Hours of fun await summertime anglers who launch their boats at this Lafourche Parish port.
Bayou Lafourche glimmered in the moonlight to our left as we rumbled our serpentine way down Highway 1 to Leeville for the weekend. Ten old college chums would converge at the motel for three days of serious fishing, serious revelry and serious reminiscing. Fishing conditions couldn’t be worse — drastically low tides in the mornings coupled with westerly winds to suck ’em out even lower. The blustery winds also promised to churn the water into a nice chocolate tinge throughout the weekend.
But the trip had been planned for months, and there was no wimping out. We were still pumped.
Alas, we’d have to be resourceful in our fishing. Fortunately, a base of operations at Leeville offered several options.
Heading southwest, we could hit the beaches or lee shores in the Timbalier Island network.
North of there, we might try the lee (and hopefully cleaner) shorelines of Lake Raccourci and Little Lake, depending on water quality.
Heading east, we could hit what’s left of Queen Bess, Beauregard and Mendicant islands behind Grand Isle.
What’s left of the marsh between the mouth of Southwest Canal and these islands (as well as the one around Lake Raccourci) might also yield reds in the afternoon high tide, we surmised. Reds are much less squeamish than trout about dirty water, and we counted on them to take up the slack.
Wetting a line at the Belle Pass jetties might also proffer itself if the specks rebuffed us (as usual) then white trout and channel mullet would be fine with me.
And if the wind ever put down, I was gung-ho for hitting the shallow Bay Marchand and Timbalier blocks visible from shore. No question about catching fish at these rigs — mangroves, Spanish, spadefish, puppy drum, perhaps cobia. At least one of these (and usually several) usually cooperate in this area. It’s all a matter of being able to get out — which looked hopeless. But it was an option.
We like options when we fish. After almost four decades at this game, we know better than to put all our eggs in one basket.
Chris was in charge of the music for the trip, and just as we passed South Lafourche High, he slipped the Stones’ “Some Girls” into the CD player. Soon Jagger was snarling about some “Puerto Rican girls just dyyyyiing to meet you!”
Various lunacies and debaucheries at Tiger Plaza sprang promptly to mind.
This turn in conversation brought up another blast-from-the-past, our old friend Becky’s eye-popping performances on Zachary’s riding bull.
“She put Debra Winger in Urban Cowboy to shame!” recalled Don.
“She made Madonna look like a pom-pom girl at Sacred Hawt!” laughed Chris.
“She made the pole dancers at The Gold Club look like the Lennon Sisters on Lawrence Welk!” roared Howie.
“Slow DOWN, for Pete’s sake!”
Suddenly Perry was yelling into Pelayo’s ear from the back seat. Pelayo tapped the brakes — and just in time. We were breaching the city limits of Golden Meadow. More ominously, in keeping with the spirit of reminiscing, we were taking Highway 1 along the bayou the whole way down, rather than the four-lane highway. After all, that’s how we made our way to Grand Isle during the glorious period we were reminiscing about. It seemed fitting.
More fitting would be a couple speeding tickets. Once we got one on the way down and another on the way up, while wearing frilly cut-offs, puka shells and listening to this very soundscore — but on an 8- track at the time. On this trip, we were keen on omitting this facet of the reminiscing — the one involving flashing red lights, frantic hiding of beer cans and stuttered excuses to badge-wearing public servants.
We pulled into the hotel, climbed out of the truck and immediately heard the sounds of revelry. Turning toward the tables and chairs under the motel rooms, we saw the sights of revelry.
“Looks like they started without us,” said Pelayo as we hustled over.
The throbbing rhythms hailed back to the very era we’d be reliving on the trip. So we assumed Dennis, Bob, Dave and the rest of the gang who preceded us had cranked up the boom boxes to capture the spirit of the times and get an early start on the festivities.
Instead, we focused on the scene, and — WHAT THE?! A group of women seemed to be the instigators? And they were whooping it up big- time.
Dennis came running up.
“It’s a freakin’ bachelorette party!” he yelled with a crazy grin on his face. “Get your stuff up to the rooms and hurry down! Ya ain’t gonna believe this stuff!”
