Camping on Calcasieu...

We had been fishing West Cove pretty hard the past few weeks and wanted to chase some more schools of redfish in the marsh. The weather was forecasted to be warm and windy. It turned out to be HOT and glassy. Nothing to complain about. We never ran into any schools but we all caught a good bunch of fish. Mostly singles picked off tight on the grasslines and points. Even got a few trout to hit tucked behind some tight passes. I wanted to expirement with a few new colored Matrix Shads and the reds gobbled up any color I threw at them. Those little bastards have been awesome! Green hornet, tigerbait, ultra violet, shrimp creole, lemonhead. I'm seriously considering picking up one of every color and fishing those exclusively. THEY ARE THAT GOOD!!When you're told you have a few days left until you go to work for a month, you'd do what seems natural right? When me and a few of my work/fishing buddies got the call we made plans in between the thunderstorms to hit up Big Lake for 2 days of fishing & camping. Above all we wanted to  unwind, catch some fish and have some fun before we get back to the grind.The proof is in the pudding. Every fish I casted to absolutely inhaled every matrix shad that was put on their plate. There was no shallow lip hooks, just full on gulping of the tiny plastics. It may have been the feed after the 9" of rain the lake had seen in the past week, or the autumnal equinox. I don't think the real fall feeding frenzy is on yet but I know what I'll have in my tackle box when it does!

So West Cove was awesome as usual and we set up our tents at the Intracoastal RV Park on the way down. We only brought snacks to eat for 2 days and some fixins and planned on grilling our catch that night. The park has a lighted cleaning station, showers, and bbq pits so it made a perfect place to relax with some Swamp Pimm's. We had grilled peppers, onions, eggplant, fresh roasted garlic sausage, and redfish on the halfshell. The meal was awesome, the mosquitoes had an equally good time feasting on us as we sat and ate. Guess it's not quite fall yet.

With some leftover fish we mixed up some ceviche for lunch the next day at Fred's. 

Fred's. Fred's. We had planned on hitting Hebert's to try for some trout but got cold feet when talking to some locals about the amount of rainfall in the past weeks. Figured it would have driven the trout further south. May never know what the conditions were like at Hebert's that day. But the good ol; honky tonk of Fred's Lounge took us in and we ventured north first thing and we were all trolling something. Picked up a tiny red after a few minutes on a Baby 1 Minus. The winds were calm and we saw the water boiling and cast into it. A few small trout were busting little pogies or something. Managed to pick up a few legal schoolies and one 18"er.
Switched gears and headed to the marsh for some redfishing action. They were all piled up in one area it seemed. The reds and flounder were hanging out in the downwind side of the bays and a buddy of mine was picking them up like it was going out of style (Red-25", Trout 17.5", Flounder-18"). They were killing a shrimp looking plastic like New Penny and whites.The action was not as hot for me. Caught a handful of reds but couldn't complete my slam. Managed to bring in a completely spotless red as well. Everybody except me picked up a slam. I tell you, flounder just don't like me. This was a scouting mission for the Cajun Castaway. Just not for me, I won't be fishing the tournament. But the reports, pictures and good times are on me.