Cigars and courtbouillon — Best bets for spring school trout and redfish

The Lenten season is winding down, but cigar trout and redfish courtbouillon never go out of style. Learn where you can fill da box with plenty of fixings for all your family get-togethers.

The crawfish heads were piling up, the keg was foaming and Artie was in the spotlight. Happens every time.

The boy was on a roll. His stage presence and delivery shamed Huey Long, Jimmy Swaggart and Vince Vance — maybe even Ronnie Lamarque and Bob Breck.

Artie, you see, was vouchsafing his secret formula for rocketing both LSU and Da Saints “back to the top” — in two seasons flat (fire Miles and Payton.)

This was hardly the first time we’d heard Artie’s painstakingly complex (and loud) remedies for ALL of Louisiana’s football woes.

In fact, it seemed like take 75 or somewhere thereabouts.

Alas, the Spring Break bash at Doc’s Shell Beach camp always makes Artie more garrulous than usual. Doc’s Spring Break décor for the weekend contributes much to the festive atmosphere. Digital cameras, much less smartphones, were decades away from invention during our Tiger Land years; the current fetish for snapping off selfies and other such obnoxiousness at the merest whim weren’t even gleams in anyone’s eye at the time.

But somehow Doc always finds enough pictures (mostly blown-up old Polaroids) of our Spring Break adventures during our college years to plaster almost every inch of the walls in his camp.

“Thanks for the memories, Doc!” is the usual reaction from the gang.

But not the exclusive one — especially from the wives.

Wet T-shirt contests, you might recall, were all the rage around Destin and Panama City at the time. New Orleans Ladies, you might recall, was a hit song at the time. Well, this song blared as a backdrop to a FAMOUS such beer-soaked contest that most of the people in Doc’s den remembered QUITE well — whoo-boy!

“Va-va-boom!” Pelayo kept whooping as he traipsed around Doc’s den, humming the song while pointing at the glowering gals.

But don’t get me wrong: The gals did eventually get their digs in. Especially after Doc’s girlfriend Trisha got them in the proper mood. It usually doesn’t take long.

First, Doc’s state-of-the-art speakers start thumping out a hit song of the period: Kool and the Gang’s Ladies Night. Then his tape switches over to a song that was a particularly big hit with us at the time: Rupert Holmes’ Pina Colada Song (actually titled Escape.)

Then Trisha starts serving up the song’s namesakes — in hurricane glasses. Always does the trick.

“Look at all that HAIR!” Cindy laughed right on cue, while pointing at a picture of Pelayo and me dressed to kill under the disco ball at Spinnakers in Panama City.

“And check out those abs — whooo-whooo!” adds Melissa, while pointing at Artie and Chris posing on the beach near the old Miracle Strip pier. “Ain’t dat AAAW-nold Schwarzenegger?! What happened?”

Fair is fair.

So for relief, we (the guys) all ran to the porch. Trisha followed and approached Artie, just as he was catching his breath.

“I was getting Nana Fontaine’s (Doc’s mom) recipe for crawfish bisque yesterday,” Trisha said to Artie. “And she asked me to remind y’all to save her some cigar trout. She wants to fry some up for Lent —but what’s a cigar trout?”

Trisha frowned while looking around. “I thought I was quite familiar with most of the fish,” she said.

“Haven’t heard DAT term in a while!” Pelayo laughed and jumped into the conversation. “Well, Trisha, let’s just say that you’ve caught a bunch of them yourself. Doc calls them ‘dinks,’ right before throwing them back. The term was popular WAY before size limits on speckled trout. So it ain’t dere no more.”

“And we’ll get Nana plenty of them!” Artie blurted. “As you well know, we ain’t trophy fishermen any more than trophy deer-hunters. So, if our trip tomorrow goes off as planned, Nana will have plenty cigar trout for her Lenten meals. Don’t worry.”

Indeed, the “Cajun computer” on Pelayo’s boat has those all-important (for us) 12-inch and 16-inch marked in big, bold black to make sure nothing delicious (and legal) gets thrown back.

“And oh: Nana Fontaine also wants a redfish,” Trisha said. “She says she’s going to make something she called, um, um cooo-bee-yon or something? What’s … ?”

“Got it covered, Trish!” Artie whooped.

“But she says she wants a whole one. She says you guys waste too much meat,” Trisha said. “She wants it scaled so ….”

“DONE!” Artie yelled as Doc walked up.

