There are closer places to catch redfish out of Lafitte, but there aren’t many better.
What makes four-leaf clovers so lucky is that they’re so difficult to find. You could pick an entire acre of clovers one by one and still not stumble on the lucky one that has four leaves instead of three.
I felt like I was stepping into an even larger patch of clover when I met up with Capts. Donavon Hinton and Jason Shilling at Joe’s Landing in Lafitte.
Like every other launch along the coast of Louisiana, Joe’s Landing can be a launchpad to some of the best fishing in all the world … or the worst. Pick the right spot, and you’ll swear you’ll never fish anywhere else. Pick the wrong spot, and you’ll swear you’ll never come back.
Finding a good fishing spot out of Lafitte isn’t as difficult as finding a four-leaf clover, but there are plenty spots that are just like all the others. Finding that one special spot that is as lucky as a four-leaf clover takes a lot of picking around.
Or does it?
“We’re headed to Cloverly Canal,” Hinton, who operates Lagniappe Fishing Charters (504-382-4487), told me as he tossed a bag of market shrimp into his boat. “We’ve had some high water here lately, and there ought to be a lot of water and bait coming out between those rocks.”
I didn’t really hear what else Hinton was telling me about as we idled away from Joe’s. All I could think about was that we were going to fish a place called Cloverly Canal. Surely that had to be a good omen.
As we approached the mouth of the well-known canal on the western shoreline of Little Lake, it became obvious that finding a lucky fishing spot wasn’t going to take much looking around.
Giant schools of bait were swimming the length of the rocks on the southern side of the cut. Their synchronized movement showed a hint of nervousness, which was justified based on their occasional evasive maneuvers to get away from redfish patrolling just below.
Hinton started fishing market shrimp under a cork while his buddy Shilling, who runs New Orleans Style Fishing Charters (504-416-5896), decided to go straight to the bottom. It didn’t take long for Hinton to take off his cork and join Shilling on the bottom.
We finished a 15-fish limit by the time Hinton’s watch had ticked to 7:25.
“It’s a little early to go in,” Hinton declared as he put down his market-bait rod and picked up his gold-spoon rod. “Everybody’s still in bed back there, so we might as well have a little fun and see if we can pick up some redfish on spoons or spinnerbaits.”
I don’t know how blindly chunking and winding at redfish would be any more fun than what we just experienced at Cloverly Canal. Fifteen redfish in less than an hour was just about as much fun as anybody could expect to have out on the water.
And to make it even better, we did it all at a spot that’s as obvious as a pimple on a prom queen’s nose without ever having to pull in Hinton’s anchor. Cloverly Canal is definitely one easy-to-find four-leaf clover.
“I find these redfish bite all the way through November,” Hinton told me later on back at home while slathering butter on a redfish fillet. “The water temperature cools off, and I don’t find these fish are under as much pressure from the heat of the water.
“They pile up in different areas to eat more coming in to the wintertime.”
Although Hinton says redfish will be as close in as Lake Salvador and The Pen during November, he doesn’t mind making the little bit longer run to Cloverly Canal to take advantage of such a dynamic redfishing hole.
“Those rocks hold bait,” Hinton emphasized. “They hold minnows. They hold fiddler crabs. They hold blue crabs. And in the opening of that cut is a deep hole. There’s about 15 feet of water in that hole that we didn’t fish today. When those fish feel pressure, they get down in that deeper hole and hunker up.”
Redfish don’t stay deep in that hole very long, though. When the current starts moving, what happens is the water comes around those points, and it’s pulling bait with it. Being ambush feeders, redfish gleefully stack up and slam anything edible that comes out of that cut.
“Also, with those rocks being there,” Hinton added, “it creates somewhat of an artificial reef over a period of time.
“You get the growth of the algae. You get the shrimp eating it. You get the crab eating it. You get the redfish eating the shrimp and the crabs, and everything just makes a little circle of life for all your aquatic species. One lives off the other, and we just happen to be the predator that’s after the redfish.”
Cloverly Canal goes all the way over to Highway 90 around LaRose. Some of Lake Salvador drains through Cloverly Canal, as does water from the Delta Farms area and water from LaRose. A lot of fresh water comes through Cloverly Canal, too, and Shilling pointed out that many bass fishermen go in there to fish.
What makes Cloverly Canal such a good redfish hole during November is that the prevailing northwest wind blows water out of the canal while making the east side of the rocks the lee side.
“And I’ve never caught them on the inside of those rocks,” Hinton admitted. “I’ve tried that side a thousand times, but nothing.
“Whether the tide is rising or falling, I’ve always caught my fish on the east side — the Little Lake side — of those rocks.”
Hinton thinks the reason the east side of the rocks is so much better than the west has a lot to do with that being the side with Little Lake rather than the side with just a few little canals and some marsh.
“That whole shoreline of Little Lake is full of shrimp and everything as opposed to the marsh,” Hinton said. “That’s got to have a big influence on the redfish staying on that one side.”
On an incoming tide, Hinton and Shilling like to fish the hole in the opening between the rocks. The reds will sit down in there because whatever is coming from that lake and headed into Cloverly Canal will drop down into that hole. A lot of times, their best bite comes right on the ledge of that drop off similar to bass fishing.
When fishing the deep hole during November, both anglers change from popping corks and shrimp on a jighead to a Carolina-rigged market shrimp because they’ve got to get their baits down 15 feet in moving water.
Unlike fishing an incoming tide, a falling tide allows Hinton and Shilling to move freely up and down the Little Lake side of the rocks to find where the fish are that particular day.
It might seem like they could be all up and down those rocks, but we found during our trip that they are more likely to gang up in one particular spot based on tidal current and baitfish activity.
“You saw it for yourself today,” Hinton said. “They had three boats come around us, but it seemed like those fish were just held up in that one little 50-yard area that we were in front of.
“The guys on the north side weren’t catching like we were. They all took off, and we had our limits.”
Hinton believes that what made this particular spot so good was that the current was flowing out of Cloverly Canal and wrapping around an eddy pocket on the south side of the rocks.
“And the current was pushing all that bait we saw up against the rocks,” Hinton explained. “Every redfish we caught today was feeding on those mullets that you saw all nervous looking on top of the water.
“When you saw them jump everywhere out the water, that was redfish chasing them.”
The best way to fish the rocks, according to Hinton and Shilling, is to spend 30 minutes to an hour feeling them out. Fish the north side for a while. Try the south side. And then fish the middle. See where the fish are, or if they aren’t there.
Although both anglers like fishing with spoons and spinners, their general advice is that if you throw a piece of meat, a market shrimp, in front of them, they’re going to eat it. That’s why neither angler ever leaves Joe’s Landing without a bag of market shrimp. They say they never know when they’re going to need it.
If you’re now all fired up to go fish Cloverly Canal, Hinton and Shilling warned against waiting too long. Although they know they can catch redfish during December and January as long as they can find clean water, they realize that November is kind of the last best chance to catch redfish.
“The more the fronts come, the lower the water gets, and the less water comes back in,” Hinton said. “Everything starts getting shallower, and you’ve got to go to the deeper bays where the water won’t be so cold. And a lot of fish move out to the Gulf and move back in come March. By December, most of the bait and fish have been pushed out.”
The thing about finding a four-leaf clover is that the finder tends to hold on to it for as long as possible to maximize his or her luck. Why should Cloverly Canal be any different?
To see a video of Capts. Donavon Hinton and Jason Shilling in action at Cloverly, visit: www.louisianasportsman.com/details.php?id=3306