Years ago, I eagerly planned my fishing escapades back to the vibrant waters of Venice, Louisiana, drawn by the thrill of battling yellowfin tuna on Super Bowl weekend. Most trips kicked off with a Saturday adventure, setting sail into the azure expanse, the anticipation buzzing like the engines of our 39-foot Contender as we ventured 70 to 80 miles offshore, ready to face the titans of the deep. After a day of relentless fishing, we reveled in the camaraderie at the Venice Marina, surrounded by fellow fishermen and spirited charter captains, all sharing in the excitement of the game.

Those days of the chase feel like a lifetime ago, especially as I look back on the journey colored by two shoulder surgeries, a back surgery, a knee replacement, and a handful of hernias. I’ve lived through the evolution of the region, with some fishing trips marked by the shadows of pre-Katrina nostalgia and others reflecting the resilience post-Katrina. Belle Chase, Louisiana, cradled my spirit from late July 1993 to late July 1997, a time etched with rich memories before I transitioned to life in Atlanta, Georgia, during my Navy career.

Though I still find myself longing for the lush landscapes of Louisiana, my annual pilgrimages have taken a different turn. The fiery thrill of conquering a 100-pound tuna in the vast ocean has softened into a fondness for the tranquil embrace of the marsh. Now, I revel in the slower pace, where the water barely rises to my waist, and I engage in a spirited pursuit of a new formidable foe: the redfish. Each return to Louisiana becomes a dance between nostalgia and new adventures, as I embrace the beauty and challenges this cherished land continues to offer._

There’s not a lot of things in my life anymore that can tap into the kind of adrenaline rush I used to get from running around the flight deck of an aircraft carrier during flight operations. There wasn’t a day that went by when I was on the flight deck that my adrenaline wasn’t pumping like crazy and the thrill of dancing with danger had me jacked from dawn till well into the night. It seems that the only other time I can get close to that kind of thrill is on a fishing trip. Whether it was pike fishing with bears in northern Canada or surviving an overnight storm on a rickety old commercial fishing boat, anchored on a reef off the sandy shores of Key West, I’ve had a few thrills on fishing trips over the years and each time it happens, it brings back a spark of that old adrenaline rush from my glory days in the Navy. I got to feel just a bit of that old spark again at the mouth of the mighty Mississippi while in pursuit of the Louisiana red snapper this past week.

When I saw that the creel limit of red snapper was four down in Louisiana this snapper season, I had to plan my annual trip to coincide with the starting week of snapper season. I was always reluctant to make the trip to Fla. for my bucket list red snapper due to the creel limit being two snappers. It just wasn’t worth the trip for a couple snapper, but the quotas for red snappers were higher this year down in Louisiana, so it fell right into my wheelhouse. I’ve always warned others going down with me, that we are always going to be at the mercy of the weather, and you never can tell what kind of plans mother nature has in store. Making fishing plans in Venice ahead of time and hitting a two day stretch of good weather in the spring is like walking into a casino in Vegas and throwing it all down on red at a roulette wheel, you’ve got a 50-50 chance as it either happens, or it doesn’t. When I phoned Billy, owner of The Venice Fishing Lodge, my biggest interest was a combination snapper and redfish charter for 2 days and staying 3 nights at the lodge. Billy was more than happy to set the trip up with one of his snapper charter captains and after a down payment on the trip we were all set to fish for snapper.

Everything is inclusive at the Venice Fishing Lodge and the charter captains are all very experienced when it comes to finding the fish to make your trip a memorable one. Sandy and Mannie do the cooking for the lodge and it’s always a treat to sit around the big dinner table and listen to everyone sharing stories from the days fishing while having a 5-star meal. On our most recent trip there were two other fishermen from Kansas, three from Tennessee and on the last evening at the lodge, another 3 rolled in from Texas. This was during the middle of the week and the weekend crowd hadn’t even begun to arrive. We were going to roll into the lodge on Tuesday afternoon, fish Wednesday and Thursday, then let out for home early Friday morning. That was the plan, and my good friend Jimmy Sanders was the perfect partner to get it done. Jimmy is like me, retired and has plenty of time on his hands so I invited him along on the journey. Jimmy had an interest in the red snapper as well and Jimmy is a much better driver than I am, so we loaded up Jimmy’s decked out Dodge truck with enough clothing to last for a few days and a big cooler for the fish filets, and off we went.

The thing about Jimmy driving is that he can kick the Dodge up to a pretty quick pace and the miles just fly by because there’s hardly ever a lack of conversation. Jimmy is a talker and I’m a talker so before you know it, another 100 miles had flown by in no time. Besides gas stops and maybe a quick bathroom break on the way, the first order of business is to have lunch at Salvo’s Seafood Restaurant and Market in Belle Chase, La. They have the best seafood around and it’s a local favorite as well as a favorite for hungry fishermen on their way to Venice. Jimmy and I grabbed a Po’boy and while we were there eating, I noticed that the restaurant was packed. When the Salvo’s restaurant is busy down there the economy is booming and later, I realized it was mainly from the nearby LNG project.

After we had lunch at Salvo’s, it’s about another hour or so down to the Venice Fishing Lodge and that’s when the fun always starts. Dinner is served around 6:30 and the lodge has plenty of areas to hang out after your fishing trip is over and you’re waiting on dinner.

After dinner there is always more conversations between the guests, billiard games to be played and fishing shows to watch on the big screen tv’s before turning in for the night in anticipation of the next day’s fishing.

When Jimmy and I arrived on Tuesday, it was early afternoon and the charter boats and guests were just returning with the days catch so Jimmy and I found our sleeping arrangements and then met up with Neil, the head charter captain and pseudo-operations manager at the lodge. Neil told us that our guide for the snapper and redfish combo both days would be Jay Winters, and we would meet him at the lodge in the morning at 6am during breakfast. We had never met Jay before, but Neil said he was a good dude and a very seasoned charter captain, so we were all set. Jimmy and I spent the afternoon shooting billiards and chatting with the other guests before dinner started. Mannie was our cook for the first evening and I got a chance to catch up with her on the latest goings on at the lodge and the surrounding area. Mannie and I know some of the same local folks from the area that I knew back in the 90’s and it’s always good to get caught up on the latest local news with Mannie. After dinner there was more visiting before hitting the sack and calling it a day.

Wednesday morning came early for me as I’m the guy who wakes up the chickens in the morning. I usually get up somewhere between 3:30 and 4am, ready to start my day. I believe in getting the most out of a day and my day starts early. Back at home, our cat has learned my routine and will usually assist in waking me up if I sleep past 4am, but it’s rarely needed. A few trips back, I asked Mannie if I could go to the kitchen and make coffee since I get up so early and she gave me permission so I’m usually hanging out in the kitchen of the lodge very early, sipping my coffee and reading the news. Sometimes the charter captains will stay at the lodge but most of the captains have homes in the area to go home to. Chris is a charter captain that stays the night at the lodge and he’s usually one of the first ones to get up in the morning and come to the kitchen for coffee and a quick greeting before he’s out the door and prepping his bay boat for a day of fishing. Around 5:30 Sandy comes in and gets things started with breakfast for the guests and it’s always been something good. Sandy knows that I like biscuits and gravy, so she made sure that both the biscuits and gravy were available every morning that we were there. Breakfast is served at 6am and usually everyone is present for the morning meal and ready to get going.

Jimmy and our charter captain Jay walked into the kitchen together on Wednesday morning as they had met outside while I was grabbing my gear, so I met Jay in the kitchen while loading up my Yeti mug with coffee. After chatting with Jay for a couple minutes before leaving the lodge, I knew it was going to be a fun day. Within minutes Jay, Jimmy and I were cutting up and laughing and the ride from the lodge down to Venice Marina went by quick. You usually ride with your guide to the marine because the lodge is a few miles up the road from the marina and that gives everyone a chance to get to know your guide a little bit before you launch. In our case, I got to get more information on what was going on down there with the economy and business. I really wanted to hear more about the huge LNG liquified natural gas project down there along highway 23. I was amazed at the size of the exporting operation they are building. When we passed by the building site there must have been at least 50 large cranes moving heavy objects and the project is putting thousands of people to work. Jay told me there were at least seven thousand employees at present and the next phase of the operation would employee another seven thousand plus. That was just to build the plant. Once it is complete, there will be thousands more employed there. It was an amazing site to see, and I was happy that it was still going after listening to the current administration saying they were going to shut down operations such as the LNG plant. The plant will inject millions and millions of dollars into the economy down there.

When we got to the Venice Marina there were boats launching and a few big tuna boats picking up the last of the guests at the docks but most of the tuna boats leave very very early in the morning. Jay told us that the winds were steady at 10 mph which was at the top of the safety scale for us, but it was still doable if we wanted to get out past the mouth of the river and go offshore a few miles for our snapper limits. He said it would be a little rough getting out there, especially at the mouth of the pass, but he thought it would be fine in his 24-foot bay boat. The ride out from the marina is always pretty cool. There are different ways to get to the gulf from the marina and different options at the mouth of the Mississippi. Where the river dumps into the gulf, the end of the line is feathered into different channels or “passes” as it is referred to. Depending on the location of the pass is how it gets its name. The main three are the South Pass, Southeast Pass and Southwest Pass. All three are big enough to allow the giant cargo ships and oil tankers to pass through on their way upriver into areas closer to the city of New Orleans. The three main passes all come together and join into the main river, as the passes give the large ships a way to spread out instead of having a lot of ships trying to converge into the same area. The Army Corps of Engineers keeps the passes dredged and they are usually working 24/7 out there in the passes keeping the channels deep while removing tons of sediment from the river. Here’s a video from the Venice marina just before leaving out on Wednesday.

