Articles

Lots of planning and discussions happen for months before Paddlepalooza. Al Chee was on it!Beside the being on the board thing, each participant must make accommodations, prep and load gear, and plan. Planning fishing trips in 20-30 mph winds is usually as easy as staying home, but not this weekend.My search for clear water started in Golden Meadow at 515 Friday morning. Thanks to MotoGhost, I did almost 15 miles searching for trout green water, which was nowhere to be found. Loaded up and headed south. I launched on the [...]

Kayak fishing in January? Better be hardcore to fish with us! Due to Polar Vortex(extreme cold front), entrants were allowed to vote to reschedule or modify the format to allow bank fishing, huge boundaries and multiple launches instead of our normal shotgun launch. Baits were still limited to those provided by club, though difficult to enforce with angles spread out over many, many miles.I did not pre-fish Friday because I knew conditions would be radically different Saturday, but did arrive in time to dine and hang with some of the [...]

FridaySlept in till 4, as fall is here and sun coming up later. Stopped at State Oil for defication break and ice an ran into Lance Burgess, exchange pleasantries, of course. Ran into horrible traffic caused by construction shift change and a wreck. Planned on launching at Joshua's but first light met me at Port Sulphur. Well, the championship is near so needed to do some scouting anyway. Went in a direction I'd never been and found some interesting areas. Caught tons of rat reds, baby trout, white trout all [...]

So I’m not really a fan of fishing Terrebonne Parish as I've never had great success there. 2023 was the first time in several year's that I hadn't qualified for the BCKFC Championship by Trout Challenge. I told friends that I didn’t care, which is true, and I probably wouldn't fish Rumble unless redfish were calling my name all day. I pre-fished hard in 4 locations, never finding good conditions or the kind of fish needed to win. AOY Standings were published the week before the tournament and I was [...]

Got in bed Friday night around 8 to prepare for a long day of fishing. My son and his friends woke me up at 1030 whooping it up on the patio, lovely. Took me at least an hour to get back to sleep.SaturdayRolled out around 3 with full cup of coffee, on a mission. Iced down with SloMelt and launched at 530 and ran into Steve Lessard about 300 yards from the launch, who already had an 18.5" trout.  Fabulous. After exchanging pleasantries,  I moved to my first spot, nada. [...]

Cruised down Thursday after work and yes, I stopped on side the road to cast a few times. I was utterly disturbed seeing a flounder and trout that a shore fisherman had left on the ground. Shameful! Rolled into Bridgeside right at dusk and was very pleased to see Eric Stacy, who's been absent for over a year. Then saw Wade Barbay who has also been absent! So great to see all the members at these events! Hung out for a while, then unloaded my gear and got in bed [...]

So this year Trout Challenge happened in spring, instead of fall, and returned to the east side of the Mississippi River. Tournament Nazi made Boundaries from Lake Ponchartrain to Delacroix, a huge area, certainly, but in all that real estate, only 5 launches were used to my knowledge, with 57 entries. Either end of Hwy 11 on Lake P, Campos, Pips and Hopedale Marina were it.I launched at the northshore end of Hwy 11 with about 7 others way too early, and exchanged pleasantries. LateNightCake woke me up at 327 [...]

So, when I got frustrated shore fishing and started looking for kayaks, I found Bayou Coast. It was before FB was the main means of club communications and the website had tons of information. I researched past posts and narrowed my search down to 3 brands based on reports written by members. It took a couple weeks, but I found a fire sale on a used Jackson Cuda 14 in my budget. Gotta start somewhere, right. It took me a couple weeks to get it rigged and procure a roof [...]