Prien Lake...

You know you have a kayak fishing problem when you "sleep in" and are up at 4:15am. My plan was to fish a morning at Prien Lake before spending a month offshore. Can't think of a better way to use up my last free day. Prien Lake is north of Calcasieu and unpaddled territory for me. Since i've been on a kick to go to new places I was off a little before 5am.

The salinity has been pretty good and my STAR membership was still unused, so it was trout on the brain as the sun was coming up. Didn't take long to see birds working the water and me to paddle like hell to catch them. There were small school trout busting bait out of the water and all those little bastards wanted to do was stun the crap out of my skitterwalk. No follow ups. They were hitting my plastics but having a hard time getting the hook in their mouths. I scaled down to a 1/8oz jighead with white plastics and a tigerbait matrix shad. Most of them were so small that they came flying out of the water on the hookset. It was funny to see a 6" trout getting flung through the air. One finally kept the hook and after too many casts. He was 16" and 1.5 lbs and weighed in at West Marine just to get my name in the mix for the kayak west division.

After an hour or so trying to get those little trout to eat I moved on. There was a ton of bait around and the water was glassy. On the first flat south of the bridge near all the oilfield valves and pipelines there was a lot of activity. Reds, black drum and sheepshead all digging through the shallow rock bars with their tails in the air. It was a sight. Probably 8-10 fish all around me getting after some food. I dropped anchors and spent about an hour casting at them, spooking most and catching a few.

I took a few puppy drum home and a nice little red who came up and slammed a white bayou chub. It was a great day and I was off the water by noon. Lake Prien will see more of me in the future. As long as the winds are low this place is well worth a shot. Plus it's probably closer than anywhere else on the lake for Lafayette anglers.  Should only get better as the salinity comes up and the fish keep moving north.

Here's a few random pics that were on my camera. Til next time...