“Louisiana’s Buddy Oakes Heads to Canada with the Aglia, the Syclops and the Marabou”

Part 3: Just Add Water to Catch Fish with Mepps Lures

Editor’s Note: How do you learn to catch walleyes and northern pike when 99.5% of your time has been spent catching saltwater fish like speckled trout and redfish? Why do you take your wife and your friends to Canada to catch coldwater species when you’ve never fished for these fish previously? How do you learn to fish for fish you’ve never had the opportunity to catch?

To learn the answers to these questions, we asked Buddy Oakes, marketing director and guide for Hackberry Rod and Gun in Hackberry, Louisiana, to tell us about his first northern exposure and the role that Mepps played in the success of his trip to Angler Rapids Wilderness Lodge (www.anglerrapids.com) in Saskatchewan, Canada.

Question: What pound-test line were you using when you were fishing for walleye and pike in the far north?

Oakes: We used 12-pound-test line.

Question: What size walleye were you catching?

Oakes: The walleyes we were catching weighed 3- to 4-pounds each. We caught quite a few 18-inch walleyes but also a lot of 24- to 26-inch walleyes. Rick Hagel, one of the guys who was with us, caught a 44-1/2-inch northern pike on the Mepps #5 Marabou. He got a medal to put on his hat (see Part 2). He was really proud of that medal and the fish he caught.

One of the things I liked about the Mepps lures we used was that they were no brainers. All you had to do was cast them out and reel them in, and you could catch fish - lots of fish! Some of our wives were inexperienced fishermen, and they all caught plenty of fish. They weren’t watching other people catch fish and feeling frustrated.

On the second full day of fishing, we changed partners. My wife Marsha fished with a friend of mine named Jimmy, and I fished with Jimmy’s wife Lynn. Lynn wasn’t a very-experienced fisherman. She started fishing with the Mepps Aglia, but there were a lot of weeds in the area where we were fishing. So, I told her, “Lynn, just cast that Aglia out and reel it in about 1- to 1-1/2-feet below the surface. You won’t get caught in the weeds, and you’ll catch fish. Just turn the handle on the reel, and the Aglia will do the work of catching the fish.”

After four or five casts, she mastered reeling the bait just under the surface of the water, and she wasn’t getting caught in the grass. Then she started catching fish on almost every cast. She caught five or six fish consecutively. She looked at me and said, “I’m going fishing with you every day, because you know how to catch fish.” That Mepps Aglia made me look like a hero.

I went out another day with Martha Austin, and she caught fish like they were a blue-light special at Kmart. Martha caught the biggest fish she’d ever caught in her life – a 30-inch-long pike. She had me take pictures of her with that fish to send back to her grandkids. She caught that big pike on the Mepps Syclops. I don’t think she’d ever been fishing before in her life, and I just told her to cast it out and reel it in, and she started catching fish. One of the big advantages of this bait and the Aglia is that you can just cast them out, reel them in with a steady retrieve and catch fish.