We chose the Southwest pass on Wednesday morning because Jay had been out the day before and found fish near a big channel buoy just a mile or so outside the end of the rock jetty at the mouth of the Southwest pass. I gotta admit that it was a little bit rough on the way out of the pass but on the way down the pass it wasn’t bad. About the only thrill I got on the way out was overtaking a large container ship with a tender boat moving along with the big ship to bring the local pilot back to shore once the big container ship cleared the river area. Local pilots are always used to navigate the big container ships, oil tankers and cruise liners through the passes, either coming upriver or going out into the gulf. On our way out we had the pleasure of overtaking the container ship and tender boat and I was able to get a quick video of the before and after. It was a little rough during the actual overtaking so I cut the video so I could hang on with both hands. These videos can give you a sense of what it was like during our run down the Southwest Pass.

That video doesn’t really give the size of the wake from that tender any justice, but I gotta say that Jay did an excellent job in navigating those big waves and I was impressed that we were all still completely dry at the end of the process. As we neared the end of the pass the big swells or “rollers” started coming into the pass and we were going up a big swell and then going down a big swell instead of the smooth flat 30 mph ride we were accustomed to. As I looked off to my left, I could see waves breaking over the top of the rock jetty and I thought that those waves had to be at least 4-5 feet tall to be breaking over to top of the rocks at the jetty and I was thankful we didn’t have to contend with those breakers. There are rolling waves and there are breaking waves out at the mouth of the passes. Ideally you want rollers instead of “breakers” because breakers are the kind of waves that break over the top and can swamp a boat before you can get to the top of the wave. Breakers usually happen when the wind is excessive and pushing against an outgoing current. Rollers are just calm swells that a smaller bay boat can ride over the top of with ease. As we got nearer to the mouth of the pass, we made a left turn and headed towards an opening in the jetty. This is called a cut, and the cut is usually a cut-through hole in the rock jetty for smaller boats to get out into the gulf a little quicker. We were heading straight for the cut-through and I could see large breakers at the mouth. Here is a short video I made of the big breakers crashing into the jetty. The jetty is 5-6 feet above the waterline, so I could tell it was going to be tough to get through.

I heard Jimmy and Jay have a short conversation about the size of the breakers and Jay turned back to me as I was seated behind and just to the left of Jay. He told me that it was going to be a little rough, but we’d give it a go. That’s about the time the adrenaline started pumping a little faster because in that short period of time I was looking straight at a giant washtub of breaking waves about 100 yards in front of our bow and I knew we were going to get wet. The biggest question was how wet we were going to get? At that point I took the attitude that if it doesn’t kill you, it can usually make a good story, so I was all in.

“I’d like to say something about that decision to tackle those waves even though it was reminiscent of some of those Hanover Inlet fail videos where unsuspecting boats get thrashed about and swamped from the huge breakers at the mouth of the inlet. Although there was an element of danger, we all three agreed to put the hammer down and go. It reminded me of years ago when I made a very similar decision in a story called Man Camp. Even though there was an element of danger I made the decision to take the Jon boat out into dangerous water in order to make it to our camp. Had I not made that decision, there would be no story to write about. Sometimes you have to take chances to make memories and I’d rather say that I did it, rather than saying I didn’t want to take a chance. Then again, I’ve done a lot of very stupid things in my life, so there’s that”….

There were mistakes made by me during the next few minutes of our ride and one major mistake was wanting to see what was happening, so I had seated myself on the left rear corner seat of the boat just behind Jays left shoulder because I want to hang on but still have full view of this display of seamanship from Jay. This was my view during calmer times and this video gives you an idea of the seating arrangements.

When we hit those breakers, it was immediately everything I thought it would be and more. We were running, gunning, dodging, slipping, sliding, and maybe even jumping waves at one point and that’s about when that old adrenaline rush hit level AR-twelveteen. Jay was working that throttle back and forth, trying to time our advancement through the maze of breakers while I was in the back in deep silent prayer. Jay was trying to figure out a navigational path and anticipate what was going to happen with the boat in rough seas. When I opened my eyes, I got smacked upside of my head by a couple sucker punch waves from the left before the haymaker came in a frontal attack. It was like a scene from that movie “The Perfect Storm” with Clooney and Wahlberg when they were climbing that huge wave, and they didn’t quite make it. Our skiff was going vertical to climb a big wave before it broke over, but unfortunately it broke over before we made it to the top. I saw a wall of water heading straight at us and my first thought was that this this was going to hurt….bad. My second thought was more of a question of my sanity when I realized that I could have used Jay and Jimmy as shelter if I just would have scooted over about 3 feet to my right but no, if there was danger, I wanted to get slapped right in the face with it rather than getting out of the way of it.

The wall of water from the break of the huge wave hit us all head on and immediately the boat shuttered and came to a stop from being swamped by the top of the wave. We punched through the wave but not before we took on the wall of water at the top. Everything inside the boat was floating and I was sitting in water up to my knees. My left ear filled with water, and I was completely soak from head to toe, The good part was that I was still inside the boat and the motor was still running. I knew we had a chance if the motor would move the boat and the scuffers and bilge pump worked properly. Jay kept navigating through the breakers and after a few minutes the water had drained, and we were through the cut. All we had to contend with at that point was big rollers but no breakers.

I finally heard the motor slow way down and we stopped near some underwater structure in about 50 feet of water. We used big Penn Battle III 5000 spinning reels with 5-ounce weights and a big piece of dead shrimp on a circle hook dropped down to the sandy smooth bottom. It didn’t take long till the first fish was brought on board but not the species we were hoping for. We just brought up some hard-heads or saltwater catfish and croakers, so we pushed on to the next stop. We pulled up to one of the huge red channel buoys a mile outside the southwest pass and hit the spot lock on the trolling motor to hold us in place. Jay told us that the snapper like to hang around the big chain holding the buoy in place. He was right and on my first drop I brought in my first red snapper.

Shortly after Jimmy brought one up and we were both on the board for our first red snapper. We kept working and putting fish in the boat then Jimmy started showing off, first with a big bull redfish that we had to release and then Jimmy caught his first Jack Crevalle, and it was a big one.

It wasn’t very long till we put our 8th snapper in the box, and we were making our way back to the mouth of the river, with one change in the navigational plans. We wouldn’t be going back through the same cut that almost swamped us out. We would be going into the main entrance to the southwest pass instead of trying to take the shortcut back through the dangerous cut. It took about an hour to make our way back into the marshy areas where we wanted to look for redfish and before long, we were beating the banks for reds. It was windy in the marsh, and we just couldn’t fill up a limit of reds apiece, but Jimmy and I put 5-6 in the boat out of a possible 10 fish limit before heading back to the marina. It was a good day even though we didn’t get our limits of redfish and we had a pretty decent story to tell about getting out to catch our first snapper.

After cleaning our catch at the cleaning house we got cleaned up and settled into the lodge for the evening. Another group of fishermen came in from Tn. and we had a whole new group of fisherman to visit with. The hours passed by quick in the afternoon and before long we were back at the dinner table for another fine meal. After dinner there was more chatting before turning in for the evening.

Day 2 started at 4 am for me, in the kitchen making coffee and checking the weather forecast. The second day for us was Thursday, our last fishing day and it was supposed to be much calmer winds than the day before. We had a good breakfast and soon Jay, Jimmy and I were on our way back down highway 23, heading back to Venice Marina. We laughed about the day before and conquering the breaking waves at the shortcut at the end of the Southwest pass. The day before, shortly after surviving the breaking waves I gave Jay a new nickname, JBa*** or JB for short. He liked it and I think the name suited him well. Jay could have easily said that the wind was too extreme to get out on day one, but he was just as anxious to get out as we were, and I loved that kind of passion when it comes to fishing. It wasn’t long and we were backing the big skiff away from the dock and we were on our way back out into the gulf. This time we were going out via the South Pass rather than the Southwest Pass. It was a little foggy on our way out, but JB had a radar on the boat which made it a little easier to see the boat traffic in the pass as we navigated the channel in the fog. It took about an hour to get close to the mouth and traffic was light. As we neared the end we started going up and down rollers that were coming into the pass and the last of the rock jetties were seen to the left and right. The rollers were smooth which made it somewhat easy to navigate at faster speeds. About two miles outside the mouth of the South Pass we pulled up to another large navigational red buoy and hit the spot lock. On our first drop we caught a larger snapper and then another and another. There was a nice mix between 3lb up to 10lb snapper and it only took an hour to finish our limits before heading back inshore to attempt another two limits of redfish.

Once we got back inside the marsh, we found a few little ponds and cuts and we were able to find a couple redfish to put into the box, but we were running out of time and only had about an hour left to catch about 6 more redfish to cap off limits for Jimmy and me. We pulled into one area where two separate ponds were separated by a point and the was current from an incoming tide that ran across the point. We put the power poles down within casting distance of the point and the two small ponds, had lunch and caught 6 more redfish plus a few black drum to put in the box and finish off our redfish limits for the day. It was a great way to finish the day with limits of redfish and red snapper. It just doesn’t get any better.

After cleaning our catch back at the lodge, we got cleaned up and settled in for another afternoon. We parted ways with JB and I gotta say that Jay was the best charter captain that I’ve ever had the pleasure of riding with down there and I’ve had some good ones. Jay went above and beyond to show us a good time and Jimmy and I really appreciated it.

