Fly Fishing for Reds

[Goooh]

Originally Posted by redchaserron

G0ooh,

I spend just about all of my free time fly fishing for redfish in the marsh from one end of the state to another. I learned and developed my skills doing it in the Calcasieu Estuary when I lived in Lake Charles, and guided for about 5 years pulling fly fishing trips in the marsh. I quit guiding in 2008 but still fly fish a LOT and have great success with it.

There are a lot of guides specializing in fly fishing for redfish to the east, from Dulac/Dularge/Coco all the way over to Biloxi Marsh.

If you want to go the guide route here are a few suggestions

My good friend Ron Ratliff is guiding Dulac/Coco and all areas south of Houma, his web site is http://www.marshdawn.com/

Further east Capt Rich Waldner is out of Port Sulphur www.fishwithrich.com Capt Greg Dinni fishes venice/empire/hopedale etc
also good are Brian Carter, Greg Moon, and quite a few more. Google them and you'll find their web sites.

Also, there is one guide Devin Palamino, another very good friend of mine, that will pull trips for Grosse Savanne on their private marsh in the Calcasieu Estuary. He's a great guide, but his availability is very limited. If they can book you with him it would be worth it, otherwise I don't have the confidence that any of their other guides are really versed enough in fly fishing to be effective. There's a lot of things you have to do different with a fly angler on deck regarding boat position, being stealthy because you have to get closer, spotting fish, fly selection etc... that I wouldn't hire a conventional guy to do it for a novice fly fisher.

You can fly fish for redfish year round, now through the fall you can catch all the slot sized you want sight fishing the flats from one end of the state to the other. In the late fall/winter the sight fishing goes to crap in the Calcasieu Estuary but that's when the east part of the state fires up with chances at GIANT redfish on a fly in 2 feet of water. I have a web site that has a lot of info on fly fishing redfish including fly patterns, techniques etc at www.redchaser.com . If you think you want to take him yourself instead of hiring a guide shoot me a private message and I'll try to point you in the right direction.

I caught this little guy on fly sight fishing in 2 feet of water.

Great info, I would like to take him myself, but am unsure if my boat would even allow me to get to them - it's a 24' bay.

I will check into guides for sure, that will shave years off my learning curve. I'm just worried I may get hooked and wind up with a duck/flats boat...