“Cut the girl some slack,” Doc laughed. “Poor thing grew up in the Hamptons. How’s she supposed to know about stuff like cigar trout and courtbouillon?”

“Man, I still remember getting that whole fried trout at Fitzgeralds!” Pelayo said. “Finally dawned on me — shoot man, I can do that with MINE, too!”

Yes, amazingly, people used to actually scale fish! And fry and bake them whole! Specks in the frying pan. Reds in the baking dish — because the only conceivable use for reds in that distant era was for courtboullion. So they were usually scaled, gutted and left whole for that procedure.

Artie was right. We were primed to supply Nana Fontaine with everything she needed — along with the supplies for Doc’s own “Lenten Kickoff Fish Extravaganza” scheduled for the forthcoming evening at his camp.

Some blustery east winds, so typical of this time of year, promised especially good conditions (high tides covering grassy shorelines) for catching the makings of courtboullion.

“It’s all about the salty waaaw-da,” has become a popular lament amongst us lately — especially during high river levels in spring and early summer when we’re running around like crazy catching nothing but hardheads. (And not many of them, actually. They’re a saltwaaaw-da fish, too, after all.)

Well, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist (or hydrologist or biologist) to look at a map and figure out why we target the area around the mouth of the MRGO in April. The Pearl River’s high (freshening the upper Biloxi marsh). The Mississippi River’s high (freshening much of Delacroix area through the Caernarvon diversion, plus areas farther south along the southwestern edge of Breton Sound through Mardi Gras Pass, Bayou Lamoque, Ostrica, etc.).

This coastal area east of Hopedale and Shell Beach is almost evenly distanced from these freshwater sources — and thus forms a pocket with the highest salinities around at the time.

Nothing to it.

In fact, you might say these super-low salinities recently along our southeastern coast simplify things for us. Sure, it’s a nice little haul out to Bay Eloi or Lake Machais from Hopedale or Shell Beach. But once you’re there, the fishing doesn’t (usually) require repeatedly picking up and hauling long distances to find the fish, as might be the case elsewhere.

I mean, you launch outta Venice and you might run from the Jump to the rocks at Southwest Pass to Sandy Point looking for fish — a 70-mile trip.

Around the mouth of the MRGO, on the other hand, the action’s a bit more localized this time of year. The high salinities (relatively speaking) seem to account for this. The blustery east winds would surely muddy up the open water, making what are generally considered as iffy conditions for specks.

But for us this, again, simplifies matters. When the water’s calm and clear, specks can be anywhere — abundant perhaps, but scattered.

However, when eastern gales turn the edges of Breton Sound milky to muddy, we simply search for wind-sheltered pockets in places like Lakes Eloi, Treasure, Athanasio or Machais, where the water’s calm and semi-clear — and we generally find some concentrations of specks.

And it was just such a spot we found along the finger of marsh between Lakes Athanasio and Eloi. The water had about a foot of visibility and some current lines formed to our front, with small pogies or glass minnows twitching around.

The place had “cigar trout” written all over it.

I set my shad rig about 3 feet under a popping cork, tipped the jigheads with a little maaaw-ket bait and cast toward a current line.

The cork never stopped; it hit the water and kept going down.

For a second I thought it might have gotten tangled, as often happens with tandem rigs.

Then I felt the jerk.

“We’re on them!” I howled while lifting the rod and setting the hooks.

The drag on my light spinning rig was loose and singing crazily as I cranked away. Finally, it went airborne. A complete flip — almost like a chicken dolphin.

“Saw that?’ I howled and looked around.

But no one had. Because they were too busy fighting their own fish.

Pelayo trout was thrashing the surface, rattling that yellow mouth like castanets. Artie was already swinging one aboard.

“Dey SWARM!” he howled while removing the hook and tossing the fish in the bucket.

He was yelling out again after his second cast.

“Yeah, you rite!” Artie shouted. “Gotta be a double here!”

And Artie looked over with a lunatic grin as both his fish went berserk on the surface, one finally pulling off the hook.

Pelayo was in hysterics.

“Geezum!” he laughed. “With all this excitement, you’d think we’d never done this before!”

Indeed, a school-speck frenzy still does that to us. It did while wade-fishing along the Metairie lakeshore in 1969, and it does it near the mouth of the MRGO today.

I chunked out my shrimp-tipped tandem shad rig under a cork toward a little swirl, and again the cork never stopped. It hit the water and kept going down.