Another group came in during the afternoon and there was a whole other group of likeminded fishermen to visit with. By this time the lodge was filling up and the guests at dinner table grew in size again. After dinner we all sat around and talked about our lives and fishing experiences while the hours past. Jimmy and I finally called it a night and turned in. By 3:30am on Friday morning we were loaded up with a good 15-20lbs of red snapper and redfish filets and our luggage and headed back home. As we passed through Belle Chase that morning, I quietly watched out the window and as we got closer to where I made my home for four years while in the Navy. I quietly saw landmarks out the window at 4am that brought back old dormmate memories, long forgotten by time and it took me back some 30 years ago. Those old memories are some of the best memories from my life and these trips back help rekindle a few every time.

Our ride home was quick and uneventful, and I can honestly say that this one was one for the books!

I’d been in the Navy for all of about 4 years when I first started fishing the California aqueduct. I was married and living in Hanford, California and my son Derek had just been born. We drove an old Mazda Rx3 wagon with Derek in the back, in the car seat at less than a year old. The car below wasn’t actually our car, but the picture resembles it right down to the color. It had a rotary engine under the hood and boy did we put some miles on that car.

One of the places you would frequently see the old blue wagon was on the side of the access road along the aqueduct. It wasn’t uncommon for fishermen to park right at the edge of the aqueduct and fish right outside the car. The bait of choice was usually cut frozen anchovies and we usually set out a rod apiece with a 2-bait rig and a 1–2-ounce weight. There was usually some current in the aqueduct and you needed to get the bait down on the bottom, out around the middle of the concrete channel, the further the better, so to speak. If you didn’t have a sufficient weight, the current would just wash your bait to the edge and back into the shallow water. We would usually bring the playpen and set it up so Derek could play, and we would fish right beside the car. My neighbor told me all about the aqueduct and places we could fish, as he was a fisherman also, but much older than myself. He was retired and I can’t recall visiting with him much, but I was a younger and very busy with life at the time. He did share a good fishing spot with us, where the channel took a turn, and we fished that spot along the aqueduct often for stripers and catfish. The paragraph below is from Wikipedia and gives a little more of an explanation on the aqueduct that I thought was helpful. I believe you can click on the links for more info.

The aqueduct begins at the Clifton Court Forebay at the southwestern corner of the Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta. The aqueduct then heads south, eventually splitting into three branches: the Coastal Branch, ending at Lake Cachuma in Santa Barbara County; the West Branch, conveying water to Castaic Lake in Los Angeles County; and the East Branch, connecting Silverwood Lake in San Bernardino County.

There was one time in particular that I made a visit to my favorite fishing spot along the aqueduct very early on a Saturday morning looking for a few catfish and if I was lucky, a striper or two. I pulled off the highway and onto the access road that ran along the edge of the aqueduct. I could see my favorite fishing spot was occupied by a small Winnebago type RV camper along the edge of the road. The access road was wide in that stretch and there was plenty of room to get by the camper, so I decided to go on downstream a quarter mile or so before stopping and setting up shop. When I stopped and started unloading gear, I could see the camper just up the road to my right and an open stretch of road to the left, so I had the whole area to myself that morning. I had a small cooler with ice, and I kept my frozen anchovies in the cooler until I cut and used them to bait my hooks. I had 1-2 rods out at one time, and both were baited with cut anchovies and anchored to the bottom with a 1–2-ounce weight after a long cast out into the middle of the channel.

It was very peaceful in the early morning hours and almost immediately I caught a 4-5lb catfish which was perfect eating size, so I put it on ice in a larger cooler in the back of the wagon. A few minutes later another rod doubled over, and I had another very nice catfish to add to the bounty. As soon as I reset the rod, I caught some motion to my right and when I looked towards the camper up the road, I saw a blonde lady in a robe come out of the camper and start walking around as if she were looking for something. She glanced down the road towards me and then went back into the camper. I didn’t think too much about it and I went right back to watching the rods. Soon after another rod doubled over and this time it was a striper that was about the same size as the catfish already in the cooler, so I added the striper to the mix. It was turning into a very prosperous morning, and I was thinking about how good those fish were gonna taste after taking a dip in lake Crisco.

It wasn’t long until I heard a noise up the aqueduct where the camper was parked, and I saw the blonde lady come out of the camper again only this time she was fully dressed. She once again wandered around the camper a bit and then she started walking my way. At that point I kinda knew something wasn’t right because she seemed so out-of-place in that area. She looked to be in her late 30’s or early 40’s, very pretty and dressed in attire a little too nice for aqueduct fishing. As she approached, we greeted each other and then she asked if I had seen an older gentleman in the area since my arrival. I hadn’t and I let her know that there was no one in the area that I had seen since pulling up, so she thanked me and slowly made her way back up the road to the camper. I continued to fish but I knew that something was wrong, and I started putting the pieces together. The aqueduct can be dangerous in certain areas, and this stretch of the aqueduct was one of those areas. The reason being is that just below the waterline there is a very thick and very slick moss that sticks to the steep concrete bank. If you have the misfortune of falling into the aqueduct it is not easy to get out, as it is maybe 10 feet deep and there is current that will sweep you away. There are no structures or cables running across the channel for a person to grab ahold of and you are at the mercy of the aqueduct. If you can’t swim and you fall in while by yourself, it’s game over, so it can be very dangerous for some. After putting the pieces together, I kinda knew that someone was missing, and I contemplated leaving but the fish were biting, and curiosity was getting the best of me so stayed and kept fishing.

The blonde lady went back to the camper but this time she didn’t go back in but stayed outside the camper milling about. It wasn’t long till a big white work farm looking truck came into view beyond the camper to my right and I saw the young lady wave the truck down. There were crops growing in the fields adjacent to aqueduct and sometimes the workers would drive the access road to look at their crops. I saw an older gentleman get out of the truck and have a short conversation with her. They walked to the edge of the aqueduct and looked up and down the bank. The man saw me, got back into the truck and came to where I was. He again asked the same line of questioning that she had asked earlier. He told me that a man was missing from the camper, and he was going to get help. At that point he went back to the camper and the young woman jumped in his passenger side. They left together, heading for the main highway and I knew things were about to get busy, I just didn’t realize how busy it was going to get. Another half hour and one nice striper later I saw the white work truck return with a California Highway Patrol in tow. Both the vehicles stopped at the camper and there was a 3-way pow wow next to the camper. All three of them seemed to be looking at something down at the water’s edge and I wondered if there was fishing tackle down there that was hidden from my view, but there was definitely something they were all interested in down near the water. A few minutes later a local Sherriff’s car showed up and 2 uniformed deputies got out and joined the group. I watched as they all looked down the road at me and one of the deputies headed towards where I was fishing.

I thought that I was going to get asked to leave the area by the deputy, but to the contrary, he asked about how the fishing was going. After I told him that it was going great and I was having a good day, he told me that a man was missing and once again he asked if I had seen anything. I gave him the same answer as before and he basically told me to have a good day as he headed back to the group. I probably should have left but I was fully committed to the mystery at that point. It wasn’t long before a few more Sherriff vehicles pulled up and then another on the other side of the aqueduct directly across. Pretty soon a Sherriff’s helicopter landed on the other side of the aqueduct and shut down. There was a conversation between the pilot of the helicopter and the Sherriff’s deputy from the car and then the deputy got back in his car and drove away as the helicopter took off from the opposite road. There was a big crowd gathered at the camper by now and at times I could see the group or members of the group looking down at the water’s edge across from where the camper was parked. There was definitely something down there that piqued their interest and I saw one of the deputies pull out a 35-millimeter camera and start taking pictures of whatever it was that they were looking at.

This is where it got weird, but if I’m lying, I’m dying. A churro looking cart or some kind of small ice-cream truck showed up out of nowhere. The next thing you know, there are a least a dozen people, 6-8 vehicles, a helicopter flying overhead and a small ice-cream truck all around the camper area, with me down the bank a quarter mile watching the show. I may have caught another fish or two during all the excitement but after another hour or two, one by one they all started leaving. Pretty soon the helicopter left as well as the vehicles and that dang churro ice-cream truck disappeared as quickly as it appeared. I watched as the young lady got into the car with one of the deputies and they pulled away leaving the camper all alone sitting by the side of the road. I fished a bit longer, but curiosity was getting the best of me, so I packed everything up to leave. While no one was around I wanted to see what it was that everyone was looking at down at the water’s edge, so I stopped right by the camper and looked around the bank in the area they were all looking. At first, I was looking for something in the water at the edge, but I quickly realized what they all were looking at, it was finger-like marks scratched deeply into the green moss. It was as if someone had taken both hands and dug deep scratches into the moss, in a clawing fashion. It was clearly the clawing marks from the fingers of hands just as plain as day and there were a few in a 4-5 foot span. I kinda got a cold chill down my spine when I saw that, and it kinda hit home at that point, as I got back into the wagon and drove away. This was way before cell phones, and I was really anxious to tell my wife when I got home. As I pulled into the driveway, I noticed that 2 Sherriff’s vehicles parked in front of the neighbor’s house along the curb at the street. I thought that it was weird because they were older folks, and I wondered what was going on over there. When I went inside the house, I asked my wife what was going on at the neighbor’s house and she told me that my neighbor was missing and presumably drowned in the aqueduct in the overnight hours.

