First post, jumping right in! After a few freshwater trips looking for the pre-spawn bass, but failing, we headed out to the Cocodrie area looking for reds. My buddy, Andrew, and I got off to a late start, not getting into the water until around 7:45-8am. Luckily, it didn’t hurt us too bad.

The wind was a challenge, but after only about 20 mins on the water, Andrew hooked onto a nice red. Not long after, he landed a 16″ speck. And for the rest of the morning, he consistently was setting hooks while I tried to figure out what I was doing wrong.

This continued until around 11 or so. By the time Andrew had caught another 2 fish, I finally caught 2 rat reds on back to back casts, one of them with 6 spots!

A few more missed hooksets, Andrew with another 2 fish in the cooler, we started our paddle back to the put-in, slowly. With the wind picking up, our pattern of motion was paddle up to the shoreline, cast while drifting back, paddle up, repeat.

I casted out along the shoreline and started a steady retrieve (the trend for the day). Felt a thump. I waited a second worrying that I may have snagged something but then felt the pulling, so set the hook. Landed my only legal red for the day at 23″.

We continued our paddle back, Andrew caught more. Coming through a canal, we started pulling in specks on every other cast.

At the end of the canal was a pond with shallows pockets. I noticed movement near a north bank where a small ditch was draining in. Nothing. Andrew had moved into one of the shallow (6″) areas. He noticed a red tailing and casted to him. He hit it twice but not well enough. The wind then picked up strong so we headed in.

All in all it was a good day. Andrew hauled them in, and I didn’t come home empty handed, so I’m satisfied.

All fish were caught on LSU colored Bayou Chub Minnows on a steady retrieve.

I can’t wait to head back for the marsh, but in the meantime we’ll be heading back to lakes and bayous looking for the Largemouth!