I caught my Louisiana red. It was three or four pounds, a decent fish for Texas but nothing special for Louisiana where redfish are larger. It’s caught though, and Louisiana is done.
We fished the Biloxi Marsh Wildlife Management Area, a 36,644 acre estuary 40 miles east of New Orleans, owned by the Biloxi Marsh Lands Corporation and leased to the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, subject to mineral rights. The Biloxi Marsh Lands Corporation was founded in the 30s to own the marsh and lease land for oil and gas exploration. I suspect it was a transfer of public lands to private parties for the benefit of Huey P. Long, his friends, and his family. It was probably formed after oil had been discovered but before state lands were leased. If that’s not the case, if the land was always private and it was all on the up and up, I’d be pleasantly surprised, but it wouldn’t change my opinion of Huey P. Long. If he didn’t run that scam in the Biloxi Marsh he ran it somewhere.
On a Saturday in August the Marsh was mostly empty.
The marsh looks like how a marsh is supposed to look: flat and watery and grassy. It’s shallow, but it’s no Caribbean flat, and it’s too far north for mangroves. There’s no clear water or sandy bottom. It’s muck, mostly, muck and oysters, and not a place for wading. When the pole went deep in the mud black ooze came up with the pole.
We launched out of Campo’s Marina in Yscloskey. Yscloskey was originally settled by Spanish Canary Islanders in the late 18th century, and in 1900 was still a Canary Islander descendent fishing village. That Campo surname probably isn’t random.
Yscloskey was destroyed by Katrina–the New York Times reported there was nothing left intact but a single light bulb and a garden hose–but it looks well enough now. It was busy on Saturday for the blessing of the fleet at the start of the shrimp season. The shrimp boats as often as not flew Confederate battle flags, along with plenty of pennants, the Louisiana state flag, the American flag, and some other flags I didn’t recognize. There was lots of red, white, and blue and purple and gold.
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You’re never very far from a discussion about Katrina in New Orleans. It’s not the same city, literally. What held people in New Orleans before Katrina was extended family networks and the Ignatius J. Reilly state of being: if you were born in New Orleans and lived in New Orleans you as likely as not never went anyplace else unless it was 90 miles to LSU. Katrina forced people to leave, and after Katrina the family networks were damaged. Cousins who left for Houston or Dallas or Atlanta got new jobs and better houses and schools and never came back. Twelve years later in the Treme near Willie Mae’s Scotch House there are still boarded houses.
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Kris caught two reds. She hooked a big red, at least 20 pounds, but got distracted and the fish broke off. You can’t multi-task when landing a 20 pound fish. Lesson learned. I learned a lesson too. Fishing the second day with a New Orleans hangover isn’t that much fun. I really didn’t need that final Sazerac even if it was the Sazerac Bar, and I didn’t need the Abita with the oysters at Felix Oyster House to start the evening, and I certainly didn’t need what came in between. Lesson learned. Also, take insect repellent, and use the insect repellent you take.
Our guide, Bailey Short, used big heavy flies, 10 weight rods, and 20-pound leaders. It was big stuff, much bigger than I’d expected.
He polled slow. There was no hurry to get anyplace because we were already there. Thorough, he said, you gotta get to the spot and be thorough. There were fish where we were, and we needed to take our time and spot them. Sooner or later we did, even if we didn’t catch them.
We talked to Bailey about the fall and winter months, the supposedly best months, but he said that the fish were just as big in the summer and that everybody now had heard about the big winter reds. There was so much winter pressure with interloper guides rolling in from Florida and Texas that July and August were in some ways better. He showed us lots of fish and we got lots of shots. Bailey did great, and was great company, but the fish didn’t cooperate. It certainly wasn’t my hungover casting. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
When we left Yskloskey for the airport Kris said she wanted a burger but I said po’boy and at the turn on to the highway Yelp! told us that the Last Stop Grocery and Deli sold po’boys. We sat out under the awning in the Gulf breeze and listened to the insect sounds and watched the jungle green on the side of the road. It was the perfect last moment in Louisiana. Good fried shrimp po’boys too.
