Small boats put speckled trout, reds on the table
Rising gas prices have many Louisiana sportsmen looking for alternative ways of getting after their favorite game fish. For Lafayette Kayak Fishing Club member Greg Sonnier, that means grabbing his Hobie kayak out of the garage and tying it to the top of his SUV for a spontaneous trip to Calcasieu Lake.
Sonnier and some of his kayak buddies have been fishing the northeast corner of Calcasieu Lake around an area most know as the “Blue Camp.” In fact, club members landed two trout over 4 pounds from this pocket during a kayak tournament a few weeks ago.
“There have also been lots of redfish coming from these same waters,” Sonnier said as we paddled our kayaks from Hebert’s Landing to this well-known hotspot.
He had debated going to West Cove, but the recent successes of trips to the Blue Camp spot and the light easterly winds made his choice a no-brainer.
Sonnier and I began scouring the shallow water close to the marshy shoreline. We couldn’t have asked for a more perfect morning to be fishing such a giant lake in small kayaks, but one thing was missing – bait. The wind was calm, the water was clear, but no baitfish activity dimmed our outlook.
Sonnier was mixing it up a little bit by throwing a topwater, a suspending bait and a plastic on bottom. I stuck with the plastic on bottom. Whatever we threw didn’t seem to matter until we spotted some bait jumping out of the water about 200 yards out from the bank.
The burn still fresh in my legs, I kick-paddled my way out to the activity because it was just about the only option we had. I was feeling more and more comfortable in my borrowed kayak, and venturing so far from shore didn’t bother me. And that’s when the fun began.
I landed a nice speckled trout that made his intentions toward my glow and chartreuse TTF Hackberry Hustler aggressively known. Sonnier paddled out to get my trout and put it in his soft-sided ice bag, but he continued to throw his suspending bait.
My next fish changed his mind.
“No sense in being stupid,” he quipped as he quickly put up one rod and grabbed another that had a glow and chartreuse Norton Sand Eel threaded onto a 1/8-ounce jighead.
Over the next hour or so, and in the face of increasing pressure from five wade fishermen who had moved between us and the shore, Sonnier and I landed six trout, one flounder and one redfish. That might not seem very impressive to the run-and-gun crowd, but Sonnier considered it an excellent haul from our kayaks.
“Especially since we got the slam,” he concluded. “Fishing out of a kayak is hard enough. I don’t know why we do this to ourselves, but the kayak grand slam is one trout, one redfish and one flounder. That’s what we’ve got to weigh in during our kayak tournaments.
“It’s more difficult than you might think, so anytime we can get the kayak slam we’ve had a good day on the water.”
So if rising gas price have you down in the dumps, hit the classified section to see if you can find a good used kayak. If you’re looking to get into a new one, Sonnier said it was important to go ahead and get one that you won’t want to sell by next weekend.
He advised spending $700 to $1,000 to get one that will be comfortable and easy to fish out of. He prefers the Hobie Mirage Outback.
You can follow kayak fishing in Louisiana at the Louisiana Sportsman fishing reports. For more information about the Lafayette Kayak Fishing Club visit www.lafayettekayakfishing.com.
Follow the author’s blog at www.chrisginn.com.