Again I thought it might have gotten tangled — then I felt the lunge.

“Whoa!” I reared back, and felt another lunge that almost jerked the rod from my slimy grip. The drag was loose and singing crazily when a white trout went airborne and speck thrashed the surface with that gaping yellow mouth.

“Another double right chere!”

And it was, but the speck dropped off as I swung them aboard, leaving only the white trout, which was fine with me: They also qualify as “cigar trout” — and are every bit as delectable as a school speck.

“Nana Fontaine’s gonna love these!” Pelayo said while holding up his latest prize, another white trout. “Man, I still love catching school trout like this.”

Pelayo whooped as he chunked in the box.

“Like we used to do wading in front of the Lake Villa pumping station when Honky Tonk Woman was No. 1 on the WTIX charts,” he sang out. “Only we were using go-go worms and smoky shrimp tails at the time.”

“And side-winders,” I added. “And Mr. Champs.”

I smirked as my cork plunged again.

“I, for one, am using the same thing I used back then — shad-rigs!” I bragged.

In brief: If you find moderately clear water, some current, a little bait action on the surface — not necessarily birds (though that’s unbeatable), just some pogies, mullet flashing around or some shrimp hopping along, especially near some current lines 100 yards or so off some point or island — you’ve usually found some cigar trout.

The trout frenzy switched off as quickly as it had switched on. I counted 14 fish in the box while Artie raised the anchor.

We’d motored barely a quarter mile along the coast of this little peninsula that provided cover from the wind when Pelayo pointed.

“That’s them!” he bellowed.

Sure enough, some gulls (the black-headed ones) were hovering, with another dozen or so sitting on the water resembling a small flock of malnourished dos gris.

They were maybe 100 yards off a grassy and wave–lapped point.

Seven times out of 10, beneath these gulls you’ll find feeding school specks, pushing up shrimp for them. On the other hand, if you cast around diving terns, the ones that make that creaky, squeaky sound and smack into the water head first after diving like a Stuka, you usually catch sail cats or ladyfish, especially later in the year.

Half of these gulls were sitting on the water. A few others were hovering and dipping their beaks. A current line formed right past them. Little swirls and various forms of surface commotion rippled the surface.

Everything looked perfect.

Pelayo killed the motor about 100 yards away, and we drifted in just as the gulls started lifting.

In seconds the action was as hot as at the first stop. No hocus-pocus or dilettantism for this type of fishing — and we had a blast, finishing with another 18 (mostly in the cigar-trout size, six of them white) from this spot.

“Time to hunt-up some coo-bee-jon fixins!” Artie announced from the bow.

Which was easy considering the route back through a marsh flooded by a high tide, which was — perfect conditions again — falling.

Midway through Long Lagoon Pelayo pointed at a shoreline with an emptying trenasse that had “cooo-bee-yon” written ALL OVER IT!

A school of finger mullet that had congregated at the trenasse mouth suddenly erupted as a huge wake creased the broken, grassy shoreline.

It didn’t require a PhD in fishingology to figure out what was afoot.

My cork hit the water inside the trenasse. It started drifting out, and I popped it twice.

Suddenly a huge swirl enveloped my cork but it stayed up!

“He’s smacking your cork!” Pelayo yelled.

And I knew what was coming next — another smack, another swirl — hah!

The cork disappeared. I reeled in a few cranks of slack, felt pressure and reared back with my rod high overhead.

The water exploded, I whooped like a lunatic and it was off to the races.

‘Wow!” was all Artie could manage as the wake headed past us and toward the middle of the lagoon.

“He’s taking off like a striped ape!” Pelayo laughed. “Like By HEK used to say!”

I reeled furiously, knowing all too well how reds take advantage of the slightest slack to throw a hook. But when I reeled in the slack, I felt that heavy, heavenly pressure again and knew he was on for good.

“YEAH!” I howled again as I raised the rod overhead and the reel started singing.

Since my fish was in the open water now, Pelayo quickly cast at the trenasse with a nice chunk of shrimp on his beetle. It took him all of three pops before his cork zoomed off sideways (he had it set a little too deep — 2 feet).

He set the hook on another red that frothed the surface before rocketing off, just like mine, into the open water. The bigger ones always seem to do this.

Two more stops in similar locales yielded three more perfectly courtbouillon-sized reds.

Nana Fontaine was waiting for us back at Doc’s. Shoulda seen her eyes when we opened da box!”