That was the second cold chill I got down my spine as she shared that with me. I told her that I was there when it all happened, and I told her about the younger looking blonde who was in the camper. My wife said that according to our neighbor’s wife, he was alone when it happened and there was no one there to help him. She said that according to the Sherriff he may have got caught up in the current and swept away, as he was older and not a good swimmer. At that point we decided to keep the part about the mystery blonde lady to ourselves and be good neighbors in a tough situation. Eventually they recovered my neighbor’s body from the aqueduct and if memory serves me correctly it was 2 days later and 7 miles down the aqueduct from where he fell in. Sure enough, he had drowned in the aqueduct. There are big “DANGER” and “PELIGRO” signs up and down the aqueduct, calling out the dangers of the swift current, but it seemed like every year we would hear about drownings.

I continued to fish the aqueduct for a few more years while I was stationed at the air base in central California before moving on in my military career, but I’ll never forget fishing the aqueduct and that morning.

This is the first time I’ve ever written about my time on Grand Lake in Oklahoma, but the lake was a big influence on me when it came to the outdoors and fishing. I can only guess that my dad must have had a profound love for Grand Lake, judging from all of our visits when I was a kid growing up. Later in life, he and my stepmother owned a home at the lake for over 20 years before moving to Texas. I wasn’t much older than 6-7 when I can first recall weekend trips and fishing the lake. Back then we would fish for catfish from the bank at our campsite when we weren’t out on the lake trolling for white bass with Roostertail’s. My dad had a cab-over Cameo camper on top of the bed of his pick-up truck and we would spend a lot of weekends on the lake during the summer months. It wasn’t much more than a 2-hour drive from the house to the campsite and usually my dad’s friends Gene and Charlotte would bring their camper with Gene’s aluminum boat in tow, and they would camp with us. Hanging out at the campsite and fishing around the shoreline would occupy my time during the day but the real fun was going out in Gene’s boat and trolling for white bass, usually in the mornings before the lake traffic and pleasure boater came out in full force. Trolling was usually good during the summer months and catching white bass was a fond memory I have of the lake. When we trolled, we would use a couple of Zebco rods with Zebco 33 reels, one protruding out of the gunnel at a 90-degree angle on each side of the boat, and each towing a Mepps type rooster tail, white with black dots. It had to be white with black dots. To this day, if I see a Roostertail that is white with black dots, my mind immediately goes back to Grand Lake in my younger years. Basically, we just put the motor at idle and moved around different areas of the lake until we ran across white bass and started catching them. We would concentrate on the areas we were having the best luck and using nothing but dead reckoning and reading shoreline to stay around the schools of white bass once they were found. In the mid to late 60’s there wasn’t a whole lot of electronics and depth finders were usually the anchor or dropping a weighed bait over the side to see how close we were to the bottom. Sometimes we would camp at the State Park on the lake and sometimes we would stay at the cabins at a place called “Blue Bluff Heights” (which is no longer there) or a place called “Blue Bluff Habor”, (which is still there from what I understand).

Staying at Blue Bluff Heights was pretty interesting as a kid. The owner was a Native American artist who not only ran the business, but also was a very talented painter and painted western type canvas art. He sold his paintings from time to time, and I can remember us buying a couple of the big paintings from the owner/artist. The most interesting part about staying at Blue Bluff Heights is the fact that it was at the top of a huge rock bluff at the lake and the drop had to be more than 60 feet. There was an elevator shaft from the top of the rock bluff down to a crappie house, and that’s what my dad and stepmother Kay liked to do when we didn’t camp at the park. We would stay at the cabins and crappie fish from the crappie house for the weekend. We would usually bring back a haul of crappie and throwing a fish fry was pretty common in our household. I don’t have any pictures of Blue Bluff Heights because it is long gone and the old owner that we became friends with died when he was struck by a winch and fell from the bluff and drown. It was a tragic ending for a great man a personal friend to our family. I can remember riding in that old rickety elevator down to the crappie house and you would have to stop the elevator manually before you got to the water or you would wind up with wet feet. It was an experience to get to the crappie house but once you got to the crappie house it was pretty cool. If you’ve never seen one, here’s a picture of the inside of a crappie house at Blue Bluff Harbor which was exactly like the one at Blue Bluff Heights. You can barely see a fisherman on the left edge of the picture. At times, when there was a good bite, there might be a few dozen anglers in or around the house fishing at once.

Back in the late 60’s and early 70’s, for $10 we could sit inside the crappie house and fish all day. You could get 2-3 dozen minnows for another $10 and for a total of $20 you could bring home a pretty good mess of crappie if you knew what you were doing. It was heated in the winter and a window air conditioner ran during the summer, so it was pretty nice inside the floating house. There were two large square openings with seating all the way around the openings into the water. The depth of the water was around 20 feet and brush piles were stacked and added to regularly under the floating house. Some brush was on the bottom and some brush hung suspended from the crappie house. With all the brush and a great population of crappie on Grand Lake, the crappie houses were always a good place to fish. You just bought a few dozen minnows or just used crappie jigs and made a day of it. I can remember sitting in those seats for hours with my eyes glued on my rod tip waiting for it to bounce. It was always pretty comical to watch the older people catch crappie because they would somehow become youthful and giddy catching the fish. It was pretty close quarters inside the crappie houses, and you usually got to know the people around you during the course of the day. There we no secrets inside the crappie house and if one color or bait was working better than another, everyone knew it right away. There was always a certain smell inside the crappie house and it’s a smell very similar to the smell of bait or shad out on our own lake. I can only imagine the amount of bait around the brush piles below the crappie house and the fish eating the bait. I liked to go outside the crappie house and fish the exterior from time to time. You could either crappie fish or catfish from the outside and there was some bench seating around the outside for you to sit and fish from. Usually, I would take my old Zebco 202 and wrap a dough ball of catfish bait around a treble hook and fish the bottom for channel catfish to add to the crappie collection. Most folks kept their catch in fish baskets that were hung from the posts that surrounded the openings inside the house. I can remember watching as folks pulled their baskets up to put in a recent catch and the number of fish in the baskets was a good way to determine whether or not the fish were biting. It was always pretty cool for me to catch crappie as a kid inside the crappie houses and sometimes my grandparents would be there to join us for the fun. By the time I was 10-11 my dad and Kay bought a cabin on the Neosho River, and we went from camping and fishing at Grand Lake to setting trot lines and limb lines on the river just about every weekend.

There was a pause in my visits to Grand Lake in the early 70’s but in 1980 I took a job at a local grocery store in Miami, Ok. which was just a couple miles from the lake. I lived with a workmate in Miami and my roommate, and I met 2 sisters that were our age and their parent’s owned a very nice lake house. Their dad had a very successful dental practice, and they spent the school year at their home in Kansas City, but they spent their summers at the lake. We became good friends with the sisters and for one summer we stayed with them at the lake house and we water skied with their family boat in our off time from working at the grocery store. It was a fun summer and a summer I’ll never forget but a year later I joined the Navy and left the area for my new career in the Navy.

In the meantime, my dad and Clyde bought a little mobile home in a little lake community at Grand Lake and the lake was a short walk from their mobile home. They used it as a weekender from their main home in Tulsa, Ok. and when I came home on leave from the Navy my dad would take off work and we would stay at the lake and fish. There were times I would plan my leave from the Navy to coincide with the crappie spawn on the lake. My dad and Clyde lived just off the shores of Horse Creek and during the crappie spawn we would take their aluminum v hull up the creek to look for productive blowdowns where the crappie would spawn. It wasn’t uncommon for us to catch 30+ crappie in a trip and we tried to have a family get together and fish fry when I came home for leave in the spring. Once my dad retired from his job in Tulsa, they moved to the lake full time and replaced their old mobile home with a nice doublewide mobile home. I spent quite a few years visiting them and fishing on the lake while they lived there. My dad bought a very nice bass boat, and he tried his hand at bass fishing the lake for a few years, but it was tough for him, so he gravitated back to crappie fishing and he and Clyde used his bass boat for crappie tournament fishing before selling it when they started spending their winters in south Texas. I bought my dad’s aluminum v-bottom boat in the early 90’s and they sold their place at Grand Lake in the late 90’s, moving full time to south Texas. It probably been 30 years since I last fished Grand Lake and I may never fish it again in my lifetime, but I’ll never forget fishing the shores of the lake or trolling for white bass as a youngster on Grand Lake.

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During my time in central California, I made a lot of trips to the San Luis reservoir in search of stripers and largemouth bass but there was one fall trip in particular that always rises to the top of my memories of the massive San Luis reservoir and O’Neil forebay. I’m guessing that the year was around 1986, and it was a late fall weekend of fishing with the backdrop of barren rolling hills and cool-crisp mornings around the reservoir. The kind of mornings that you can see your breath and the familiar smell of campfires drifted around the shores of the lake at dawn. Back in 1986 things were very different than they are now. We didn’t have the luxury of cellphones or debit cards like we do today, with most folks using cash or check for purchases and pictures were somewhat rare unless someone in our group was a photo buff. I doubt we took any pictures of our trip, but I still have my memory and this one was a doozy, that’s why I still remember it. Oh, I had made a few trips to San Luis with my good friend Sonny since checking into the squadron 3 years earlier, but this trip was probably the best I had made in terms of numbers of fish and the size as well as shear laughter and fun we had that weekend. Here’s the way it went down….

