Spring Day Pursuit of Happiness

Speck Scale + FishxScale

Today I met my buddy Dwayne and he showed me around one of his favorite spots to fish in southeast Louisiana. This was my first scouting trip for the upcoming Ifa in Empire Louisiana on May 18. The weather conditions looked favorable and the wind that has been plaguing us wouldn't be a problem.We launched and headed to large lake that  averaged about six feet. We started off working the shorelines early with topwaters and on my first cast I had a large fish slash at my lure and miss the hooks.I continued throwing the topwater and the trout were peppering the lure with hits but I couldn't connect on any of the hits. Luckily while I was failing at top water dwayne was doing a little better and landed a fat 21 inch speckled trout. We got a late start around 7:30 so the topwater bite only lasted for about an hour so after that we left and headed to another area looking for some subsurface trout and whatever else that would bite line. I started working a point with a current line and caught a solid keeper trout pretty quickly. I stayed in this area and quickly hooked another trout that shook off and a couple casts later I hooked a redfish but it bent the light wire hooks that I was using for my tandem rig.

The second speck on the tandem rig

I probably shouldn't use freshwater jigheads they work fine for trout but redfish too much for them  to handle. Speaking of tandem rigs This was my first time trying it out and I think it might be better.
 I alternated between a single and tandem rig and surprisingly I had three fish hit on the tandem and one on the single jig. This small sample size is encouraging and I will continue to experiment with the tandem rig. After catching a couple fish I did something I rarely do and left them biting to try and catch a redfish. The Ifa and it requires a different philosophy than I usually prescribe to and you really need to target large fish rather than large numbers. I then met back up with Dwyane as he was working in a shallow pond looking for a red. I checked his progress and went and explored a little further ahead. I found a little trenasse and cast a marsh melon Who Dat Weedless Spoon

Fell for the marsh melon

I casted to the outer left side started reeling and felt a bump my line then went weightless and I was wondering if my line popped. I realized the fish was headed straight for me and I reeled as fast as I could to regain the slack and the fight was on. The fish down there were strong even the speckled trout put up a fight this was a 22 inch red and it towed me around pretty good. After getting the fish in and taking a few pictures I set up again in the same trenasse casting to the right bank it took a couple of casts but I got him. This fish was not as large but the fight in close combat and shallow water was explosive. After catching that one I went a little deeper into the cut but I couldn't draw any more out so I moved into a small pond with no luck. After exiting the pond I could see an area similar to where I was catching the trout earlier so I pedaled over. I threw a deadly dudley frogs breath and began jigging it back to the boat and I felt a solid tap I set the hook reeled in a solid red. We then fished our way back to the launch with little action.I did have a short hook up on my mirrodine that consisted of three seconds of drag being pulled and no hookset im pretty sure I had a large speck. I imagine it was probably double digits mark it down as the one that got away.

Number 1

Number 2 Big Spot

Number 3 Small dot