3-Weight Reds

"This one's mine…let me show you how it's done." Capt. Danny Ayo skillfully presented his small crab fly pattern to a big cruising Redfish, or what might be called a Poisson Rouge in Louisiana country where Ayo fishes. The Red studied the fly for a moment, and Ayo prayed aloud: "Lord, please let me catch this fish." The entreaty was a refreshing change from the sort of language we too often hear on fishing boats. As his request reached the heavens, the Redfish very deliberately tipped up and sipped the imitation crab. The fight lasted five minutes.

As you might expect in such a food-rich environment as a back-country marsh, the Redfish was fat and healthy; it weighed about nine pounds. The exciting part was that Ayo had landed the fish on a 3-weight outfit.

A 3-weight rod is not exactly designed for sight-fishing, but in the hands of an angler as skilled as Ayo it works incredibly well. He delivers his flies with an 8½ foot rod matched with a floating 5/6 Triangle Taper line that has three feet cut off the business end. I tried it and easily tossed the entire line (which was entirely unnecessary for this fishing, by the way).

The 16-pound-test leader handled the fish just fine, and we successfully released all the Redfish we caught. Ayo says a big Red in the marsh runs 11 or 12 pounds, and he routinely takes fish of that size on his light outfit. He's never broken a rod on a fish.

With this dainty tackle, Ayo fights the fish using a light drag setting on the reel. If he needs to put more pressure on the fish, he sometimes palms the reel, but more often holds the tip on his index finger against the line. When the fish runs he just lets it go, and works the rod with short pumps to regain line after the run ends. "You can only fight the fish with the butt when using these little rods," Ayo said. "If you put too much bend in the tip, the rod will break."

His favorite fly is an unweighted, fingernail-size crab imitation he calls a Deadly Dan. He ties it on a size 4 hook, and uses Furry Foam for the body. That's as large as his flies get. He also uses hooks that most saltwater fly fishers would consider ridiculously small– sizes 8, 10, and 12. Ayo files the points of all his hooks to razor sharpness, removing the barb in the process. The slightest pressure from the angler or fish buries the hook in the Redfish's rubbery mouth.

I had to unlearn some of what I knew about Florida Redfish to successfully catch Cajun Reds on lighter fly tackle. "Forget what Lefty Kreh says about presentation," Ayo coaxed. "It doesn't matter which direction the fly approaches the fish from as long as you get it into the strike zone. That strike zone extends out about six inches from the fish's head. If you get the fly in there the fish will usually eat. If you don't, it won't."

I found his advice hard to accept, but time after time he demonstrated what he meant. He would cast the fly past the fish and drag it right into it's face. As soon as I began imitation him my catch rate went up.

"I like to get out on the fishing grounds before the fish start moving," Ayo said while staring at his global positioning system unit, tracking us through the darkness. We were whizzing through the marsh under the stars, cutting through the rich swamp odors that hung heavy in the air. The marsh was alive with mullets.

"The best fishing happens later, after the sun comes up," he said. "If you can find clean water you can sight-fish just like you do in Florida."

It was true, the best fishing was yet to come that morning. But the sound of Redfish crashing mullet kept reverberating through the humid morning air, so I put on a foam diver, made a cast, and connected almost immediately with a fat, healthy fish of about eight pounds.

Ayo not only prefers to sight-fish with light tackle; he's passionate about it. If he lived and fished in the rocky Mountains he would be a dry-fly purist, casting only to rising fish.

"Most fly fishers here in Louisiana will bang a Clouser Minnow off the bank, blind-casting, hoping something will find the fly. That's not fly fishing. Seeing the fish, presenting the fly, and watching the fish take, now that is what fly fishing is all about."

In the Louisiana marshes, finding water that's clean enough to see fish in takes some searching. One day's hot spot might look like the Mississippi River the next, and without clean water a sight-caster is doomed to frustration. We fished places about 12 inches deep overgrown with leafy aquatic plants. "The weeds filter the mud out of the water," Ayo explained.

Later on, as I fought another fish, the knots, connecting my leader sections snared big globs of vegetation. "That's why I use a level, sixteen pound test leader," he said. "No knots to catch the muck." I tried his suggested leader the following morning and was pleased with it's performance.

We fished on a weekend and didn't see another boat the entire time. I wondered how many spots were like this in Louisiana.

"The marshes extend from the Mississippi state line to the Texas state line. There are literally thousands and thousands of duck ponds loaded with Redfish that entire distance," Ayo told me. "The marshes are unbelievably fertile and support enormous numbers of shrimps, crabs, crayfish, mullets, pogies, and other food for Redfish. The fish live in the marshes until their third or fourth year, then they find their way out into the Gulf where they join up with other breeder fish. Hardly anyone fishes the way I do and most of these fish have never seen a fly before."

I asked him his favorite time of year to fish. "I love the fall and early winter,. The fish eat well, fattening up for the cold weather. They tail all day long, moving into the skinniest water imaginable. The water is cleanest then, and lots of these weeds die back. When we get cold fronts the fish move into the canals along the pipelines and then I can't find any. But as long as soon as it warms up they come right back into the shallows."

This is the kind of action to expect when you fish for Poisson Rouge — Louisiana's Cajun Redfish. And the enjoyment is only increased when you do it, as Danny Ayo does, with lightweight fly tackle.