Redfish have a golden-orange hue in Louisiana marsh country.

“There goes another one!” I shouted over the motor’s roar, surprised that a redfish would wait until the last second before scooting out of harm’s way. In a few popular Florida locales, flats reds start to get antsy when you back your rig down the ramp. But not here.

Barely five minutes from the launch, we had entered a cut in a low levee and voilà! Louisiana marsh as far as the eye could see.

Given the advanced warning from the high-pitched primal whine of a 24-horse Go-Devil, it wasn’t like we were sneaking up and surprising these guys. As we skimmed over dense mats of milfoil and hydrilla, reds, mullet, and the occasional sheepshead and gar rocketed away, only to plunge right back into the jungle.

“Looks like there are enough reds to toss flies at right here, Jay!” I yelled over the motor.

“There’s always a few here,” Capt. Jay Bunch replied. “But I’m headin’ for a couple of ponds where I’ve found finners and a few big crawlers this week.” I took that to mean redfish rubbing their bellies.

Fish continued to part like the Red Sea as we made our way deeper into the interconnected duck ponds of the Barrataria estuary at Myrtle Grove, just southwest of Belle Chasse, Louisiana. Up ahead, a fat, glistening coal-black nutria slithered from the water onto a muddy bank. Pairs of ducks rose from the marsh well ahead of us from time to time, but with the bulk of migratory birds north for the summer, redfish are by far the undisputed king of the ponds.

As we negotiated a bend, a formidable wake bulged up ahead and I was finally able to lock eyes with a big-shouldered, golden red before it tunneled back into the salad. Now I was really itching to pull the trigger and get some loops in the air.

We came off plane in a sea of mud-banked grassy islands, and Jay cut the engine. There is no quiet like the quiet that follows the wail of a Go-Devil. As we prepared to fish, the sun burned through the morning mist, and the dew-soaked marsh went from gray to gold and green.

“This stretch has been good for tailing and finning fish lately, and before the water gets too high, we might see some big crawlers up real shallow,” claimed Jay, who went on to explain that the tide might be higher than normal today due to forecasted strong southerly winds.

“If the wind comes up strong on the heels of this rising tide, it’ll flood this place pretty good, so let’s hope it lays for as long as possible,” said Jay, as he grabbed his pushpole and climbed atop the poling platform. For now, the wind was fairly light. We worked our way down the edge of an island and a couple of reds tipped their tails up immediately.

“See there? Like those fish, most of ’em will be tight to the shorelines in here,” Jay predicted. “That’s where the fiddler crabs are, so these fish will tail more and stay put for your cast a lot longer than those we see out in the open, well off the banks.”

After another pole stroke or two, I signaled to Jay that we were plenty close for my cast. Though I don’t cast spoon flies for Florida reds, Jay’s black-and-red spoon fly turned over smartly and plinked in within a foot of the fish’s business end. I made one slow strip, and the red’s tail went down. After a second strip, the water humped, then a jolt. I dug the fly home and my first bayou red awoke its neighbors with a showy, splashy surge. The 6-pounder got into my backing a bit, after which I hand-stripped it in, while watching another half-dozen or so unseen fish wake off a short distance before settling down.

Richard Kernish kept tabs on their whereabouts while I plucked the fly free and released my fish. We traded fly shots for the next half-hour, landing a few more medium size reds and losing a couple more before somebody switched on the fan. The weatherman was on target—the winds had arrived. The tidal current picked up noticeably within the hour. By midmorning, wind-foam lined the surface in rows, a high veil of clouds scudded the sun, water piled into the marsh, and the marsh was a gray world again.