Well, I fished an Inshore Fishing Association Redfish Tournament in Cocodrie, Louisiana on 04/25/2010. We had a bad storm come through on Saturday and postponed the tournament. The storm was pretty bad, with tornadoes and terrible winds. When it came through and really messed up all of my spots that I had planned on fishing on tournament day. The water went from crystal clear to pure muddy everywhere we looked.

We scrambled all day for the tournament on Sunday to find quality fish again, but didn't manage to find the fish we were looking for. We did manage to put two redfish in the box but we were still pretty disappointed with the results but that's fishing.

My next event is this weekend (5/1/2010) in Destin, FL. Its an Emerald Coast Redfish Club event. I have a few tricks up my sleeve for this one, hopefully they pay off in a solid win or a top five finish, if the weather holds up. I will keep you posted as it unfolds.

Hello from the beautiful Gulf Coast. So far, the weather around here has been sketchy and you really have to pick and choose your days carefully. Lately, we have had some really howling winds and a ton of rain making the water very muddy and extremely high not to mention the cold fronts that has been coming in. But that hasn't stopped the fish from biting everywhere.

There has been some good upper slot reds caught to the west of Dauphin Island, AL near Coffee Island. Mainly on the west side of the Coffee island where the cut through in the middle of the island (about 30 feet wide) dumps out into a slight cove. And as always with this time of year, there are large numbers of fish being caught around Dixie Bar and Fort Morgan. Most of the fish have been caught on spinner baits and popping corks with a Bass Assassin Shrimp or a Berkley Gulp! Shrimp in the molt, natural, pearl colors, or anything with chartreuse in it. I like to have as much scent as possible on my lures so I always add an attractant such as BioEdge Fishing Product's Shrimp Potion or put some Trigger X attractant on the lure.

The speck bite has been hit or miss lately. As always during time of year, fishing in the evenings when the dock lights are on is almost a must. There has been a decent bite around the south side of Ono Island, AL. Try to hit every dock that has a light on it. I would start by running up the south west end of the island. Start fishing when you get past the No Wake Zone. Look for deeper pockets and pot holes in the grass beds to hold decent fish. There are also some nice specks in the Theodoore Industrial Canal, just make sure you hit it when the tide is moving in or out, it doesn't matter. There are some good flounder being caught right now in the same area's as the specks, so make sure you get your bait down close to the bottom.

Hopefully, the weather in November will be better than October around here. Hopefully the big bull reds will be coming in full force by then.

Tight lines,

Chris Williams

Do you ever wonder where all the scientists and organizations such as the The Coastal Conservation Association (CCA) get their statistics on fish populations? Well, they use a variety of methods, one of which is through a tagging program such as the one that the State of Louisiana's Cooperative Marine Sport Fish Tagging Program has started. This program is funded by the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries through a Federal Aid in Sport Fish Restoration grant from the US Fish & Wildlife Service. The importance of tagging studies has been well established and began with studies conducted as early as the 17th century.

The CCA of Louisiana gave anglers the opportunity to participate in this process by starting a volunteer tagging program. Since 1987 the program has used more than 1,400 volunteer taggers, tagging over 105,000 fish.  The main focus of this tagging program is to introduce volunteer anglers to more qualitative or "scientific" methods for reporting their tag and recapture information. The more precise the data will yield to more specific information that can be used in measuring the populations of the fish.

The best part of this program is you do not have to tag fish strictly in Louisiana. You can catch them right here on the Gulf Coast and tag any sized Speckled trout or redfish you release alive. Here are some of the basics of the program for you:

• Tag Spotted Sea trout “Speckled trout” and Red drum “redfish” of any size in any water body in any state
  
• All that they ask is that volunteers complete the data cards with the required fields and return them in to us for data tracking purposes
  
• They also ask that GPS coordinates be included on the data card for data analysis and tracking. Volunteers are reminded that this data is for biologist’s use only and will not be shared with the public. So NO private fishing spots will be reveled. * Whenever someone recaptures a fish that you tagged a recapture report will be sent to the tagging and the recapture angler letting them know where the fish was tagged and recaptured (brief location information/no GPS coordinates), how long the fish was at large and the measurements at the time of tagging and recapturing.
• All supplies are provided to volunteers free of charge and tagging kit includes instructions on how to fill out the data card as well as how to tag the fish.

If you would like to volunteer for this program (as I did), please send the following information in an email to fishtags@wlf.louisiana.gov. It will surely be one of the most rewarding things you will ever do.

• Name
• Address
• Phone number
• Email address
• Do you own a GPS unit? Yes or no
• Area Generally fished:
• Have you ever participated in a tagging program before? Yes or no