Even if Louisiana’s marshes contained only one species of game fish, our action would be better than any other place on the continent.
But fortunately, not only are our marshes incredibly productive, they’re also diverse, offering a variety of fish that can be caught a number of different ways.
So after my buddy Justin Bowles and I spent a morning raking in speckled trout on hard-plastic baits, we decided to duck into the marsh and try our hand at catching some bass and redfish.
Our intention was to hit several areas, and hopefully boat a few fish to take home for dinner, but at our first stop, the bite was simply too good to leave. We spent the rest of the day there, catching both bass and reds almost nonstop.
We found great action even though almost every condition was working against us. We were fishing midday under a mostly sunny sky, and the tide was rising. Working for us, however, was water clarity; it was excellent.
Water levels had been super low during the three days leading up to our trip, and that had the fish concentrated in the middle of the bayou we fished. We caught very few along the ledges.
Another important key was the 12-pound-test fluorocarbon main line we used. The light fluoro allowed our lures to reach the bottom quickly on our casts and twitches.
We caught all our fish on 1/8-ounce Deathgrip Jigheads teamed with various soft-plastics, including Matrix Shads, H&H curl-tails and Down South Southern Shads.
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