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Early Summer Fly fishing

It has been a great a summer minus Covid and of course the tropical storms and or hurricanes. Early summer was awesome. Had a couple jacks around town that were acting right but not the numbers we get in later summer. So after the early morning jack bite we were switching gears to laid up gar fish which kept the action going. Made an island run in late June which was amazing. Pushing jacks, tailing pompano, big speckled trout on popper and one giant redfish in ankle deep water. All that with perfect weather made for a great two days of fishing. Early July I moved the bay boat down to Venice where we had one day when blue water pushed in and the mahi were plentiful. The next day the blue water pushed back out so we stayed close and worked some rigs with sinking lines catching a couple different species including some very large jack Crevalle!

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Flyfishing In Louisiana during Late Summer for Pre-spawn Bulls and some other great Species

With fall weather becoming more and more volatile, the consistent summer weather is looking more and more attractive to fisherman looking to catch big fish. Throughout the summer, it is relatively common to find big redfish doing redfish things when you look in the right places, of course. This is especially true just before they move out to spawn, which usually happens around the first or second week of September. When you find them, fish are usually gorging on bait and have serious bellies, making them even more powerful then usual. But like a light switch, when they decide to move out to spawn they are gone! Luckily, Louisiana is full of formidable targets that will happily eat a fly and test your gear.

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Summer fly fishing options in Louisiana

This past summer started off strong with some jacks moving in relatively early and backing fish in ankle deep water(when the tide was right). But as soon as the jacks appeared they seemed to disappear and I was forced to fish in other areas. This paid off. What I found in these “other areas” were first of all more jacks, which was great, but also some very large redfish and plenty of sharks. I also did a nearshore trip on one of those perfect weather late summer days and it payed off with a plethora of species. I continued to occasionally try my typical Jack areas and although it was less action as I would of liked we had some jaction, caught some fish and I loved every second of it. Now I’m just looking forward to next summer and the endless fly fishing opportunities Louisiana has to offer. Above photo courtesy of Sam Collett @collettjsam on Instagram.

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Big redfish season is here…

September is when we start getting very busy. Although the big fish have not moved into the shallows we are still able to target them in open water with the weather permitting(reasonable winds and sunlight)… This will continue usually through mid October when a good cold front pushes the bigger fish shallow. Although we have had some smaller cold fronts this October the majority of the bigger fish have not moved in yet.  This mixed with some serious winds have made fishing this month no easy task… Don’t get me wrong, we have had a couple days with great weather that we have had great fishing but over all it’s been tough.  We have had to grind it out, luckily we have a very healthy fishery and we can usually fall back inside and chase some smaller fish in protected waters.


  
  
  
  
  
  

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Summer Fly Fishing for Cobia

Summer is hot!  So instead of poling around in the marsh we decided to take it to the big water in hopes of finding something different… We found it! The first buoy we pulled up to had about a half dozen Cobia floating just underneath the surface.  The water only had about 3-4 ft of clarity but you could easily spot these brown bastards from about 100 yrds away.  Every rig, buoy, or piling we drove up to had at least 3 and as many as 12 floating right under it.  As soon you dropped a popper into the area they were on it.  They stayed on it until you hooked someone out of the group then they would sound.  At that point we would land the fish, move to one or two other spots, then come back and sure enough the school would be floating right on top again.  We did this all day…  I had a great time to say the least.

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Offshore Fishing Venice Louisiana

Although the wind was blowing and the fish weren’t eating right, Capt Kyle Smith still got a pretty good haul.  We started the day as usual trying to catch some live bait.  After a couple throws with the cast net we got them.  Menhaden.  We dropped the live bait only to see nothing happen for the next 2 hrs.  We decided to chunk.  Almost immediately a reel started screaming. After that it was pretty consistent and we ended up with 6 Yellow fin from 60-90 lbs.

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Early Fall Action

It is that time of the year when the shrimp boats are holding massive black fin and yellowfin tuna. We didn’t hook a yellowfin on the fly on this day, but a 20+ lb blackfin was certainly a battle on the 12wt.

The redfish have been schooling in certain areas. The schools mostly consist of males between 10-15lbs. Although there are a few 30+lb females around, the smaller males usually hit the fly first. It should be any day now that the majority of the big 25+lb fish will be transitioning to the interior marsh.

Obviously there has been some Black drum and Jacks around too…

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Some Offshore Fishing In my Inshore Boat

After putting a hurting to slot fish on spin gear and fly.  (Im talking tripling up on just straight jigg heads) we decide to go out and look for big reds.  We spot a huge group of birds working and found Bonitta, Spanish Mackeral and look down jacks tearing up bait in a school the size of a football field.  Needless to say we had to stop and get in on the action.  After many doubles boated and my finger almost getting bit off by a Spanish we make another move to some close in rigs to see if we couldn’t scare up a Cobia, well we got one.

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The Kerns Come fish Louisiana

After staying with Matt and Candace Kern in Rockport I told them they should come over and do one day Inshore fishing and we will do one day Offshore fishing.  Well the Inshore fishing was less then great due to a front that pushed the fish down, we did manage to land this nice size gar on the fly. The Offshore fishing the next day more then made up for the slow inshore bite.  This time of year brings in the shrimp boats that if you find the right one you can not only catch giant Blackfin Tuna on fly but if you have heavy enough stand up gear you can catch one of these MONSTER yellowfin tuna. This one went 165 lbs.

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