Ghastly coastal erosion and a direct hit from one of North America’s worst hurricanes ever can’t stop the super-strong spring action in this hotspot.
The high tide wasn’t until 11 a.m., so there was no rush.
For inside fishing the lower Buras area, we like the tide high and falling. A high tide allows us to penetrate the lair of the redfish. His first cousin, the black drum, is equally fond of shallows, especially over oyster bottoms, very common in the Bay Coquette/Bay Jacques area. Their more distant cousin, the sheepshead (he might look like a drum, but he’s actually a big pinfish), loves to root through the flooded shallows himself.
And find a point or the mouth of a trenasse with the current moving, and chances are you’ll find flounder too. Rather than a stalker like the speck and red, the flounder’s an ambusher. He lies in wait, allowing the current to bring prey within range. These current-washed points serve as his food plot.
But lying flat and still on the bottom and given his color, he’s nowhere near as conspicuous as I am in a box-stand on Wesley and Priscilla’s “Six-Point” lease, waiting for anything brown, so I can cut it down.
Get out a bit deeper, closer to a main channel where the water dips down to 2 1/2 or 3 feet, and the school specks might be smacking shrimp. Black-headed gulls hovering, or simply poised in the water like a flock of dos gris, often give them away.
Catch all the conditions right in what’s left of the marsh near the coast below Buras, broaden your horizons with all these species, use plain shrimp-tipped jigs or shad rigs under popping corks, and you can still come home with a “box,” like you did when Morgus graced our TV screens on Sahhh-dy night.
In April, the river’s high and the wind is typically out of the southeast. The muddy river water gushes into the Gulf from Red, Tante Phine, Tiger and Southwest passes. The southeast wind and a rising tide then inundate this area of marsh with the muddy but magic elixir — good in the long run, but it makes for tough fishing while it’s flooding the marsh.
Hence our fetish for fishing during a falling tide in this area. This tide brings down the clearer water from up around the Buras Canal and Hospital/Yellow Cotton Bay areas to the regions closer to the coast, and puts the fish into a feeding frenzy. Best of all, most fisherfolk are up around those Buras Canal/Hospital Bay areas this time of year, so we have the coastal areas pretty much to our ourselves.
Notice I didn’t say “clear” water. I said “clearer,” as in compared to river water. In this open, wind-buffeted area this time of year, you’ll never really get clear water — say as in ponds and bayous in the Biloxi Marsh. Nothing even close. Clear for us means about 3 inches of visibility. If you can see the top of your prop around here, you’re in business.
Actually the generally murky water greatly simplifies things. Simply find pockets of clearer water, and the fish will often be stacked up within them.
So, like I said, with a late-morning high tide, there was no rush, no pre-dawn haul down the Belle Chasse Highway, more like a leisurely late-morning one, which saw us stop at Balestra’s for last-minute provisions. In the evening, we planned on hooking up with Doc Fontaine and his girlfriend of the month at his Venice houseboat. A few more beverages and victuals were clearly in order.
“Heaven help us!” I was just turning the aisle when Pelayo grabbed my shoulder and pointed ahead. “What luck, huh?”
There was no mistaking her. That was no Wal-Mart jogging suit encasing her ample curves. That was no “Artie’s Machine-Shop” give-away cap on her head. Her streaked hair poked through the back in a bouncy-ponytail as she addressed some young Mexican gentlemen near the Tostito chips display. The Mexicans were in paint- and grease-stained duds, their short stature and swarthy looks clashing with the sleek, blond and stylish … Priscilla!
Yes! “Yoko” herself!
“Well,”smirked Pelayo just as she turned and spotted us. “Doc said Wes (Doug Neidermeir) and her would be down at their place in Venice this weekend. Said they might come over for a drink tonight.”
“Let’s get it over with,” I said as we walked over. “She saw us.”
But after a curt nod, Yoko quickly turned back around and continued her conversation with the grinning and nodding Mexicans. Priscilla claims to speak Spanish, but Pelayo and I have never managed to keep a conversation going with her in Spanish — not that we do much better in English. Two sentences into it, her eyes narrow. Three, and she starts snarling. Four, and she’s off in a huff.
