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

Part 4: For a Great Trip, You Need the Right Equipment

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: Buddy, what did your party think about your first experience in fishing for coldwater fish?

Oakes: Everyone in our party had a great time. We’ve all decided to go back to this lodge and fish again this year. We also all learned that having the right kind of ammunition to go to war with the fish was what really made a fishing trip successful. We learned that the Mepps lures were the right ammunition. The lodge had a tackle shop and a place to buy gifts and souvenirs, and 90% of the lures they had stocked were Mepps. I was really tickled to see that the lures we had gotten from Mepps were the same lures they were selling in the tackle shop because we didn't know what to bring.

When we saw the lures the lodge was selling, and we looked at the lures we’d brought with us, we knew we’d brought the right ammunition to catch fish. Because the store had the same lures that we had brought with us, when we ran out of Mepps lures, we were able to buy more lures just like the ones we’d been fishing with from the lodge store.

My friend Jimmy and I probably caught and released 60 or 70 pike in one afternoon when we fished together. When three boats are averaging catching between 100 and 200 fish a day, lures get hung and get lost, and you’ll need some more. When fish are biting, you always want to have the right lures that have proven they can catch fish. All those different Mepps lures produced both walleye and northern pike.

Question: What rod did you fish with up there?

Oakes: I took my favorite pink rod, made by American Rodsmiths. The rod’s a 6-foot, 6-inch casting rod. Under that pink color, you’ve got one of the finest rods that the American Rodsmiths company produces. I use it to catch speckled trout, redfish, flounder and every other fish that we fish for in south Louisiana. My wife Marsha also has a pink rod with her name on it. She really caught a lot of fish on her pink spinning rod.

Now the when the guides saw those pink rods, they wouldn’t even touch them or have anything to do with them. But those rods really handled those Mepps lures and those pike and walleye like they were made to catch coldwater fish.

All the guides at Hackberry Rod and Gun fish with pink rods. We first started using them as a novelty just to fish something different. Our customers always laugh and joke about us having pink rods. Then when they saw how many fish we were catching on these pink rods, more and more customers started buying them from our tackle store.

I’ve found that with a pink rod, no one’s going to mistakenly pick up your rod thinking it’s their rod and walk off with it, and I very rarely if ever have anyone ask to borrow my pink rod. And when I fish with a pink rod, everyone remembers who I am because they say, “Buddy’s the fellow who fishes with the pink rod.”