We had been planning the weekend for a while and it just so happened that our plan all came together for a weekend of camping and fishing at San Luis reservoir, located in central California. It was going to be myself, Sonny and Tom, all from the squadron and all somewhat avid fishermen. As I remember, Tom wasn’t quite as avid a fisherman, but nonetheless he was a musician with an acoustical guitar and an interest in fishing with Sonny and I, so I saw the entertainment value right away. That came into play later on in the story, but Tom was a good friend of mine and our wives also hung out together, so he was a shoe in for our trip. Sonny had the truck and the boat, which was a 17-foot Bass Tracker that he personally picked up from the factory and towed out west to its new home in central California. Sonny and I put a lot of miles on his Bass Tracker and his little Ford Courier pickup truck. His little truck had an aluminum camper shell over the bed, and he had a big handmade wooden camping box inside the covered bed, where he kept all his camping equipment/supplies and kitchen type equipment. Common items we generally had in the back for the trip was at least 1 Coleman lantern, we generally had mine and Sonny’s. We also had a couple Coleman stoves for cooking/deep frying, as well as a few tents and sleeping bags so needless to say, with all that equipment the little truck was loaded down. For that reason, Tom agreed to ride in the floor of the boat for the duration of our trip up to San Luis. Looking back on that decision, I’m not sure that would fly by today’s standards, but we really didn’t see the harm and it was less than 2 hours away. Besides, it gave Tom a chance to wrap up in a sleeping bag and sleep a bit down in the floor of the Bass Tracker on the trip. It was Friday evening, and we were off for our trip shortly after finishing work and getting everything ready. Tom met me at my house and Sonny picked us up curbside with the boat and gear in tow. Tom crawled into the floorboard of the Bass Tracker and covered up with his sleeping bag. It wasn’t long till we hit the I5 interstate, and we were cruising north for the next hour and a half, blasting music and chatting about fishing.

Sonny and I had been up to San Luis a month earlier on a bass fishing trip and we had a good time, not only with the bass but we both caught some nice stripers as a bonus. Before San Luis, I knew very little about striper fishing and I never really thought about targeting them at the time. Sonny and I were mainly interested in bass fishing, that is until I caught my first big striper on San Luis. I can’t remember if I had caught some smaller stripers prior to catching a behemoth right before dark on our last trip, but my fate was sealed, and I found a very large interest in striper fishing from that evening on.

I can remember that Sonny and I were fishing the forebay and there was a long stretch of grass parallel to some rip rap, and we were concentrating on throwing topwater along the edges of the grass. We had caught a few nice bass along with a few smaller stripers and the sun was setting fast. State Park rules said we had to be off the lake at sunset, and we only had another 30 minutes or so to fish. I got a bad wind knot in my reel, and it looked like the reel was done for the evening. It looked like a re-string job, so Sonny told me to grab his little spinning rod with a Pop-R tied on it to finish out the evening. I grabbed Sonny’s little spinning rig and made a long cast out the back of the boat, away from the weed line and out into deeper water. I just wanted to see how the rod and reel felt before working the Pop-R down along the edge of the weed line. Sonny got his topwater snagged in the weeds and I turned to watch him work his topwater out of the obstruction. I heard a large splash in back of the boat and turned around to see a large boil and circular swirl right where the Pop-R has landed. I was confused because I could no longer see the Pop-R on the surface, but my line was very slack. I looked at my slack line and wondered if the Pop-R had somehow broken off or it had come untied. I was baffled so I started taking up the slack on the reel and when I looked down at the remainder of the line where it entered the water, I saw it slowly tighten on a very dark shadow under the water swimming towards the boat. No sooner than I saw the fish, the fish saw me, and the boat. At that point the big striper made a quick turn away from the boat and the drag started screaming off the reel. The big striper was headed for the middle of the lake with the little Pop-R and I was hanging on for dear life. The pile of line wrapped around the spool was getting thin and the striper showed no interest in slowing down, so we had to chase him down. Thankfully there was very little structure and the fish stayed near the surface for the duration of the fight. He must have pulled the Bass Tracker around for 10 minutes before we finally landed the 31lb monster and called it a day. Back then we kept everything for table fare as long as we were within our legal limits and that big striper provided a lot of meat for us Navy folks on a budget. A month had passed since that trip, and Sonny, Tom and I were returning to San Luis in search of stripers for the freezer.

The long drive to San Luis went by quickly and it wasn’t long till we were pulling into a local San Luis gas station, store and bait shop just a couple miles from the entrance of the state park where we were camping. On this trip we were only interested in stripers and the best way to catch them at the time was using cut bait in the form of frozen anchovies. The store sold frozen anchovies by the bag and there were a few dozen in the bags so we wanted to get enough to last us through the next day’s fishing. I wanted to stretch my legs and I was pretty sure Tom wanted to stretch after riding on the floorboard of the boat for a while. When Sonny and I got out of the truck we were chatting about something and I watched as Sonny reached into the bed of his truck, over the side and it dawned on me that something wasn’t right. Tom was walking up after climbing out of the boat and I realized that we no longer had a camper shell on the bed of the truck. Sonny was busy digging in a bag for cash and I asked if he noticed anything out of place? Right away it dawned on him that his topper was missing. Nothing in the bed had blown out and nothing was out of place, the topper was just gone. We asked Tom if he had heard anything, but Tom said he fell asleep and didn’t hear a thing. On further inspection, we found that the shell had hit the corner of the windshield on the Bass Tracker and did minimal damage. We debated on going back up the freeway to see if we could locate it but it was getting late and interstate 5 is a big interstate to try and find a small camper shell, so we let it go for the night, citing that we would look for it on the way back home. Money was pretty tight back then and we all pitched in for groceries and gas. After buying supplies, bait and gas we were on our way to the park to set up camp, grab a quick bite to eat and get some rest. After unpacking, pitching tents and heating up some supper we called it a night and hit the tents.

It was a brisk morning on the water and the ramp was lined up with boats waiting to launch. We got there a little late and by the time we were on the water and moving the sun was up and it was warming up to be a nice sunny morning on the lake. We found an area that had a long tapering point, and we dropped the anchor on the crown of the point in 20 feet of water. We cut the anchovies into 2-inch chunks and put them on a single hook 1 foot leader with a 1-ounce weight 2 feet below the leader. That got our cutbait about a foot off the bottom. We just dropped the baits straight down under the boat till the weight hit the bottom and we brought up the slack which brought the bait suspended a foot off the bottom and dangling from the leader. We just sat and waited for the stripers to show up. It didn’t take long, and we were all three bring in nice 2-5lb stripers. Every once in a while, one of our rods would pull down and another striper would come to the boat. Over the course of the morning, we boated 5 nice stripers a piece and headed back to the launch to trailer and have some lunch. We had 15 very nice stripers, and we were pretty happy with our catch. We cleaned the stripers right after lunch and decided to drive down to the Oneil forebay for an afternoon/evening of more striper fishing. The launch at the forebay was about 15 minutes from the upper lake and the state park where we were staying. Legally we could catch 5 more stripers a piece to finish off our daily limit and there were plenty of stripers in the forebay for us to catch. We used the same method of suspending the cut anchovies and in the course of the afternoon through evening we accumulated our limits again, including a few bigger teenage stripers. We were having a blast and it was by far the best trip that Sonny and I had been on. We had a total of 30 stripers for the day and we were going to be eating deep fried striper for our supper along with some fried potatoes to go with it. When we got back to the camp Sonny broke out the cooking equipment and I started fileting out the stripers from the afternoon trip to the forebay. Tom broke out his guitar and we built a nice fire in the firepit in the center of the camp. Tom played music as we ate fish, drank beer and sang songs into the chilly October night before hitting the sleeping bags for some rest. Nights like that have always been some of my best memories while on fishing trips.

The next morning was Sunday, and our plan was to fish the morning before breaking down camp and heading back home in the afternoon. The morning was a copy of the morning before, and it was a little chilly to start the morning. When we got to the ramp, we realized that none of us had enough cash to pay the launch toll. It was pretty ugly as we pulled up in line to launch but had no money. We had to move out of the way of the other boaters waiting to launch and we were just sitting in the parking lot with the boat trying to figure out what to do. We would need to drive to town and write a check for cash as this was before ATM machines and cash withdrawals. It was really going to screw up our morning, but Tom came up with a plan and took his hat off, broke out his guitar and just started playing songs right there at the top of the ramp with his hat turned over on the ground in front of him. It didn’t take long until a couple of the boaters dropped a few dollars in Tom’s hat and Sonny, and I stood back and watched as more boaters donated to Tom’s hat on the ground and within 15 minutes, we had enough money to launch the Bass Tracker for our morning run. It worked out just the same as the morning before and we all got another 5 fish limit of stripers before calling it a morning and heading back to break down the camp and pack for the ride home. We cleaned the stripers and packed the gear for the ride home in the early afternoon. Tom covered up on the floorboard of the boat again and we had an uneventful ride back home, not finding Sonny’s little camper shell on the way back down Interstate 5.

We made several trips back to San Luis over the next few years, but we never experienced a 45-striper weekend like Sonny, Tom and I had on that October weekend. We didn’t know much about striper fishing at the time, and we only had a flasher for electronics, but we had a blast catching those stripers and I was hooked on chasing stripers for years to follow. We also fished a lot of other lakes for stripers after that and we caught some nice ones out west including the Colorado River, the California Aqueduct and the Delta but the San Luis Reservoir and Oneil forebay is where my striper roots begin.