Point is, she doesn’t understand a lick of Spanish. She simply recites a few phrases, a few pleasantries, a few platitudes — and that’s it. Her Spanish lessons probably came from listening to Jose Feliciano’s “Feliz Navidad” and watching Cheech and Chong.
She discharged every one of her lines on the Mexicans, who seemed to detect her unfamiliarity with their language. Yoko was in her glory. Here, in front of these humble and picturesque foreigners, was a perfect opportunity to display her open-mindedness, her lack of bigotry, her support for diversity, just like in those old Coke commercials (I’d like to teach the world to sing …).
And the Mexicans themselves seemed immensely gratified. Their hurried comments to each other about “la gringa’s” physical attributes revealed a remarkable open-mindedness and gratitude in themselves.
While listening to them, Pelayo’s lips were compressed and quivering while he tried to stifle a guffaw. When they went into detail about how to best utilize those attributes, my own midriff started convulsing, and I was forced to cover my mouth in a mock cough.
Yoko was all smiles. These little men — so innocent, so pure — were obviously impressed by her worldliness and compassion, said her glowing face. When turning to Priscilla, the Mexicans were all smiles. When they turned to each other, they also smiled — but now with an edge. When they noticed Pelayo and me, they reverted to the pleasant smile — not suspecting that we understood every word of their salacious fantasy.
Somewhere between Jesuit Bend and Myrtle Grove, Pelayo and I finally caught our breaths. Chris laughed along, but unlike us, no tears squirted nor drool dribbled in the process. It was clearly one of those, “you had to be there” scenes.
Surveying the briar patches and canebrakes along the highway kindled glorious memories of Benjamin pump-wielding teenagers fleeing through the briars and canebrakes, a brace of rabbits flopping from our belt after the cops bullhorn announced: “Come on OUT! We’ve got the place surrounded.”
Hah! We knew better. The “place” was usually an old pasture along the levee, or even the long-abandoned Jefferson Downs, a jungle of briars, tallow trees and canebrakes, a paradise for rabbits. And on weekends, also a paradise for young hoodlums with pellet guns who’d learned to spot them, hunched up and ears back, as they huddled in their lair perfectly camouflaged — or so they thought.
Careful aim … then — SPLAT! — right behind the ear. They flipped, went into a few convulsions and were soon hanging triumphantly from our belts, smearing our jeans with fresh blood as we pumped up the guns and pranced to the next briar patch and the next rabbit.
Naturally, some busy-body would blow the whistle on our weekend bliss, and soon the JPs would burst upon the scene, talking big through their bullhorns, like they had John Dillinger himself cornered.
“Come on OUT!”
Yeah, right. We knew better. Their usual lair was the creaking, moaning stools in donut shops, not these hellish tangles of briars, brambles and slop. And somehow, we always prevailed. Things got dicey now and then, when one ventured a good 50 or 60 yards into the brush, and started screeching hoarsely about the terrible fate the law had in store for us. But he never went much farther. Soon the little hippo was huffing and puffing, tucking his shirt back under his walrus-like bulk.
Soon, the rabbits and dismantled pellet guns were in large Holmes (Home-zez) or Schwegmann’s (Swagamans) shopping bags and hanging from our banana handlebars as we pedaled triumphantly home, motorists, and even cops, waving and all thinking: “How nice! Look how those dutiful boys did their shopping for their overworked moms this weekend!”
We launched at Joshua’s, headed southeast, and the first stop was an eroded shoreline along a silted-up pipeline canal near the end of (what used to be known as) Dry Cypress Bayou, just west of (what used to be known as) Bay Coquette. The depth finder showed about 2 foota-wawda. The waves were lapping gently over the flooded wire grass. The water was “clear” and moving. All three elements looked perfect. The place had redfish written all over it.
I peeked astern, and barely made out the top of the prop through the hazy water.
“It’s fishable,” I said while easing in the anchor.
Pelayo made his first cast from the stern. I turned to watch his cork hit smack at the grass line. One pop, two pops, a little bouncing, a swirl —WHAM!!
“Don’t take long down HERE!” Pelayo bellowed, and the fight was on.
