When Captain Scott Poche pointed to his left while reeling in a big redfish, I knew things were just fine in Lafitte. The pack of redfish moving in to see what all the fuss was about didn’t stand a chance in the crystal-clear water. I flipped a black and chartreuse H&H Cocahoe Minnow to the lead fish’s nose, and he fell for it. The double was on.
Amid all the hustle and bustle of oil clean-up boats, Poche and I had idled away from Lafitte Harbor just minutes before. A quick run through Bayou Perot and a turn to the west left us facing the north shore of Little Lake. The shoreline was familiar, but I don’t think I had ever seen it as clear as it was late last week.
“The water’s just gorgeous,” Poche noted as we settled down off plane. “We’ll make a pass down this entire stretch… should be some good reds somewhere around here.”
It didn’t take long for Poche’s call to be confirmed. A bathtub-sized section of nervous looking water was moving slowly but steadily toward us. If we could time our casts to land just in front of the crazy water we knew we would be well on our way to putting our ten redfish in the boat.
“A lot of redfish are up in the ponds right now,” Poche explained while unhooking the first in a long line of redfish. “But I wanted to come out to some of these lakes and bays to see if we could find some cruising the banks. Looks like they’re out here, too.”
All was not well in Little Lake, though. While many redfish turned and crashed our artificial offerings with reckless abandon, just as many went through the motions only to turn away at the very last second.
Poche theorized that the winds the day before and the high pressure sitting on top of Southeast Louisiana probably had something to do with the finicky nature of some of the fish. His answer was to put his trolling motor on high and quickly cover water until we found the reds that wanted to eat.
What was looking to be about an hour-long trip turned into about three or four hours as we worked our way from Little Lake to Turtle Bay. Before long, we had come across more than enough redfish that were willing to commit rather than turn away.
“When they’re like this,” Poche said referring to those redfish that didn’t want to play, “the best thing to do is just kick it up and keep moving. I like to scan the water from the shore out to about 20 or 30 yards out because not all the redfish schools will be tight to the bank. Some just like to cruise out a little deeper. It all depends on where the bait is.”
All ten of our redfish fell to the black and chartreuse H&H minnow, but Poche said anglers could just as easily catch fish on spinnerbaits, gold spoons and shrimp under a cork.
Contact Captain Scott Poche at 504-915-0392 or visit www.lafittefishing.com.