For me, southern Louisiana has become like an old friend that I like to visit periodically, if for no other reason, it’s just to catch up on what’s going on and reminisce about old times. It’s very hard for me to believe that it’s been almost 30 years since I first laid eyes on the Louisiana marsh and the best fishing Louisiana has to offer. Running down the Mississippi and diving into the marsh by boat is like entering another world for me; a world mixed with the timeless beauty of the marsh and the always present invasion of the ones who may eventually destroy it.

I‘m not sure how many times I’ve made the trip from the Atlanta area to Venice, but I can assure you that there has never been a faster trip down to Venice to my recollection. I’m not saying that because my friend Jimmy Sanders is a fast driver, which he is, but it’s because we were never lacking in laughs and conversation, so the miles just flew by at Mach speed. Our last meal before checking into the lodge was a lunch stop at Salvo’s seafood in Belle Chase. Salvo’s Po’boys has always been the gateway to a trip down highway 23 and some of the best red fishing in the world.

After a good lunch and about 9 hours on the road we were finally at our destination for the next few days. It was Wednesday and me, Jimmy Harmon, Jimmy Sanders and Jimmy Meadows were staying at the lodge through Friday night and leaving out very early on Saturday morning so Jimmy Meadows could make a 5pm wedding back in the Atlanta area on the day of our return.

The Lodge.

The lodge itself is located in the Buras area and is just off highway 23. We checked in mid-afternoon and just after the fishermen staying at the lodge had returned from a day of fishing. When we parked the truck, I could see a shovel on the front of a small tractor sitting by the fish cleaning station and the shovel held several redfish, sheepshead and trout carcasses. That was a good sign to start the trip. We were welcomed by the staff right away and we were shown to our rooms for the next 2 days and 3 nights. The lodge was good sized and spread out with a very large kitchen/dining area and the was also plenty of room to relax on the lower floor. The 4 of us split 2 rooms and our rooms were located upstairs. After we unpacked, we went back downstairs and sat in the kitchen/dining area and talked with our chef, Casey while she was preparing the evening meal. Casey cooked our lunch and dinner while miss Kim prepared our breakfast for the morning. There was a group of about 10 other fishermen from a manufacturing company up north that were on a team building/appreciation fishing trip and they kinda occupied the billiard room area. I went into the billiard room and started chatting with the group who had been there for 2 days prior to our arrival. I introduced myself and told the group that we were all named Jimmy or Jim so it would be easy to remember our names. During our conversation I found out that 2 of the guys were from Kansas so that struck up a whole new conversation on growing up in Kansas. I got the 411 from the group as far as the fishing went and it sounded like it was going to be another popping cork trip.

Years back, when I lived in Belle Chase and fished the marsh, after the first year or so of fishing the marsh, I started using more and more artificial baits instead of live, fresh or frozen shrimp. For speckled trout, it was usually a sparkle beetle under a popping cork, or I was beating the banks with a jig head/ plastic cockahoe minnow combination. After many trips back to the Venice area and using different guides for inshore fishing, I see more and more guides just using shrimp under popping corks for their clients. It seems that the shrimp under popping corks is effective and fairly easy to use for the novice and there is usually plenty of action from a variety of local fish. Personally, I’d rather take my chances beating the banks with a plastic minnow than slinging a popping cork around but on this trip, I was able to compromise with a big Gulp plastic shrimp under my popping cork which yielded our largest redfish for the day.

We settled into our new surroundings and after dinner and some evening chatting we all hit the sack for a early morning wake-up.

After a 5:30am wakeup call consisting of a knock at the door from Miss Kim the cook, “breakfast time-fishing time”, we quickly got dressed and headed downstairs. Scrambled eggs, sausage, bacon and a biscuit were on the morning menu and the guides for the guests were waiting around the kitchen area. One of the other guests from the guys up north let me in on a little secret and told me that the quicker you got on the road the better chance you had of getting live shrimp at the bait shop. If you were one of the last ones leaving the lodge, chances are that the bait would be gone by the time you got to the bait shop. The guys from up north were the first ones to leave followed my Jimmy Meadows and Jimmy Sanders. I was paired up with LJ and when the dust settled from all the guide boats and the clients headed down the road to Venice from the lodge, myself and our guide, a 6’6″ -280lb local behemoth named Rodger were left standing in the driveway waiting for LJ to finish his business in the toilet. Rodger wasn’t happy about the delay, and I assured big Rodger that we were just getting started and LJ usually provided the entertainment for the day, one way or another. When LJ finally came out and we got underway, we hadn’t gone 5 miles and LJ realized that he left his cellphone in the toilet. That was the final sign that it was going to be one of those special LJ kinda days. I gotta say in LJ’s defense though, he redeemed himself when he fixed Rodger’s electronics after we blew a fuse while running down the Mississippi and hitting a large wake from a barge. Our skiff slammed down hard, and all of our electronics just died. LJ had us back up and running in record time.

LJ put us in the books with his first redfish of the trip on shrimp and I jacked a few more on the Gulp shrimp before we both started throwing the big Gulp shrimp under the popping corks. Using the Gulp shrimp cut down on the hardhead action and if something hit it, it was probably going to be a big redfish.

Here’s a few fishing pictures from the first day of fishing.

We returned to the lodge, which is about 15 miles from the Venice Marina around 1-2pm and the guides promptly went to work on cleaning the fish. We grabbed a cold drink and some hot gumbo from the kitchen, and we met our new friends and new guests to the lodge, Angie and Girard. They were from Pheonix and a treat to chat with. We quickly made friends with Angie and Girard and before you knew it, we were all joking and cracking up.

Angie is a divorce attorney and Girard….well Girard did a lot of things over the years. Girard was born in Morocco and eventually made his way to the United States. Girard is 81 years old and he has led a very interesting life full of adventure and success as a businessman. He spoke 3 languages fluently and a total of 7 languages, not so fluently. I took the opportunity to chat with Girard about his life and growing up in a foreign country so long ago. Girard rubbed shoulders with some very important leadership in our country and the fact that he could speak so many different languages opened a lot of doors for him over the years. Angie shared the story of how her and Girard had met at Girard’s restaurant and we all shared stories from our lives as the time flew by on a Thursday afternoon. Both Angie and Girard were fascinating people, and we were so glad we crossed paths. Angie actually has some relatives that own a house on Lake Lanier and they visit periodically so I’m pretty sure our paths will cross again someday in the future.

Angie gave the 4 Jim’s a title while we were all chatting, and Jimmy Sanders was dubbed “The Elder”, which I thought was appropriate. LJ was given the title “The Mayor” which made his head swell to an enormous size during our conversation. Angie gave Jimmy Meadows the title of “The Gentle One” which was a good description of Meadows, and I was named “The Storyteller”. I have a lot of stories, so Angie hit the nail on the head with that title. On Thursday evening we all had dinner and hung out till time to turn in. A storm was on the way.

At 2am on Friday morning I was awakened to the sound of thunder. I knew that there was a cold front on the way, and it was scheduled to hit the area around dawn according to Accuweather. The 2am arrival was a little early but nonetheless, the earlier it got through the area, the better. The thunder I heard was followed by some lightning flashes and over the next few minutes I could tell that the storm was quickly approaching. A few minutes later the rain started pelting the window next to my bed and my mind was taken back 25 years ago and the rain beating against the window by my bed at our old Man Camp. Thought about my old Navy friends and our trips out to Man Camp and all the fun we had over the years, fishing the marsh. I laid in the bed and thought back to our drive over the big bridge at Empire and looking out at the Empire rock jetty, in the summer of 1993 it was the location of my first redfish catch while sitting out on those big rocks with a pound of fresh shrimp for bait.

The wind and rain passed over the lodge and before we knew it, there was a knock on the door and miss Kim’s voice outside the door around 5:30, “breakfast time, fishing time”. We all knew that the quicker we got downstairs and had breakfast, the quicker we could get bait and get on the water. None of us was dilly-dallying around the room and Jimmy Meadow’s and I were paired up for fishing the second morning. It was going to be a rough morning on the back side of the front. They were calling for heavy winds out of the northwest. For that reason, our guide decided to fish the east side of the river where the winds would be a bit calmer. It made sense and I was all for the calmer winds in the marsh. After getting bait we launched out of an old broken-down ramp right on the Mississippi and we were running down the big river in record time. The wind was blowing when we went into the marsh for our first fishing stop. It didn’t take long, and Jimmy Meadows put the first nice redfish in the boat but then it got bad. I noticed a lot of the water was changing colors and the wind was howling over the reeds. The heavy winds were pushing the river water into the marsh where we were fishing, and the water was quickly becoming very stained from the river and the wind pushing currents. At that point the fish shut down and we were just going from canal to canal trying to find cleaner water and a better bite. At the same time Sanders and LJ weren’t doing much better and by lunchtime we were ready to call it a day. The wind was just too brutal to fish a lot of areas in the marsh and a lot of the guides were heading in for the day. One thing I liked about our guides is that they all talked over the radio, and they helped each other while we were fishing. Here’s a few pictures from Friday morning including a sunrise looking back up the Mississippi river to the east and some approaching storms out over the gulf to the west. We had to dodge the storms, wind and lightning most of the morning on Friday, but the front moved through and by mid afternoon the sun was back out.