The fish put up a nice wake as it plowed through the flooded grass then turned for the open deeper water.
“Gotta go 10 pounds!” Pelayo whistled as he watched the wake.
I baited my white beetle with shrimp (save the spoons for clearer water — Hopedale, the Biloxi Marsh, Delacroix, Reggio, Laffite, Larose; areas where there’s usually at least a foot of visibility) and cast right where Pelayo had been. (For whatever reason, nice reds — 3- to 7-pounders — seem to hang out in pairs or trios down here.)
Before my first pop, the brute struck.
“YEAH-YEAH!” I howled while raring back and feeling that solid weight, then that lunge that set my reel screaming, then the run that stripped off 20 feet of line.
I boated mine (about a 7-pound red) as Chris set the hook on his first, which turned out to be a nice puppy drum. I hadn’t baited up again when Chris cast out to the same oyster-studded, current-washed point and hauled in a chunky sheepshead. His next cast had a fish rattling its mouth frantically right after the strike.
“Trout?!” I howled “Box-a-mixed coming right up!”
“No trout!” yelled Chris. “Flounder, podnuh, and a nice one!”
Any flounder is a nice flounder if you ask me. Sure enough, about a 2-pounder slide right into the net at boatside.
Pelayo’s fish kept thrashing on the surface, back and forth, with a few spirited runs mixed in. Classic rat red action, but he looked like a keeper. Pelayo swung him aboard, and he might have gone 4 pounds — no 10-pounder, but ideal for grilling.
“Man, but this sucka FOUGHT!” Pelayo gasped while chunking him in the box.
We nailed another three rat reds and another puppy drum, then noticed a tern smacking the water around the little eddies formed by the outgoing current about a hundred yards ahead. We raised anchor and idled over.
“Saw that?!” Pelayo said as his cork sailed toward the action. I turned to see another tern smack near shore. Sure enough, a little rip had formed from the falling tide as the clear water dropping from the upper marshes and ponds clashed with the murkier river water. An offshore rip generally means fish. An inshore rip means much the same.
“We’re on ’em! Yessir!” Pelayo yelled before I could cast.
Then his trout hit the surface in a gill-rattling frenzy. I cast out right next to him, and hauled in a 15-inch trout.
“Get it out there Chris! They’re turned on!”
Chris’ cork plunged on its third pop.
For the next half hour, we caught school trout on about every second cast. White beetles seemed the ticket, though they smacked my shad rigs with equal gusto. We nailed about 20 school specks in the process — far from a limit, but what a blast. Then we roared toward a little roseau stand on the shore of what used to be Bay Coquette.
I aimed my shrimp-tipped beetle at a cane swaying in the waves — splish … pop-pop. Then the cork went behind a little wave and never reappeared — WHAM! Then the reel started its sweet music. Then the water erupted in a foaming copper swirl. My line was singing, and I stood on the bow, pole overhead, looking over for applause, but instead saw Pelayo swinging in another puppy drum. Chris cast behind us toward the open water and promptly had a school speck.
“Yeah!” I huffed. “He’s coming in — look at the size of him!”
My red seemed tuckered, and I started horsing him in, but then he saw the net — Whoom! I grimaced, and gripped the rod a little higher. He came back to life. Another spool-sizzling run. More surface thrashing. Finally he was on his side, gasping. The net slid under him, and he came aboard to a chorus of whoops and high-fives. When I dumped in my 5-pound red, the box was looking very pretty —like in the old days.
He measured 23 inches. Fancy fishing guides in the Florida Keys go bonkers if they catch one of these a day. And now, from the bend in Pelayo’s rod, the look on his face and the sound from his reel, he had another.
We found a few on almost every grassy point with moving water and every cut in the shoreline.
The very eye of Katrina roared over this exact area. The bottom was always heavy with oysters down here, and still is. There’s not much marsh left — but amazingly, the fishing hasn’t suffered.
We were explaining this to Doc and Trisha that evening at his houseboat when who knocks briskly on the door and barges in but Wes and Yoko.
“Just in time!” greeted Pelayo. “Y’all help yourself!”
He pointed at the table.
“We got us more of dem six-point venison nachos, courtesy of your lease!”