We looked at each other wide-eyed. The same west winds that would make fishing miserable made the night wonderful, cool with no bugs. After unpacking and launching the boat, we noticed that the gals were taking full advantage of the glorious weather, all decked out in hip-riding short-shorts, skimpy tops and flip-flops. Some were dancing, some were chumming it up with our gang. All were pink-cheeked and giggly while holding drinks.
“Don’t look like the typical bachelorette party to me?” Perry said to Dennis while popping open a brewskie and looking around attentively.
“Hell no!” roared a panting Bob, who’d rushed over to fill us in. “These ain’t exactly teeny boppers! These women been around the block a time or two!”
“And that’s the beauty of it!” yelled Howie, who’d hustled over to the action without even bothering to unpack or helping us launch the boat, and was now splattering us with margarita spittle. “They say it’s Gloria’s — the bride to be’s — third marriage. Say she was tired of the typical French Quaw-daw bachelorette party at Pat O’s, the fruity male strippers, etc. This time she wanted a FUN one, they say, doing the stuff she loves, in the area she grew up in. So here they are whooping it up at night and fishing during the day!”
I was still trying to make sense of the scene when I felt my arm jerked.
“Let’s go, big guy!” yelled a curvaceous brunette in hoop earrings and a skimpy tank-top that terminated well north of her pierced and bejeweled navel. “Time to shake a leg!”
Half my beer spilled as I was dragged to the middle of the impromptu dance floor, where Chris was already weaving and gyrating like a maniac.
Typically, Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive” boomed from the speakers. All women — regardless of generation — love this song. And from their looks, these women came of age just as it topped the charts. So they were really shaking their booties while wailing along. I noticed a tattoo of some kind on Chris’ dance-mate, right at the base of the spine, between the dimples. Looked like either a rose or a cobra. Couldn’t tell with all the shaking. Mine had one above her ankle. Either a flower bouquet or a Harley-Davidson emblem. Hard to tell with all the strutting.
Some crazy shouts turned my head, and I looked over at Howie, Don and Perry gyrating madly and singing with the same fervor as their dance partners. It wasn’t taking long to get into the spirit of things.
The song ended, and the gals all handed us fresh drinks.
“WHOO!” Chris gasped upon his first sip. “Heavy on the rum, I see!”
My own sip seared my throat, but I wasn’t complaining. We sat on the tables for a bit, still a bit disoriented by the scene, when suddenly the gal in the miniscule cut-offs they called Jenny rushed over to the boom box and slipped in a new CD.
Donna Summer’s “Hot Stuff” suddenly boomed from the speakers. Jenny whooped, turned around with a wicked smile, lifted her arms overhead and started strutting her stuff.
The “dance floor” filled with gals thrusting their hips and shaking their bosoms with complete abandon.
“I want some HOT STUFF!” they screamed.
And in seconds, Chris, Howie and I were again dragged into the mad melee of swaying hips and half-naked bodies.
Much less effort was needed for the dragging this time, courtesy of those throat-searing drinks. The gals seemed to put special emphasis on the “I want some HOT STUFF” section of the lyrics, bumping in close with their short-shorted hips, grabbing our hands and yelling the lyric into our faces with wide eyes and intense looks that made me very uneasy.
Some whoops and claps jerked my head around, and I saw a circle had formed. Sure enough, Dennis was in the middle, ‘poppin’ the gator.’ With all the racket, I figured we’d all be getting booted out of the motel in short order. But no, the lunacy proceeded and got even crazier.
Nobody talked much as we boarded the boats the next morning. Many shifty eyes and sheepish looks as we sipped our coffees and loaded the ice and live bait (both cocahoes and shrimp, to make sure.)
The ride was bumpy on the way to East Timbalier Island. But the Gulf side of the hurricane-battered islette was semi-sheltered and the water a gorgeous green.
“Trout waw-da!” yelled Pelayo while pointing at pods of finger mullet finning on the surface. “Saw that?” A little school had erupted as something ripped into them. Pelayo sent a Top Dog near the action, and hadn’t twitched his rod tip twice when — WHAM!