When we got back to the camp, I was greeted by an old friend and tuna boat Captain from about 15 years ago, when I used to come down to Venice to go offshore tuna fishing. His name was Hooper but everyone in the area knew him as “Hoop”. He was a Captain on one of the boats I went out on and he was the co-captain of another tuna boat I went out on, so we got to know each other pretty well after a few long-range tuna trips. Hoop iss an inshore guide now, and he was the guide for Angie and Girard. When Angie asked Hoop how old he was, he said that he was so old that he played in the sandbox with Jesus. LOL…He is 80 years old and still going strong. We had a chance to chat for a while and it was great to see Hoop still kicking butt at 80. I hope that I’m in that kind of shape at 80.

After a quick lunch back at the lodge we got cleaned up and sat out back of the lodge under a gazebo and chatted the afternoon away. We played a little cornhole and had a few drinks before dinner, knowing it was our last evening at the lodge as we would be leaving out a 3:30am. Each person from all the fishermen donated a fish for the chef and Casey made us all blackened redfish for dinner and it was delicious. The meals we had during our stay at the lodge were to notch and very well prepared. We ate well the whole time we were there and there were always coolers with drinks available. They had an icemaker which supplied us with all the ice we needed for our filets. Jimmy Sanders and I loaded up and iced down all of our fish filet for the trip back home and we had quite a few filets for the cooler. After getting cleaned up and packed up we chatted for a bit longer and called it a night.

We were up by 3:15 in the morning and pulling out of the lodge by 3:45am. Jimmy Sanders laid the hammer down and the big Dodge Ram was headed back to Georgia so Jimmy Meadows could make a 5pm wedding. I think I wore a hole in Jimmy’s floorboard in the back seat, but Jimmy got us all back safely and in record time. Jimmy Meadows made his wedding by 5pm and I was prepping our catch for the freezer.

Just last week I made my first purchase with Tackle Warehouse. I wanted to pick up a few things I needed, and as always, a few cool looking new things I wanted. I’ve been reading a lot about these topwater lures called “Vixen” on the Bass Barter and Buy website I frequent and some of the old Vixens on the site sell for upwards of $200.00. The fishermen on the website rave about these Vixen lures and I remember reading about the lures last summer in a Georgia Outdoor News magazine. In the magazine they had a cover page picture of this guy holding up a solid 5 pound spotted bass and this bone colored “Vixen” topwater lure was dangling from the fishes jaw. I could see the word Vixen plain as day on the back of the lure. That was a pretty cool picture and just about all the convincing I needed to buy a few of those Vixens.
With summer just around the corner and a shallow water striper bite in full swing I decided to take the plunge and buy the Vixen. The only color I was interested in was the bone colored pattern. The bone color is the universal color for stripers and bass. I’ve been throwing lures for a lot of years and when I think back to some of my most memorable topwater striper catches, a bone colored topwater lure made the top 10 on a few different occasions. Probably the most memorable was a few years back in the July heat of the summer, my friend Capt. Doug Nelms and I ran across a big school of stripers pushing bluebacks to the surface over deep water. We were pulling a spread of leadcore rigs and decided to take a crack at the big school of stripers with some light tackle topwater action. I circled the boat towards the surfacing school and we took a shot at the school while pulling leadcore. We couldn’t stop the boat with the leadcore lines running 250 feet behind the boat so we had to take a shot at the surfacing stripers on the fly. I had a bone colored Spook Jr. tied to a medium light spinning rig at the ready. You know, sometimes timing is everything with a topwater striper. If you put the right bait in the right area at the right time you’ll usually get the right reaction and the right result. I did all that stuff right and here was the end result:

That was my first topwater striper while trolling leadcore and casting to a single striper on the fly. My buddy Capt. Doug did an excellent job of driving the boat and circling the fish while I battled the striper on light tackle. You can see that bone colored Spook Jr I was using in the video.

Well, back to the bone Vixen. I received my package on time and timing couldn’t have been better. We have some crappie fishing friends who have a lake house out towards the mouth of our creek and this is the time of year the crappie like to hang out around docks and brush piles. Our friends enjoy catching crappie at night under their dock lights and these warmer spring nights provide some nice evenings for catching crappie. The only problem is the big stripers like to frequent the same areas at night during the spring and scare off all the crappie so striper eradication is necessary to make our friends evenings more enjoyable. That’s where I come in. If there is ever a need for striper eradication I’m your man, Johnny on the spot and ready to do battle with those pesky unwanted stripers day or night. Those three bone colored Vixens I bought were going to work right away. It was Friday afternoon and I was finishing up and order of shad baits and checking out the box my lures came in. Heck the box looks seductive in itself so I guess if the lure doesn’t work, well, you’ve got the box to look at. Here’s a photo of the lures and the box just before going into battle.

I inspected the lures and determined that the hooks were somewhat tough looking and slip ring looked a little weak but with todays new technology those slip rings were probably some kind of miniature forged metal heavy duty slip rings. Hey, it’s a Vixen and a somewhat pricey one at that so it’s bound to have good hardware. It looked sweet and I thought about a big striper blowing up on it as I tied it on my medium spinning gear with fresh 8lb test mono. I was ready.

We were settled in at the lake house right after an early Friday dinner and I was heading out towards the mouth of the creek in our little 17 Lowes. I wanted to do a little recon mission and then come back and get Lisa right after dark for the night raid on the stripers. I showed up in the pocket our friends dock is in and I cut the motor down to watch the sun set and look for stripers. They already had the dock lights on and it didn’t take long till I saw the first surfacing striper. I had to do a double take on the boil the striper created. It was big and I watched the same area for other activity. Another boil caught my eye in a little pocket to the left of area of the dock so I kicked the trolling motor up on high and made my way into the area of the boils. I saw another good sized striper in the very back of the cut and he was full on chasing bait on the surface. The little pocket came alive with stripers and boils as I approached. I took my foot off the trolling motor pedal and quietly picked up the Vixen on the spinning gear. I was right in the middle of a feeding frenzy and stripers were moving all around me. I unhooked the Vixen and watched the water to pick out a target. I was looking for one aggressive surfacing fish and as soon as I found it, I was going too put that Vixen right in the area as quickly as possible. Finally I saw a bigger striper hit the surface and I made my cast; it was perfectly placed just beyond the area where the big striper surfaced and I moved the Vixen for the first time, walking the dog back to the boat. The lure had a big clunky ball bearing in the forward area and the sound the ball bearing made banging back and forth provided some audio attraction for the fish. I saw the striper come up and swirl behind the Vixen but then left it alone as I brought it back to the boat. I liked the feel of the lure and I got ready to make a second cast when I saw the same striper come back up in the same area and was swimming on the surface like he was looking for something. I threw the lure back at the fish and within an instant he attacked it. The lure disappeared from the surface with a small pop and it took a second for me to process what happened. As soon as everything was processed I set the hook on the running striper. He was big, tearing drag off the spinning reel with no intention of slowing down. He was heading for the back of the cut, right down the middle and pulling deeper as he went. I put my foot down on the trolling motor and started chasing the striper down. He didn’t stop so I put my hand on the spool of the spinning reel for just a tad more drag on the fish to see if I could stop him before snapping the 8lb test. Finally he stopped in mid channel after a 200+ foot run. Now came the task of turning the fish and getting him pointed in the right direction. I knew just about how much force I could put on the 8lb test and I began to try and turn the fish and I pulled hard to turn the fishes head. When I did, I felt the line unload and I was cranking back a weightless length of line. It took a while to get the line back to the boat but when I did I was glad to see the Vixen still attached and ready for the next cast…. well almost anyway. Upon further inspection of the lure, I found one of the back hooks straightened. My heart sank.. I don’t mind losing a fish now and then but it stings pretty bad when losing one to faulty hardware. Especially brand new lures that cost some coin. Hey, it happens and I know that was a big striper. It looked well over twenty up on the surface and I know a big striper has a hard boney mouth so a single hook holding a striper that big is probably a pretty tough task. There are 3 big treble hooks on a Vixen for a total of 9 barbs to be used to hold a fish and the chances of just one of those barbs being used is pretty slim. Usually the fish get at least 2 sets of hooks buried in his jaw to hold the weight. I thought to myself, I should probably change those hooks out when I get back to the shop and put some bigger hooks and heavier slip rings on these lures.
I sped back to the lake house to pick up Lisa and get back out to the action right after dark. Lisa was ready to go and I tied on a blue bomber on her medium action rig. The blue bomber is my second favorite jerkbait type lure to use after dark. It has some evil looking florescent orange eyes that glow in the dark and stripers love them. Our friends were on their dock as we pulled up and we chatted for a minute and watched for surfacing fish. It was dark beyond the reaches of the dock lights but we could hear splashes off in the distance in the direction of the cut where I had lost the big fish earlier. After chatting, I kicked in the trolling motor and started moving us towards the darkness and the feeding stripers. Luckily there were some smaller lights from a couple docks in the cut and it made seeing the ripples from the surfacing fish more visible. We slipped ito the area and cut the trolling motor and waited. The stripers were swimming everywhere on the graph. We could see schools of 5-10 fish moving all around. Lisa started throwing the bomber and I went to work with the Vixen. It didn’t take long and Lisa was hooked up with a nice 8 pounder on the bomber. She was having a blast and the striper provided us with some aerial acrobatics in the darkness with the dim dock light in the backdrop. The smaller stripers were feeding and we were sitting in the middle of a striper feeding bonanza. The Vixen was a big hit with the smaller stripers and a few bass that were getting into the action in the cut. We lost as many hook ups and we landed but after about an hour of this I think the stripers figured us out and moved out of the area. Lisa and I headed back to the lake house for the night and with a plan to get back out the first thing in the morning before light. Here’s a nice striper we caught on the Vixen just after dark.

