Under Pressure
Crowds don’t have to limit your success at Calcasieu Lake.
By Chris Ginn
May 01 at 4:43 pm
Chris Ginn Capt. Jeff Poe believes that while the pressure has increased at Calcasieu Lake, better knowledge of the lake has allowed pressure on specific spots to decrease.
This is my son’s first year of playing kid-pitch baseball.
After looking like an all-star in the batting cages during his first practice, he stood on deck and watched the batter before him take a hardball to the lower back in his team’s first attempt to hit off of an inconsistent 9-year-old pitcher.
Wide-eyed, he took his turn at the plate and bailed out on the first pitch. His second swing was more of a step-out-slap-swing defensive maneuver even though the ball was a strike right over the plate.
Realizing that he was nervous about getting beaned with the baseball, I encouraged him to stand tall in the batter’s box and to not make more out of the batter in front of him getting hit than it was.
"It’s only a big deal if you make it a big deal," I told him. "Just because he got hit, that doesn’t mean you’re going to get hit.
"The bigger deal you make of it, the less likely you are to hit his next pitch."
I wish I could report that he crushed it over the centerfield fence on the next pitch, but he didn’t. He didn’t even hit the ball. But he didn’t bail out. He took a good cut. And he didn’t let what happened to somebody else affect his third swing.
A lot has been made of the fishing pressure at Calcasieu Lake in the last few years, but according to Big Lake Guide Service owner Jeff Poe (337-598-3268), anglers often make more of a big deal out of the pressure than they should.
"And that can take them out of the game before they even launch their boats," he insisted.
Poe feels like the perception of increased fishing pressure at Calcasieu Lake has more to do with the decrease of common courtesy than it does with the number of boats on the lake.
In fact, he’s noticed in the last few years that there has been an overall decrease in fishing pressure...