Entering the second month after Hurricane Ida’s landfall on the Louisiana coast, Marty LaCoste of Absolute Fishing Charters in Dularge is back to doing what he does best: catching limits of trout and making customers smile.
“We made out extremely well in Dularge,” LaCoste said. “Our camps and boatsheds were untouched.”
But that is not to say that Dularge made it through the storm unscathed. Debris clean-up is ongoing, and the area went without electricity for a month. Still, Dularge took a glancing blow, and the fact is not lost to local fishermen now able to return to work.
Electricity was restored on Sept. 28, and LaCoste took his first post-Ida guide trip on Oct. 2. Now that utilities have been restored, he said, Absolute Fishing Charters is “back to fishing full force.”
Sportsmen from across the state want to know how they can help their fellows in areas affected by the hurricane — in the case of Dularge, at least — LaCoste believes that the best way to help is to book a fishing trip.
Back to catching limits of trout
“The bite has been getting better each day,” he said. “We caught our limit of specks today on double rigs.”
Matrix Shad in shrimp creole, double-rigged under Four Horsemen corks, has been his go-to formula for success since resuming operations.
“And we left the bull reds biting today,” LaCoste said.
Recovery efforts ongoing
The recovery process continues in Dularge, as it does across coastal Louisiana.
On Aug. 29, Hurricane Ida made landfall at Port Fourchon, about 40 miles from Dularge as the crow flies. Dularge fared much better than nearby Houma, where storm damage was more extensive.
With sustained winds reaching 150 mph at landfall, Hurricane Ida tied 2020’s Hurricane Laura as the hardest-hitting hurricane to make a Louisiana landfall on record. Only Hurricane Katrina in 2005 was more costly in terms of life and property.
On Sept. 17, RMS, a leading catastrophic risk solutions company, estimated total onshore and offshore United States insured losses from Hurricane Ida to be between $31 billion and $44 billion.