Good time in Lake Charles Louisiana
by
Bruce Wilks

My trip to Lake Charles Louisiana last weekend Saturday, Sunday, Monday and Tuesday (August 11 through 14)

Saturday... Drove to Lake Charles. Stayed at my friend Blake's parents house. Went out to eat some seafood on the shore of Big lake. Went to a Cigar Club/Bar and smoked some good cigars and some drinking...

Me and Blake fished Sunday with a Non-fly-fishing guide for 8 hours 6:00am to 3:00pm with a guide. After 11:30 until 2:30 we cooked in the sun and 101 degs... Landed 40 Specs from ~ 2.5lb to 8lb... 10 specs caught in the inter-coastal channels and Big Lake, also known as Grand Lake. Caught 5 more in the channels, then caught 25 more on the gulf side along the beach and 20 miles out fishing by the oil platforms. Also caught a 3' shark . Blake also had his $60 Streamer Express fly line shredded by another shark that took a big bite out of a Spec he had on, when the shark came back to take another bite, Blake was trying to strip it in when the shark hit his line about 30 feet up... He was able to splice it back together with a nicely tied fly line and continue to fish. We also caught a bunch of Spanish Mackerel (also lost a lot of fly's and leaders to Spanish Mackerel), I caught a 15 pound black drum on my 8wt TICRX TFO 200 grain Streamer Express fly line, 15lb Redfish leader, 1/0 saltwater hook, Near Hair grey/white/ with peacock flash clouser I tied with lots of red thread... I had tied 4 of these big clouser for this trip. Me and Blake caught at least 12 fish each on these clousers, before the Spanish Mackerel took them... Only 15 of the specs were caught on conventional gear using soft plastic jigs and swim baits... All the rest of the fish above were caught on 6wt and 8wt fly rods, fast sinking fly line, using flys we tied just for the trip... Our guide was a conventional gear fishing guide and had never fly fished before, so he wasn’t much help on what to do trying to catch saltwater fish with a fly rod, but he did find the fish for us... This is the first time I ever caught saltwater fish with my fly rod while fishing by oil rigs in the gulf... What A Blast...!!! We did keep 35 specs for eating...

Sunday evening Blake's mom cooked us a big pot of home made shrimp Creole, potatoes and green beans... Yum... Yum... Sunday late evening we went back to the Cigar Club/Bar and smoked some more good cigars and more drinking...

Monday me and Blake went fishing with a guide on a private 15,000 acre marsh preserve 6:00AM to 11:45AM We went out in a 22' john boat that was made for the marsh... We were zipping around in a 20 ft john boat through the marshes very narrow channels (not much wider than the boat at 35 mph, with marsh grass and mangroves on each side of the channels... Some times we were running in 4" of water. Saw lots of small to medium sized alligators', thousands of birds and lots of fish... Once we got out of the mangrove channels into an open mud flats, then we started fishing for redfish. We caught 45 redfish from 2lb to 8.5 lb... We caught a few reds with fly rods, but the conditions were not good for fly fishing, so most for the reds were caught using spinning gear due to water color and tide conditions... We would have done much better fly fishing if we could have got out and waded, but we could not get out and wade due to the mud in the marsh was more like quick sand, but worse... Also , in many cases the guide could not get us in close enough and position the boat for fly casting due to very low tide conditions in the marsh. He said he did not want to get the boat stuck in the mud due to it would put a quick end to our trip and we would have to be rescued... We did not keep any Reds due to guide forgot to bring an ice chest...

Monday afternoon we went to a Sushi Bar and stuffed ourselves... Then back to the Cigar Club/Bar and smoked some more good cigars and more drinking...

Monday evening, Blake's mom fried up a bunch of specs we caught the day before, along with lots of other goodies and we eat like "Fishing Kings"... It is the best salt water trip I have had in many years...

We headed back home to Round Rock on Tuesday afternoon.