It was an early fall morning and I was fly fishing for redfish in the Louisiana marsh.  A cold front had just pushed through and the combination of the clear fall light that highlighted mile upon mile of salt-meadow cord grass intermixed with black rush grass posed a beautiful setting. I saw a flock of teal acting strangely and when I looked up I saw the reason why. A peregrine falcon was soaring above them. I could tell they felt safer hunkered down in the marsh with me than in the air where they would be more vulnerable to the falcon. I watched them for a while but was interrupted by what I had come for - a redfish feeding in water so shallow that his back was above the surface. We call them crawlers. I was fishing out of a kayak that I helped designed for Native Watercraft to access these shallow areas. It was made so that I could stand and pole it, which gave me much better visibility than if I was sitting down. It was also designed with a clean open area for stripping my fly line, and it had a tunnel hull to help it track more efficiently and stay on course in a stiff breeze. The low profile made me less visible and more wind resistant. As I was stalking this fish I began to reminisce about how I had advanced to this stage of angling.

In the early 1990s I fished primarily out of a shallow-draft flats boats designed to be poled in skinny water but this fish I was watching now was in water so shallow I could never have gotten close enough to make a cast. It was impossible to get out of the skiff and wade because the bottom was so soft I would sink up to my arm pits in mud. For a while I started fishing out of pirogues and canoes. I could get back to the areas where the fish were, but the pirogues were unstable and the wind blew the canoes all over the place because of their high profile.

I was working for the Orvis Company at the time and was attending the Outdoor Retailer Show in Salt Lake City where I took the opportunity to visit with a number of kayak manufactures. When I told them I could see a great marriage between kayaks and fly fishing, most of them looked at me like I was from another planet. Andy Zimmerman, who at that time owned Wilderness Systems Kayaks, told me that he would send me a prototype kayak that he was working on to see if it would work for my purposes.  I took it over to Louisiana and the first thing I tried to do was see if I could stand up in it. Even though it was not as stable as I would have liked, it did present a low profile, tracked well and was fairly quiet. Not only could I get back in the shallows where the fish were feeding but I was able to get closer than ever before. At the time, I was traveling the whole Gulf Coast from the Florida Keys to the Mexican border for Orvis so I always had my kayak on the roof rack ready to go fishing.

As time went by I realized kayaks gave me access to more fish and they were more environmentally friendly. In the marshes and back country they allowed me to blend in and become part of the environment. I found I could get close to wading birds and other wildlife without spooking them; they seemed to accept me as being part of their world. Furthermore, I was not destroying the flats or sea grasses with prop scars as the power boats were doing. They are the nursery areas for most of our marine life, including game fish, and are vital to the whole ecosystem.

Juvenile marine life in the marsh is too small to see with the naked eye at many stages and they depend on the grass beds to protect them and supply a food source until they are big enough to survive on their own. The sea grasses also serve another function, which is to hold silt in place when it gets churned up by rough water or boat waves. Churned silt makes the water so turbid that sunlight cannot penetrate it, and without sunlight the grasses cannot survive. Many sea grasses are already suffering from nutrient pollution caused by developments and agricultural run off that contains high concentrations of nitrogen. Fertilizer over-feeds the algae, creating huge blooms that cloud the water and starve the sea grasses of sunlight. A good comparison is to cover your lawn with a tarp and see how well your grass grows without sunlight. 

There is hope to prevent the damage done by power boats to sensitive areas because we are now seeing more and more No Motor Zones where vital seagrass grows. NMZs are a kayaker’s dream but some are not even remotely close to launch sites so paddling there is all but impossible. Over the years, when I’ve run into a problem, my mind goes to work to fix it. In this case, I came up with a solution that I call a mini-mother-ship operation. It could be as simple as throwing a kayak on the deck of a flats boat to building racks on power boats to transfer kayaks. Whatever route you take, it is a great way to get close to the shallow water areas where you intend to fish.

In my case, I helped design a removable T-shaped rack I can mount on the bow of a Dragonfly flats boat. Then I attached a five-foot long bar to the top of my poling platform. Two kayaks fit upside down and side-by-side on the mounting system of my mini-mother ship. They’re high enough to sit under and they even provide shade when I’m running to a fishing hole. The kayaks are out of the way so I can move around the boat and access my fishing gear. Once I get to a spot, loading and unloading is simple and quick.
 
Meantime, back to Louisiana, I see that my redfish is still happily feeding and oblivious to my presence. I am fishing with an eight weight fly rod, which I feel is the best for the fish. Over the years I’ve tried to see just how light a rod I could use to catch a redfish, and have caught them on rods as light as a one-weight. I finally concluded this was some kind of ego thing I was going through and had nothing to do with the relationship between me and the fish.  These days I like to bring the fish to hand as quickly as possible which makes the event less stressful for the fish, and I use a rod heavy enough to put serious pressure on the fish and land it quickly.
 
I am now very close to my fish, it is feeding on something on the bottom - crabs I assume - but whatever it is, I know it is focused and the cast will need to be very close and within a visual window. I use a fly that resembles a crab which I tied partially from road kill -- a fox squirrel to be exact. The cast is nothing to be proud of, but this is fishing, and not a casting demonstration. It is a very short cast, but this is even better, because I am so close I can see the fish engulf the fly like it was going to be his last meal. The battle is short, and I bring the fish to hand quickly, then release it after a short ceremony. I am thankful for the opportunity to compete with the fish. I hope the fish knows the prize and the competition is between us. Nobody else needs to know.  

Jimbo Meador’s fishing contraptions for Orvis and other fishing companies are used by millions of fishermen. A lifelong resident of LA (lower Alabama), a hardcore fisherman and a diehard shimper, Jimbo was one of the people author Winston Groom used to help craft his character, Forest Gump.

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