“A BLOW UP!” he bellowed “We on ’EM!”
Chris soon netted Pelayo’s trout, a 3-pounder. The treble hooks were nicely tangled in the landing net. The rest of us, excited by the prompt action, quickly cast out. Dave with another topwater plug and the rest of us with freelined live shrimp. More than 45 minutes later, Pelayo’s trout was still the only one in the box. The grumbling was starting. “KNEW we shouldn’t come here!” etc.
Then my shrimp got whacked.
“One here!” I yelled while raising the rod high overhead. “Ain’t no trout, though!” I grimaced.
“Sure it’s a trout!” yelled Bob. “Look at that sucker breakin’ the waw-da! Typical trout action!”
“This ain’t a trout, I’m telling ya,” I yelled again, with my reel screaming crazily. “Can’t be a trout — cause it’s fighting! Whoo! Listen to that drag. Trout’s the most pathetic fighting fish — pound for pound — in the waw-daa!”
I knew damn well I had a Spanish and was savoring his every sizzling run, just as I’d savor his sizzling fillets tonight.
Chris reared back into his rod, yelled something and was soon slugging it out with another chunky Spanish. Twenty more minutes drifting and troll-motoring along the (mostly submerged nowadays, so watch it) rocks in in front of East Timbalier Island casting live shrimp yielded only two channel mullet, which I kept. I love frying them whole, like bull croakers in years past. That well-seasoned skin gets crispy in a hot skillet, while keeping the white meat luscious and juicy.
Then the VHF crackled, and Bob jerked it up. We listened and gaped.
“Our friends from last night!” Chris whooped.
“PAAAAAAWWWW-TY!” came a harsh female over the radio. “Y’all get over here! We wearin’ out the redfish!”
“And the Bloody Marys!” yelled her friend in the background between the whoops and cackles.
“That sounded like Jenny,” Chris gasped. “Geezum, maybe we oughta get over there? Guess they weren’t lying when they said they knew this area, knew where to catch fish even in these conditions?”
Bob got the coordinates, and we were soon bashing our way north toward Lake Raccourci, then into Little Lake. The little sliver of land now separating Little Lake from Raccourci was the scene of the action. The good-time gals had found a section of broken marsh here with an oyster bottom and just barely enough water to let us enter, while Bob’s poor prop whacked oyster after oyster. We groaned and winced at every whack, but what the hell. This was a special occasion, and besides, the gals were truly on the fish. We could see their bent rods and hear their crazy shrieks from 200 yards away.
“A couple Bloody Marys, and you’ll forget all about that prop, Bob,” Pelayo laughed.
Six of them were piled into a bay boat, and their boom box was thumping away while they cranked in reds. It was true. We anchored about 70 yards away from them, and all cast out with live shrimp under corks.
“They want live cocahoes!” yelled Gloria from their boat. “Ain’t touching nothin’ else!”
“Bull,” snorted Pelayo. “Redfish prefer shrimp. Everybody knows that!”
Fifteen fish-less minutes later, we dipped into our cocahoes, fished them no deeper than a foot under the corks and started landing red after red. Glad I saw this, or I wouldn’t have believed it myself. We always believed you couldn’t beat live shrimp for trout or reds. Thanks to the good-time gals, we learned a lesson.
Half an our after we started, they cranked their engine.
“Limited out, guys!” Jenny yelled as they churned past hoisting their drinks. “We goin’ for trout now!”
“Don’t waste your time! Trout ain’t hittin’!” yelled Bob. “Water’s too dirty in here and they not turned on out by the beaches. We tried.”
The reds slowed down shortly after they left. We had nine on board and three sheepshead. No limit, but we weren’t complaining. Things were looking up. Then the VHF crackled again.
“Mouth of the Southwest Canal, guys!”” Came Jenny’s voice again. “Mopping up on the school trout!”
We cranked the engine, blazed over and — sure enough — they were on the fish AGAIN!
Casting Speculizers, live shrimp and cocahoes under corks over the 3- to 4-foot deep flats on the edge of the canal channel netted us 37 trout in two hours. Again no limits, but plenty of action. The scenery was also gorgeous.
