Grinding it out

The saying goes something like . . . "when life gives lemons, make lemonade."
Well that is just what we did yesterday. I had a day to fish with my buddy Capt. Rich Waldner and the weather was terrible for sight-fishing the marsh for Redfish and Black Drum. Winds were sustained from 20-30+MPH all day long. There were whitecaps everywhere and really no places to excape the wind. The strong SE wind had water pouring into the marsh to the SW of Port Sulphur. Dirty water.

But, we are stubborn and just don't get a chance to fish together much so we said the heck with it and gave it our best. Trying to drop a fly on a fishes head at 50' with a 30MPH crosswind was a joke and we could not help but laugh from time to time. Capt. Rich worked so hard to pole around in that wind.

Despite the terrible conditions, we got the job done. I saw a drum tailing in 20" of water and made a quick cast and the fish piled onto one of Rich's crab fly. After seeing my backing a couple times we got the 19 pound Black Drum to the boat and released.

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After that we saw a few more fish tailing and continued to battle the wind, clouds and occasional rain. We rounded one point and saw a tank with it's back out of the water feeding in less than 20" of water. I battled the wind and got a few casts right in the kitchen and the beast of a Black Drum piled onto the fly. I strip struck the fish and drove the 1/0 S71SZ-34007 home but it took the fish a couple minutes to really figure out something was wrong. It then went well into the backing but got the line back and Capt. Rich got a hold of the fish. It was my largest Black Drum on any tackle, much less my 8WT. The scale told the tail and the fish weighed 42 pounds! A couple quick shots and the fish was released.
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thout question
We worked hard the rest of the afternoon fighting whitecaps where we have never seen whitecaps before as well as all the dirty water pouring into the marsh. We scratched away at it and I managed 3 redfish on a mix of crab flies and Capt. Rich's incredible spoon flies. Without question, Rich builds the most incredible spoon flies available. They hold up very well, have incredible action and the fish love them.
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One of Capt. Rich's incredible spoon flies. Check out his website at www.fishwithrich.com if you are looking for a great day sight-fishing the Louisiana marsh or want to try some of his spoon flies.

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All in all an incredible day on the water in the worst possible conditions. Who doesn't love a real challenge now and then . . .