Venice/Hopedale/Delacroix report (with pictures)

[TeamTTF]

My fishing partner, Trey Russo, and I just got back from four days in southeastern Louisiana and all I can say is MAN WHAT A TRIP!

I see why they call your state the "Sportsman's Paradise" - it's an amazing place to fish.

Trey and I headed down to Capt. Billy Nicholas' Venice Fishing Lodge on Wednesday night. If you ever get down to Venice (and you should) this is the place you need to stay. Billy treats his guests RIGHT! He had breakfast ready for us when we woke up, packed our lunches for our boats and was at the stove cooking up dinner for us when we got back from fishing. We had some amazing fish tacos the first night and some big ol' stuffed pork chops with rice and beans the next night - goooooood stuff. He also helped us with navigation around the vast Venice marshes and is just an all-around nice guy. I can't wait to go back, and I think next time I'm going to bring my dad down and do a combination inshore/offshore trip.

We headed down the Mississippi River to the Venice marsh Thursday morning and started thumping fish right off the bat - and we caught some GIANTS.

Look at these toads. This was one of the most fun bites I've ever experienced. We were throwing spinnerbaits with Texas roach TTF BIG MINOs and I can't even begin to describe how hard these huge reds were blasting the spinners. When these fish unloaded on it, it was like someone punched you in the arm. I LIVE FOR THOSE KIND OF BITES!

And the crazy thing is, these weren't even the biggest fish we caught. Just a couple we snapped pictures of.



Here's Trey with a hefty bull.



In between the bull madness we managed to scrape up about 14 pounds of tournament-worthy fish. At this point, Venice was looking pretty good, but it's a long run from Delacroix, so we decided to go do some running around closer to the launch to see what we could find.

Friday we looked at the areas around Delacroix and Hopedale. I had pre-fished this area two weeks before and had a pretty good idea of what the fish were doing and where to find them.

We explored dozens of lakes and were able to put together a pretty solid pattern using 1/2-ounce, black/chartreuse custom-made chatterbaits with Texas roach BIG MINOs for trailers (these fish wanted big baits). We caught 13.5 pounds easily near Hopedale and decided it wasn't worth running to Venice and losing several hours of fishing for an extra 1/2 a pound.

On tournament morning we made a bee-line straight for our best lake. Within minutes we were hooked up and putting fish in the boat. In the first 20 minutes we culled twice, and were steadily adding weight to our creel. Our bite was extremely wind-dependent, and we had pretty calm conditions to start the morning. However, the wind was picking up by the minute and we were getting more and more confident that we'd be able to sack some brutes pretty soon.

We had 12 pounds in the boat in about 45 minutes and decided we were going to make a short 200-yard run to fish a shoreline where we'd caught our best fish the day before. As I brought the boat on plane we smacked some kind of underwater debris and that did some pretty significant damage to the lower unit. We surveyed the situation and realized we wouldn't be able to run back.

We got on the phone with the tournament directors and gave them our whereabouts. We were already in our lake and catching fish so we weren't in any hurry to get back to the ramp. But we got a call about 10 minutes later from the San Bernard sheriffs dept. saying they had already located us and were looking at us through binoculars.

We kept fishing and caught an oversize fish in the short amount of time it took the sheriffs to find our lake, but after only an hour of fishing time, our day was over.

Here's the oversize we popped while waiting on the sheriffs to arrive.



And here is a pretty good example of a site you DON'T want to see one-hour into your tournament day.



All in all it was an amazing trip. We caught a ton of fish and had a legitimate shot at a Top 5 showing. It's disappointing when something like this happens and cuts your day short, but it happens to everyone at one point or another.

We have to give major thanks to the local sheriffs and Louisiana WLF officers that went out of their way to help us. We tried to offer them money but they wouldn't have it. They were a great bunch of guys and the folks in St. Bernard Parish are fortunate to have those guys on their side.

[Ray]

Good report. It happens to all of us. I'm just glad it was someone else's turn, not mine... LOL