Marsh & Bayou Outfitters is moving. Founded by Ben and Chris Tiblier, M&B has been in business in the French Quarter of New Orleans since 2014, a local source for fly fishing products as well as for fly fishing guides. On Tuesday, MBO posted on their Facebook page that they've decided to move from the Big Easy to the Northshore. The new location will be 2800 Florida Street in Mandeville, with an opening sometime in July.
Date set for Lake Athens Fly Fishing Festival. LAFFF was originally scheduled for the first weekend in April, but postponed due to the COVID19 outbreak. Now organizer Johnny Martinez has set a June 27th date. The event has been condensed into one day, with the Big Bass Challenge (tournament) starting at 7:00am, and awards presentation at 2:00pm. Other activities include casting instruction, casting contest, fly tying demos (including realistic tying by Fred Hannie), and a raffle to benefit Casting For Recovery. For more info, go to www.johnnyonthefly.com.
Online fly fishing and tying continues. Organizations, clubs, and fly shops are continuing to hold Zoom webinars and meetings at this time of social distancing. The Kisatchie and Acadiana clubs are holding a joint "Tying Tuesdays" each week. The clubs have announced continuation of this through June. Once regular in-person meetings resume, the clubs will continue to hold an online "Tying Tuesday" at least once, perhaps twice, a month.
Meanwhile, FFI has weekly Zoom webinars. Fly Fishers International has been holding various meetings each week. For example, this past week the FFI Tying Group did an online tying session, the Learning Center did a casting program with Molly Semelik, Jeff Currier continued his global fly fishing presentations with a program on "Big Fish of Canada", and the Conservation Committee continued their series of "Conservatin Conversation" with steelhead and cutthroat trout expert Dr. Richard Williams. These series and other presentations are posted on this webpage . You do NOT need to be an FFI member to attend.
And then there's OFF THE WATER. Prior to the pandemic, the Bayou Coast Kayak Fishing Club had started doing a weekly Facebook Live program on Tuesdays at 8:00pm. The program features weekly guests on a wide variety of subjects, and cover topics from recent and upcoming tournaments, fishing locations and tips, fishing reports, tackle tips, and much more. It's also entertaining as well!
Speaking of kayak fishing. Check out this article by Melinda Martinez of the Alexandria Town Talk about kayak fishing in central Louisiana. The article features myself, Mark Elliott of H2GO Outdoors in Monroe, and Jerry & Kelly Maynor of Tioga. Martinez also mentions the Kayak & Canoe Fishing Tournaments Of Central Louisiana Group as well as Pack & Paddle of Lafayette.
Fishing reports. Great bream fishing continues across south Louisiana, especially in the Verrett-Palourde system. Recently bream have been bedding strong in central and northern parishes. Hotspots include Cane River, Lake Nantachie, Chicot Lake, Black River Lake, Caney Lake, Lake D'arbonne, and Cross Lake. Bass fishing on Toledo Bend in backwaters is good with frog patterns right now. On the coast, speckled trout have been hot in Golden Meadow and Hopedale, with some big fish being caught out west in Calcasieu on the south end of Big Lake. Redfish have been pretty solid everywhere except those areas affected by river water (fish are there but flies aren't as effective).