Kayak Fishing on the Gulf Coast

When I first heard about Wray’s Calmwater Charters “fish camp” on Grand Isle, I was a little skeptical. Hurricane Katrina made landfall just east of the island, at a small town called Buras, and when the 20-foot storm surge came barreling across the island, it took 80 percent of the homes with it. Consequently, I was a little worried that the term “camp” should perhaps be taken literally. But not only did we find a modern, comfortable guesthouse upon arrival, but also a trailer full of new Heritage sit-on-tops, rigged and ready to go.

We drove the kayaks a few miles down the road and pulled them through about 20 yards of grass before shoving off into the marshy maze of wetlands near Port Fourchon, Louisiana. We would let the current and the wind take us north, fishing a perfect incoming tide the entire way.

Viewed from above, the waters we were fishing look like a massive horsetail, with dozens of narrow, shallow-water channels carrying the tide between the open Gulf of Mexico and the brackish inland bayous. Redfish like to live near barrier islands, which is exactly what Grand Isle is, sitting at the southern terminus of the Pelican State. On the horizon, drilling rigs, oil platforms, and other signs of the petroleum industry are visible in nearly every direction. Empty stilts and pilings stick out of the ground where houses used to be. Though Grand Isle was one of the first and worst places hit by Katrina, storm damage is not a novelty here, where hurricane effects are felt an average of once every three and a half years and a direct hit happens every seven. It is an attractive beach town, but few of the homes are worth more than $200,000, since that’s the maximum insurance companies will pay out to homeowners here.

Today though, as we paddled out into the estuary, there was just an easy breeze holding us gently against the rising tide. I paddled into my own private tidal creek and within minutes spotted an eight-pounder in super-shallow water, working the edge for anything edible, half his back and most of an eyeball poking out of the water.

Redfish weren’t always so easy to find. A surge in popularity in the early ’80s—due largely to the blackened redfish recipes of Chef Paul Prudhomme—drastically reduced their numbers along the entire Gulf Coast. And it’s no coincidence that the booming popularity of sit-on-top kayak fishing has paralleled the return of reds to an area now known as the “Redfish Riviera.” The Coastal Conservation Association (CCA) deserves much of the credit for helping restore—through gill net bans and other regulation—this nearly-decimated fishery, in the process helping give rise to sit-on-top kayaking as an industry unto itself.

“All fishermen have benefited from the work of the CCA,” says Jimbo Meador, vice president of kayak fishing for Heritage Kayaks, who lives along Alabama’s Gulf Coast. “But they’ve protected redfish the most, which, in a lot of places, you can only access by kayak. You can’t get a big boat into that shallow water, and you can’t wade it because you’d sink up to your armpits.”

And therein lies the true beauty of kayak fishing in this environment. Redfish prefer shallow water, often less than six or seven inches deep, with a soft mud bottom and submerged grasses. And it is in this type of water that the paddler really has the advantage—kayaks can even be a bit overly stealthy, so that sometimes the problem lies in getting too close.

“If every cast is 30 to 40 feet, that’s fantastic,” says Alex Griffin, manager of Uptown Angler, the premier fly shop in New Orleans. “But when the fish is 10 feet away and you’ve got a nine-foot rod, that can be more difficult.”

There’s been no shortage of photos in recent years of kayak fishermen somewhere off the Pacific Coast or the Baja peninsula, holding up a marlin or a tuna alongside their sit-on-top. But most of those fish are hooked from a mothership in deep water, with the fisherman hopping in the kayak after the fight has already started. Which is sort of like claiming you won a marathon after riding on the fender of a car for the first six miles. In the best of situations, kayak fishing can turn fishermen into paddlers and paddlers into fishermen, so any and all forms of the sport are worth pursuing. But when it comes to separating yourself from the motorized set, nothing compares to the pristine solitude and superb fishing found in the bayou.

With 735 known species of birds, fish, and other wildlife found in the Barataria-Terrebonne estuary, it’s no surprise that Wray is also seeing an increase in the number of guests who are just coming down to paddle. “These people want to learn to kayak but they don’t want to have to learn an Eskimo roll,” he says. “They don’t even want to get wet.”

But kayak fishermen remain the target audience for Wray and other Gulf Coast outfitters. “If I can take somebody out and they catch an eight-pound redfish, I have met or exceeded their expectations,” Wray says. “And that’s not very hard to do here.”

Indeed it’s not. At least it wasn’t while we were visiting. That first fish that pounced on my crab fly took off so fast and so strongly that it nearly knocked my boat over. The fish promptly swung my stern around where my bow used to be, muscled his way across the channel, slipped into a small cut, and continued fighting from deeper water for another 10 minutes before I finally worked him back to me.

It was the first of several fish I got during my visit, each of them blasting away after being hooked, dorsal and tail fins slicing through the surface. Every fish had a slightly different attitude and reaction, but in each case, there were two certainties: That I would not have been able to reach the fish in any other way but on a kayak, and that there was unsurpassed pleasure in fighting a strong fish from six inches above the water.