Back, Down in Cocodrie

I’ve just recently returned from the Jackson Kayak Dealer Summit in Tennessee. Had a great time and have a bit to post from it, but I’ll get to that in due time…

In the meantime, here’s a report from Cocodrie the day before we left…

It was somewhat of a last minute trip when we decided to give Cocodrie a shot. Karl loves my video “Muddy Pumpkins” from two years ago, and I was going to try to show him where I was that day. Unfortunately, we didn’t have quite the same luck, but we did catch some redfish.

We got out early and headed into the nearby marsh. The water was high, which usually means the reds will be buried in the marsh grass, so I immediately started trying to get as far back into the marsh ponds as I could. I found a few ponds in areas I hadn’t been before and started see a few fish here and there. The water was surprisingly clear back in those ponds, but that meant the fish would be a bit more spookable. I did manage a couple of rat reds on a Vudu Shrimp (a lure I really like throwing in Cocodrie).

Just a few minutes later, I was in another pond and got a clean cast on a fish, but it spooked when the lure came near him, so I decided to switch it up and put on the Buggs Curl-tail Jig in Blue Crab. After switching lures and waiting briefly, another red gave itself away while prowling the bank. I short-casted the Bugg and it was chased down by the red. After a nice fight, this 26″+ red was welcomed aboard!

I then regrouped with Karl and we headed to my “Muddy Pumpkins” location. In the video, there’s a small pond where there’s a lot of fish being spooked. It’s when you see all the mud being kicked up about halfway through the vid. Well, we reached the entrance to that pond and I told Karl to go in and I’d wait outside. I figured, with my success with fish in the previous pond, there might be a fish or two in this one, and I wanted Karl to have first dibs. He headed in and I waited outside. I started nodding off into dream-world when I heard Karl “whooping”. I stood up to see his rod doubled over and splashing on the other end of his line. He netted and measured the fish. 24″!

After that we headed back to the launch. I still had a bit of packing to do. Twenty-four hours later, I’d be on the road to Sparta, TN!