Last week I treated my son to a redfish tip to pay him back for his treating me to a couple of guided trips in Arkansas and Tennessee. We were fishing out of New Orleans and the weather of course was not cooperating, threatening skies, no sun, etc. At first light we ran around looking for Jacks that might be cruising but couldn’t find any. We saw a few black drum tails and redfish tails but in the dim light and dirty water we couldn’t work the fish properly and got no takes.
With no luck on jacks or early morning drums our guide took us into a duck pond with a lot of Coontail and Millfoil weed. Though the plant life had cleaned the water up some we still had mostly dirty water, but, when we did find pockets of clear water we usually saw redfish. I changed to a bead chain crab with the thought that a lighter fly might be easier to keep clean by keeping it shallow and not letting it fall into the vegetation. It worked well and I was able to keep the fly fairly clean. The two fish below were the result, one for each of us. Unfortunately the rain moved in and we had to bug out, but we had booked only a half day anyway.
We did a full day the following day in the guide’s big 24-foot bay boat, but that story is for another day. Suffice it to say that we had a great time, my bucket list is one item shorter and I am a happy camper.
"Samurai" Fly Shop 