by John Kumiski
“There goes another red. He sure looked like a good one.” Capt. Mark Brockhoeft was pointing out redfish to Ken Shannon and me. I was catching a good number of them on a Sili-Shrimp but the big fish Mark wanted kept eluding me.
“Any red you find over 10 pounds back up in this marsh is a good one,” Mark said. “Most of the fish up in here are immature. When they get old enough to spawn they usually leave the marsh and head to the Gulf. Although we got a 22 pounder in here one time, big fish like that are rare back here.”
Mark had us in a salt marsh pond somewhere in the vicinity of Myrtle Grove, Louisiana. We were in a boat he had designed and had built, an aluminum marsh fishing skiff, which was powered by a 25 horsepower Kohler air cooled motor with a mud drive lower unit. It could go almost anywhere in the marsh, and I couldn’t imagine any boat being better suited to its environment than this one was. Just through word of mouth, the company that built Mark’s boat for him had sold 20 more in a little less than two years. Louisiana outdoorsmen take their marsh forays seriously.
Mark was poling us along a lee shoreline along a levee. On the far side of the levee was a pasture full of cattle. On our side was six to twelve inches of water full of tailing and crawling redfish. I didn’t know what they were feeding on, but they ate the Sili-Shrimp with gusto. Like reds anywhere that haven’t seen many anglers, you could miss a shot, move the fish, try again, and have them eat anyway. I was getting spoiled by the ease of catching fish here and wondered how I would adjust to fishing at home again.
Mark was the second fly fishing guide in Louisiana, recruited by Bubby Rodriguez in 1995. That's when traveling fly fishers started visiting the area south of New Orleans in sufficient numbers that Bubby couldn’t handle them all. Mark fishes a bewildering maze of sloughs, bayous, and duck ponds in Plaquemines Parrish. An incredible number of redfish live in this marsh, along with seatrout and flounder. It’s a fly fisher’s dream- a skilled guide, clear, shallow water, and shot after shot at hungry, stupid redfish that range between five and ten pounds, with an occasional fat boy thrown in.
Ken and I decided to try to photograph a redfish eating a popper. The project proved to be difficult. Ken couldn’t follow the movement of the fish through the telephoto lens, and I blew enough shots that we finally gave up I frustration after an hour and a half. Mark patiently laughed at our attempts.
By this time the fish had moved off the levee, so Mark had us drift with the wind across the pond. He gave me a spoonfly to try, casting blindly. The fish had gone off the feed, though. We flushed hundreds of fish. I had shots at several I could see. But we only got one fish on that drift.
“You should see it when it’s good here,” Mark said. “Tailers and crawlers everywhere, all the shots you could want. Even an occasional twenty pound fish. ” When it was good? We had gotten fifteen or so fish, even with messing around with the popper all that time. I do want to see it when it’s good, and I want to meet this twenty pound fish.
Mark Brockhoeft can be reached at 504.392.7146, or at www.bigredguides.com.
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This article was written by John Kumiski of John Kumiski Outdoors and Travel. Contact him at his website www.johnkumiski.com or via email at john@spottedtail.com. Copyright 2007 John Kumiski.
John Kumiski 's most recent fishing guidebooks are How and Where to Catch Redfish in the Indian River Lagoon System (Argonaut Publishing Company), and Fishing Florida's Space Coast (Argonaut Publishing Company).
John Kumiski's newest book is Redfish on the Fly- A Comprehensive Guide.
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