Tossing and turning in my bed at Spring Hill Suites in Lake Charles I couldn’t sleep, wondering what the morning would bring. What a shame too, no one could ask for better and more comfortable accommodations.
I signed up for a waterfowl hunt courtesy of the Lake Charles Southwest Louisiana Convention and Visitors Bureau during the 2013 Southeastern Outdoor Press Association’s Annual Conference that would showcase the region’s spectacular waterfowl hunting. What’s more, I’d be paired on the trip with outdoor writer and radio personality Glynn Harris on the excursion, but there would be a change of plan.
While eating at MacFarlane’s Celtic Pub with our CVB host Ann Klenke, who greeted us on behalf of Lake Charles, I received a text message from Captain Sammie Faulk asking us to call him when we got back to the hotel. Faulk would be our guide the following morning, and we figured the call was to coordinate the pickup time.
Faulk let us know the 80-degree temperatures, fog and overall balmy conditions basically had the ducks on lock-down. There were no good reports coming out of the rice fields and marshes. So instead, we would switch to plan B and fish Lake Calcasieu Saturday morning – that’s if it was alright with us. Faulk went on to say a cold front was supposed to pass through Saturday night sometime, blowing out the unseasonably warm conditions. Furthermore, giving us a better opportunity to have a decent duck hunt Sunday morning.
I made a three hour drive, and Harris’s was more like four. Plan B was perfectly fine by us. We were there for the duration.
There’s possibly no other place in the nation where when plan A goes south you can switch to plan B, C or D in a matter of hours. Likewise, where any and all of those plans are equal to the other and not some consolation prize. My tossing and turning wasn’t from apprehension, but from being out of my comfort zone, not liking change. It was waterfowl season for goodness sakes. My myopic mind was geared up for feathers, not fins. But I knew fall fishing for speckled trout on Lake Calcasieu, also known as Big Lake, could be stellar, especially with Faulk.
Faulk happens to be Chairman of the Cameron Parish Tourist Commission, a consultant for the Southwest Louisiana CVB and Vice-Chairman of the Board that governs the 180-mile Creole Nature Trail – All American Road and National Scenic Byway. He also is a tour guide for Grosse Savanne Waterfowl and Wildlife Lodge at the end of Old Pasture Road, south of Lake Charles.
You’d think that would be enough to keep one man busy, but he is also owner operator of Gotta Go Charters. Having guided on the lake since the late ’70s, Faulk happens to be someone who really knows Lake Calcasieu and how to fish it year-round. My thought was simply, “If there was ever someone to suggest a plan B, it was him.”
Short nights have never bothered me. Maybe because I’ve always appreciated a new day and what it brings – good or bad. And running across Big Lake in Faulk’s bay boat at sunrise felt right, even though the air was actually kind of cool. I was glad I had a jacket on to take the edge off.
Spotting a fairly large flock of laughing gulls off in the distance, Faulk motored his boat towards them. Stopping just short of the birds, he let down the troll motor and maneuvered the craft stealthily into position.
The birds were frantically diving onto the surface of the water, a telltale sign that speckled trout were working somewhere in the depths below, feeding on baitfish or more probably shrimp. Tossing a black and silver colored Catch 2000 MirrOlure beneath the birds, I let it settle for a count of one thousand one, one thousand two, one thousand three, before starting the typical twitch-twitch-twitch-reel-twitch-twitch-twitch-reel motion and retrieve pattern that usually solicits a strike right away.
The solid “whumf” of a speck-hit stopped the bait halfway into my second series of twitches. There was no escape for the fish. The 10-pound test line Faulk had loaded the loaner rod with was more than a match for this little scrapper that was no more than a couple pounds.
Still, the brief fight was fun and my speck went into the fish box along with several others we caught until the raucous birds quit diving and flew off. The fish had moved.
Faulk, in describing the tactic that every fishing guide and most anglers employ when fishing trout along coastal Louisiana from Lake Charles to Venice said, “What happens is the fish – the big fish – are chasing bait. And what they do is herd them up into a ball, and then they’ll just start going through them. The bait has only one way to go, and that’s up. When they’re up on the top of the water, they’re jumping out of it. Here on Big Lake, the water is not beautifully clear. But, it’s clear enough where the seagulls that are flying up high can see the predator and baitfish flashing – or shrimp jumping. When the birds start seeing the shrimp jumping, they’ll come down and never leave. They know it’s going to happen again in the next 5 minutes.”
No doubt some of the attraction for those who frequent Lake Calcasieu is the opportunity to catch big trout. The lake attracts numerous recreational anglers, where the pressure on speckled trout is quite heavy. Therefore, the lake has a restricted limit where fishermen can only take 15 spotted seatrout, of which only two can be over 25 inches in length.
Faulk said, “We’ve got a tremendous number of fishermen here. And we have a lot of guides. A lot of recreational fishermen come here just to fish trout. It’s that good, and a lot of people will catch their limit. But, we have that limit because we put a lot of pressure on trout. Plus, we catch some big trout.”
What makes Big Lake’s trout so big? It all goes back to the abundance of bait, but in particular menhaden, also known as pogy.
“It all has to do with food,” Faulk explains. “Although most people are fishing the birds over shrimp, the shrimp are not what makes fish grow big. The big fish come from menhaden. The pogy has so much protein in it, it’s unbelievable. It would be like these guys on steroids, bulking up and being on the A-Team or real high in the batting order. Pogy are really, really good and builds them up to be big, fast and strong. I know some people who’ve gotten broken off by big trout. There are some big redfish in Big Lake, but there is also some big trout too.”
Faulk refers speckled trout, redfish, southern flounder and black drum as the Lake Calcasieu grand slam. Other fish that can be caught, though hardly targeted, are saltwater sheepshead and croakers.
One hotspot to fish in the east side of the lake is the Grand Bayou Weir. It was here Harris and I had some fun with a popping cork and live shrimp that Faulk supplied us with.
Though not fishing the sweet spot where another boat was anchored, there was still plenty of room and plenty of current flow for us to catch reds coming out of the bayou.
Harris skillfully tossed his cork about 30 feet off the port bow in the moving current, where it didn’t get a chance to even settle before it exploded, and the fight was on. While Harris fought the fish, Faulk was getting the net.
By the fish’s spectacular powerful runs, the drag giving more ground than Harris was reeling in, and the sub-surface swales we could see, this was going to be a bull red running over 27-inches. Anglers are only allowed to keep just one redfish over 27 inches in length in their five fish limit.
Harris managed to catch a couple of good redfish at the weir, and I got to catch seemingly everything else like puppy black drum and sheepshead. There were no worries though, as the speckled trout I caught throughout our day on the water were simply beautiful and the kind I’d be bragging about for quite a while.
Sunday morning we got back to plan A, when Faulk hooked us up with The Lacassane Club’s Farm Manager, Jude Zaunbrecher. The plan didn’t include ducks, but instead speckle belly geese. Ahhh! More specks.
Zaunbrecher didn’t have much confidence in a big influx of ducks coming in overnight, but had a really good field where there would beplenty of speck action. Indeed there was. Both Harris and I limited in short order.
Whether you’re looking for a fishing plan, or a waterfowl hunting plan or a weekend of both like Harris and I shared, there’s no place like Southwest Louisiana, enjoying one of the “Speck-tacular Extravaganzas” the region offers.