My internal alarm went off at around 4am and I gathered my thoughts before rolling out for that first cup of coffee. My plan was to have a few cups of coffee and get the boat ready for a early morning run back to the scene of the crime from the night before. I made a cup of coffee to go and off I went up the creek channel with the occasional dock lighting on both sides acting as a large runway path up the creek in the early morning hours. Lisa was still fast asleep and I would be fishing alone for the first hour or two before I went back to the lake house for breakfast. As I pulled into the area in front of the dock I saw a smaller striper just to the front edge of the dock. The striper was right at the dock and swirling on bait attracted to the light. I threw the Vixen into the area of the smaller striper and he swirled on the Vixen just as soon as it made the first rattle. After the swirl he disappeared and I briefly thought he was gone, but in a second I heard another pop and felt the line tighten of the spinning rig. The striper was smaller and I was able to horse him to the boat rather quickly and in a couple minutes I had the fish at the side of the boat using the lights on the dock to help me land the fish. It was a little guy compared to some and maybe made 5lbs but fought like a solid 10 pounder. These stripers had been spending the last month feeding on the abundant bait that had made its way into the creek in search of warmer winter water. The stripers we were catching were fat March stripers and very very strong.

As the sun was rising through the still leafless trees, I could feel the air warming and I could see a mix of pinks and blues in the eastern sky. I saw two big stripers roll on some bait very near the shore so I pointed the boat in the direction of the big swirls and splashes. I put the hammer down on the trolling motor and got ready for a precise cast. I took a quick look at the line from the lure up about 4 feet to make sure there were no scuffed up areas. The line looked good and the trolling motor couldn’t get to the area fast enough. I had about 100lbs of pressure pushing down on the foot pedal and I could still see the stripers in the shallow water chasing threadfin shad and blueback herring. They were making a big wake as they moved through the shallows and I only had a few more feet to make the perfect cast. I could tell these fish were bigger fish. Maybe 20+ pound fish and they were making some big splashes as they went. I could feel my heart beating in my chest and I know my knees were shaking as I quietly pulled my foot off the trolling motor. I put my first cast right into the area next to the mud bank and within an instant one of the big stripers sucked the Vixen down and I set the hook on the running fish. The fish made a run directly under the boat and I had to stick the rod deep in the water to avoid the fish getting tangled in the trolling motor. I cleared the trolling motor with the rod somehow and the fish was clear and heading for deeper water. My drag was set perfectly and I knew I could put some pressure on the fish as I stood on the bow of the boat and let the big striper pull the boat along. For some reason the striper wanted to stay on the surface which made my job a lot easier. If I could keep the fish on the surface it was just a matter of wearing out the fish and gaining line till he gets to the side of the boat. That’s the preferred method but sometimes the larger and wiser stripers go rouge and swim down deep, looking for that underwater standing timber or huge brush piles that riddle the bottom of Lake Lanier. I’ve been outsmarted by some big stripers before and when I’m fighting a big striper I always know that going deep is something in the stripers bag of tricks. If the striper starts going deep I always like to add a little extra pressure to the fish in hopes of turning the fish back towards the boat.
I had the fish on the ropes and I could see the Vixen in the fishes mouth as he came along side the boat just under the surface. At the sight of the boat he made another run and I held the rod up high too keep him at the surface. I just about had him turned when the line went limp and I saw the Vixen come to the surface 10 feet behind the boat. The big striper was gone, pulled off…so I thought until I inspected the lure and found the whole front hook was missing right down to the eyelet. The big striper had straightened the slip ring and made his escape sporting some new hardware on his lip. Man, the Vixen let me down again…. I felt like a dumb*** for letting it happen a second time. I pulled up the trolling motor and headed back to the house to pick up Lisa and switch out a few hooks and slip rings. Let’s just say that the ride back to the house was the ride of shame as I reflected on my inner stupid coming out in full force this morning.

The bone Vixen needed fixin and I had just the hardware it needed for these big stripers. I dug through the hardware box at the house and found some brand new Eagle Claw #2 nickel plated 375 treble hooks with 30lb stainless slip rings. Lisa drove the boat back out to the mouth of the creek while I switched out hooks and rings on the Vixens. No big deal, they just needed a striper modification. I guess those stock hooks were good for those feisty little green fish jerking around on those spindly hooks and rings but this was one of those times where I have to put the big boy pants on the bass lures to accommodate the larger variety of the bass species. I knew my new hardware modification would be up for the task. One thing that I like to do with these bigger stronger stripers once they are hooked is set the hook a few more times during the fight because these bigger fish have very big and boney mouths and a good hook set is necessary to hold the fish during the fight. The nickel plated Eagle Claw trebles were more than enough to hold the bigger stripers.
When pulled into the cove the stripers and bass were in full feeding mode with boils both large and small. We could tell the difference between the stripers boiling on the surface and the bass boils. I saw one big boil in particular near the shore. This was a bigger fish and it was working it’s way down the red clay shoreline wreaking havoc as it went. When the striper surfaced it was like a train wreck with tremendous splashes and slapping from the big fishes tail crashing the water. This fish was an upper 20’s, maybe low 30’s and I told Lisa to get ready as I made my way to the shoreline to intercept the fish as she worked her way up the shoreline. This fish was more than likely a female feeding for the upcoming spawn. I eased up in the area and put Lisa in position for a cast just as the big fish surfaced between the boat and the shore. When she surfaced again Lisa was startled by the size of the fish and she put the perfect cast just where I would of put it. She rattled the Vixen and few times but nothing came up. In the next instant the striper resurfaced to the right of where we had guessed the big striper to be and had moved on up the shoreline. I realized we had the morning sun to our backs and the big striper more than likely saw us approaching and quickly departed. I was really hoping that Lisa would get hooked up with one of the bigger stripers we were seeing and she was working the Vixen perfectly with the back and forth rhythm of walking the dog. As it turned out, that was the last striper we saw for the morning when a couple of jet skiers decided to cruise through the area several times. The stripers moved on but we stayed for a while and was able to manage a few nice bass to salvage the morning. Here’s a few pictures of some nice spring bass on the Vixen.


Here’s a good video of the Vixen in some early morning dock action with a feisty spotted bass:


As we were leaving the area just before lunch the jet skiers pulled into the dock next to our friends dock and we were able to chat for a few minutes. Turns out, the jet skiers would be renting the neighbors lake house for the next two weeks and there would be several kids swimming and jet skiing throughout spring break in the cove. I figured all the extra traffic and noise would probably run the stripers from the area in just a few days but we were able to pull a few good ones out of the area before they left. We headed back to the house to call it a day.

The next morning was Sunday and we were packing for an early departure from the lake. It was raining outside and it had been since just after midnight. We were going to grab some breakfast on the way home from the lake and watch a little nascar in the afternoon. I was pretty sure the neighbor kids next to our friends house would take care of the striper problem over the next week. Lisa told me she wanted to do a little cleaning before we left and it was going to take about a half hour….well that’s all I needed. I told her I was going to dawn my rain gear and make one more check on the dock before we headed out. She said ok and I was off in an instant. I jumped in the boat, fired it up and untied for the quick trip up the creek. The rain had let up a little and it made the run a little more bearable for the run at 30mph to the cove. When I got there nothing was happening, no surface activity except the small circles made by the rain droplets on the water. I sat and watched but nothing was happening. I figured the neighbor kids were up half the night swimming and hanging around the dock making noise and running the stripers to the next county. The rain started to get heavier again and I was just about to head back to the house when I saw 2 separate stripers come up at the same time right in front of our friends dock. They rolled on the surface again and again and I knew they were attacking a big pod of bait in front of the dock. I was just in range to make a cast so I tapped the trolling motor to get my body in position to make a good cast right in the area. The two stripers were still on the surface when I made my cast and it was a good one, right in the area the two were swirling around. I rattled the Vixen and nothing….I rattled the Vixen and just as I thought it wasn’t going to happen the big striper popped the Vixen and it was gone. I set the hook on the striper just as she took off. My rod tip was bouncing as the reel drag gave the fish the resistance needed to wear the fish down. I faced the fish and let her run. She peeled off a good 100 feet before slowing and turning parallel to the boat. My knees were shaking and my heart was thumping and I watched the 8lb test line from the rod tip to the water. The striper was coming to the surface as I watched the angle of the line rise and I could see small pieces of lake debris hanging from the 8lb mono rising above the water. The fish was pulling the boat along and I knew that if the fish stayed on the surface I had him. I pumped the Vixen a few times to ensure a good hook set. I watched the end of the line sink and the angle of the line change and I knew the fish was looking deep again. I kept constant pressure on the fish and kept the rod tip high in the air to hopefully coax the fish back to the surface away from the underwater structure that bigger fish like to get into. Finally the fish started to rise again and I felt a sigh of relief as she swirled on the surface. I went to work on gaining the line back and for the next few minutes it was a game of tug of war with the striper as she stayed near the surface. I kept the right amount of pressure on the fish and she eventually calmed down and came along side for a quick landing and photo Before being released. Here’s a photo of the striper:

She was a pretty stout teenage fish and a great fight on light tackle. She was just the fish I had been looking for to end the weekend and I considered the striper eradication to be a complete success. The neighbors called and said between the hurting we put on them and the neighbor kids in and out of the cove the stripers had cleared the area for the year and the crappie had returned to the underwater brush piles.

Here are a few more videos from our spring with the Bone Vixen.