Night bite under the lights

[Catcher's Mitt]

Went fishing early, early Saturday morning. left the house in Baton Rouge at 1:20 am. Drove down to the Rigolets marina and launched. by the time we met the shrimper to get bait and made our way down the Rigolets and avoided all the shrimp boats and barges we got tied up at around 4:00 am. the tide was almost slack. we were told we should try without the lights because the big trout are very sensitive to vibration.

so we tried first without the lights. we could see bait and hear fish sucking bait off the surface. i started throwing a top water because i thought it was trout. but by the light of my headlight i could see it was Gaff-top. After about 15 minutes and no fish, I could stand it no longer. I started up the generator to the protests of Josh and Alden. they said Captain Dumas said to fish without the lights. I said Captain Dumas doesn't know about fishing with lights at night.

i got the lights on and to my chagrin all the bait that was around the boat was scared off..........for about 5 minutes. 10 minutes later, wham, mule trout on the deck. it was pretty fast and furious for the next hour and a half. we ended up with 50 trout of which many were XL...over 22"

We had some much better pictures, but boy wonder was deleting one off the camera that showed his butt while he was laying out the fish for a picture. he accidentally deleted all......oh well can't cry over spilled milk or whatever cliche would be appropriate for accepting what you can't do over.

note to self......pre-rig lots of leaders for Carolina rigs. we were in deep water and several times we were broke off or all tangled when a big trout would circle around before we could get the other lines up. we could have limited if we were better prepared for deep mule trout bite.