-Man’s Land, Eddie,” Pelayo said as he came back on the throttle. “Pretty shallow usually. This area was once marsh too. But we’re O.K. today. High tide.”
“High and falling,” I added. “Perfect for reds.”
Pelayo rumbled toward a grassy shoreline a couple of hundred yards off. I looked down and saw that the water was ideal for reds — it was murky. I’d been a little worried on the way over. The water looked super clear, as often happens in the more sheltered waters.
But for whatever reason, for the type of fishing we do, (shrimp-tipped jigs under corks cast toward grassy shorelines), clear water skunks us. Maybe the reds see us better that way. Whatever. We always do better on high tides and murky to filthy water for reds.
We find maw-ket shrimp indispensable for this type of fishing too.
We zeroed in, as always, on the windward side of the bay. As we approached, I saw the murky waves lapping over the grass on this eroded shoreline, and could make out what looked like a current line. Just as importantly, the depth finder showed 2 feet. The place had rat reds, puppy drum and sheepshead WRITTEN ALL OVER IT!
My cork hit the water first, about 2 feet from the grass, and immediately a slight current started pushing it along. Another favorable sign. Grassy, wave-lapped shoreline in 2-foot depths. You couldn’t order a better situation, I was thinking to myself when — “THAT’S HIM!” — my cork plunged before my first pop. I reared back, and it was off to the races.
“WOW!” was all Eddie could manage while watching my spool empty, and the wake barreling across the shallows.
“He’s turning!” I roared. “He’s turning to the open water! He’s gotta be a monster!”
“Monster hardheads and sailcats do that too,” Pelayo smirked.
“This ain’t no hardhead, podnuh! Look at that!”
And I waved my bowed rod in front of his face.
“And LISTEN to that!”
I put my spool inches from his ear.
“Alright, alright!” Pelayo yelled right before he struck back himself. “And this ain’t no hardhead EITHER. WHOO!!”
Pelayo’s pole was high overhead as he cranked furiously.
“What the …?” he suddenly frowned. “Did he get off?”
Pelayo’s pole straightened, and his line went slack as he cranked the reel.
“HECK NO!” I yelled. “He’s swimming in ONYA! He’s a monster red too, headin’ for the open water!”
Just as Pelayo reeled in the slack, his reel gave a mighty screech to prove my point — and the rod was almost jerked from his grasp.
“Oh YEAH!” he beamed while looking over. “Feels like a red alright!”
I was still savoring mine. His berserk run took him back and forth in front of the boat, as I gained — then lost — line. I held my pole high overhead and bellowed my joy to the heavens, just as he exploded in a froth of grey and copper.
“Eight-pounder for sure!” I raved as he barreled off on another run, and I felt the muscles in my forearms bunching up from the strain of the battle.
“Forget it Eddie!” I saw him reaching for the net. “Go get yourself one. They’re stacked up along that shoreline. I can net mine myself.”
Eddie smiled, and his shrimp-tipped green beetle 2 feet under a cork was on its way shoreward posthaste.
I was just dipping the net under mine when Eddie erupted.
“Whoo! Yeah!”
He had a crazy look on his face as a wake streaked across the shoreline and plunged into the flooded grass itself.
“Work him out, Eddie!” Pelayo counseled. “Work him outta that grass so he won’t cut the line!”
And Eddie tightened his drag a bit.
“THERE!” Eddie beamed. “Got him out!”
Now his fish streaked for the open water too. This spot yielded four reds, two drum and a flounder before petering out. That’s the thing with this type of fishing. You never really find MASSIVE schools in any one place. But you find enough fish and enough variety to make for an action-packed trip.
The next spot had a nice current too — but a little TOO nice. The cork barreled across the point too fast. We caught two 15-9/10-inch rat reds, and pulled up the anchor. Next spot was another grassy point, with murky water, oyster bottom and wind-lapped shoreline.
Eddie cranked in a nice sheepshead on his first cast. Then a red. Then Pelayo caught another red.
We ended the day with 13 reds (not quite a limit), eight puppy drum, eight sheepshead, and two flounder. Not bad for inside fishing in spring.
“Know something?” Eddie beamed while unhooking a drum. “Think I’m gonna start fishing this area.”
“We been telling ya that, Ed,” Pelayo snorted. “Heck, man, we all do good at Delacroix now and then. But there ain’t no middle ground there. You mop-up or you get skunked. That’s trout fishing for ya. Out here, you might get into the trout, especially later in the year and closer to the coast around Shell Island, Bay Joe Wise, Lake Washington, etc. But if you don’t find the trout, and it’s a high tide, you can always head over this away, and you’re almost guaranteed a box of reds, drum sheepshead and flounder.”
Humberto Fontova is author of The Hellpig Hunt and the soon-to-be-released Fidel, Hollywood’s Favorite Tyrant.
