With all the lakes, streams, and rivers, Louisiana happens to be a fisherman’s paradise. If you’re from these parts you certainly know how to cast a line. I’m spending my morning at Toledo Bend Lake, the largest man-made body of water in the south and learning about bass fishing from award-winning pro bass fisherman, Darold Gleason. So Darold, this is an amazing day to go fishing. Yeah, it’s beautiful, we have a little ripple on the water which we love here. It kind of makes the fishing a little bit better. How big is this lake? And it’s about 1,200 miles of shoreline and around 186 thousand acres of water.
Louisiana A Fishermans Paradise Photo Gallery
How long have you been fishing this lake? I’ve spent a lot of time out here through college. In the last six or seven years it’s been, you know, like my full-time job. Yeah, everyone that I’ve met in Louisiana loves to fish. It’s something down here, the outdoors, it’s in everyone’s blood, and you just have so many opportunities from our freshwater fishing up here, all the way down to the coast. Toledo Bend has been ranked number one bass fishery in the United States the last two years in a row by Bassmaster magazine. So what kind of fish can you catch in the lake? Well we, so we have all the major freshwater species here. The two predominant ones that most people come here for are the largemouth bass and then also we have proppy in the lake. Is it a really hard thing to do to come out here, is this just for experts? If you want to come recreationally you can come and hire a guide, you can go out on your own and catch fish. Paula I think you got a bite! Jerk as hard as you can, jerk, pull! You do! Look! Oh my gosh! Oh look at it. Look! Look at the size of that fish! I just caught that! That is so awesome.
Holy cow! I almost cursed on camera. We also have tons of bass fishing tournaments from very small entry fee levels for the beginner, to very expert level professional entry fees. We also have something cool here on Toledo Bend, we do what they call big bass tournaments. It could be you and your son, you and your wife, or you and your buddy. You go out and you fish all day and you’re trying to catch the one biggest fish. You know I love all these outdoor things but I also love to have my comforts, too We have a lot of different resorts here. The Cypress Bend Resort, you were telling me is right here. I think you would like it over there.
They actually have a great restaurant there and some awesome views of the and you have everything from our state parks we have a south lead immense State Park and a Northland State Park and they offer camping grounds cabins so a lot of people come here their families and stay for a week at a time and you can cook everything you need but we also have a lot of people who like to rough it who like to tent camp and maybe bring RV those kind of things and we have plenty of places along the border to do that too so that was an awesome day on the lake yeah I really enjoyed having it was very for you to come down to fish, but I was excited thank you so much I’ve been falling in love with the abundant natural beauty all around me day by day so I woke up extra early to journey down south all the way to Venice Louisiana so that I could do more bird-reading and cast the liner to my captain and guide for the day is Shane Mayfield Shane grew up in these parts and knows everything there is to know about the Delta so where exactly are we again I mean we’re sitting at Cypress Cove Marina but we went on downriver gotten the Mississippi River went south went to the Delta National Wildlife Refuge.
I mean there’s great fish in there you know we tried to catch some fish we didn’t catch any fish this is a salad this is for vegetarian fishermen out there you gotta have salad right today we saw egrets and herons and Foom bells kingfishers just a great place to come if you’ve never been to this part of the country I didn’t realize that that refuge had I think it’s over 250 different species of birds yeah I mean at one time over half of them spent a significant portion of time in here that’s you more true deltaic Marge it’s one of the only ones like it in this country so you can catch you know both freshwater and saltwater species down here in these marshes and what struck me on the boat when we’re talking about this is that the audience is that you take out are very serious.
You know groups of guys and then there was the families a little six-year-old girl that came fishing and then there’s the couples that want to come and they want to be birding so we were doing inshore fishing and there’s also offshore fishing this is actually a world class destination for yellowfin tuna fishery and a lot of that has to do with you know the nutrients the waters of the Mississippi River spilling into, the Gulf you get here early on a calm day and you will see lots of angles lining up to go catch yellowfin tuna does that mean that that’s all professionals or you’re talking about just leisure travel you have a big industry for you know offshore charter fishing as well but there are a lot of people that come bring their own boats we have lodging facilities restaurants.
So I mean you can’t come and do it on your own tell me about the people gonna come down to the pike fishing you know because of our climate we get a lot of people that come from up north this is one of the go-to destination to do that back to so some of the stuff that we can do around here other than fishing you know to go out and see the sights we saw today the birds different types of wildlife for Jackson they’ve got some plantations, like woodland plantation not just a fishing destination tell me about the plantation has a lot of history event there’s a lot of plantations are up and down the Mississippi River because years ago the Mississippi River was the highway but you know the GoSee woodland and to talk to foster Capel the owner was a good friend of mine and hear about the history of it that’s boots yeah I don’t care for him I named him boots because that’s what he’s gonna be before long they’ve turned them into bed-and-breakfast ‘as they have first-class accommodations and food it’s a great place to come if you know thanks for reading to plan your own adventure visit Louisiana travel calm.
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