Toledo Bend, ‘Sam’ trip a big highlight to my fishing season

There are great seasons in sports, including outdoor sports, and each have their special time and place in our heart.

There’s the squirrel hunting season, the waterfowl hunting season, the deer hunting season, the turkey hunting season and the dove hunting season, all passionately pursued by outdoorsmen in the Teche Area. Those outdoorsmen also enjoy, in no particular order, the football season, the basketball season, the baseball season and other seasons.

All those seasons fill up blocks in the calendar year. After one ends, we go on to the next. For my youngest son, Jacob, and me, it’s always fishing season, 12 months worth, mostly for bass. Sure, there might be less of a want, perhaps, when the daytime high might be, say, 45 degrees, but we’re game if there’s a reasonable chance to set the hook on a fish.

October is a good time, a prime time, for bassin’ in the fall, especially at Toledo Bend. We have made it a point the past three years to make a trip there to probe the depths and shallows in that great border lake in northwestern Louisiana.

That was the case this past week when Jacob made his third annual trip over there to prefish for a Louisiana Bass Cats tournament this weekend as a guest with bass club member Zach Suit of New Iberia, a University of Louisiana at Lafayette student and graduate of Catholic High School.

Jacob, a merchandiser at Coca-Cola United, took our 18 1/2-foot Triton powered by a 115-horsepower Mercury OptiMax up there early Monday. I joined him at mid-morning Wednesday.

Jacob met up with and fished with Ben Suit of New Iberia, Zach’s brother, on Tuesday after a challenging day on the water Monday at Toledo Bend, where the bass bite hasn’t been as good as usual for at least the past three months. We had heard the horror stories since July.

Ben, meanwhile, staying at the home of his uncle, Jerry Suit, on the Texas side along Patroon Bayou, went to Lake Sam Rayburn on Monday with New Iberian Tommy Trotter. They whacked the bass, thanks to the latter’s unselfishness to show Ben around the lake for the first time.

Jacob, staying at the camp of my long-time friend Jeff Tall of Jennings through Thursday, and Ben hooked up and headed to Lake Sam Rayburn on Tuesday. They caught bass after bass that day and the field reports filtered home quickly via text and social media.

The very sentimental part of the week started at 5 a.m. Wednesday when I left home for the drive to Toledo Bend. First I stopped and picked up Kevin Suit, Ben and Zach’s father, the son of Margaret and the late Jerry Suit.

I’ve known Kevin since the early 1980s. We fished a lot together and against each other and I wrote about his playing days in basketball and baseball at Catholic High School. We became good friends.

After bass club and other competitive fishing, we often were out of touch as he raised his family with his wife, Nena Bedia Suit, and June and I raised Joshua and Jacob. Soon enough, though, his two sons and my two sons became young men and Jacob loves to fish as much as I do or more and ditto for Ben and Zach with Kevin.

That ride along U.S. 90, Interstate 49 and Louisiana 6 to Many was filled talk about those days when we were in our 20s and 30s. And since.

The Shoopmans and Suits up there went in their respective boats to “Sam,” as they call it. What a day, despite cold front conditions, as anglers in both boats tattooed the bass in one humongous creek.

The boys, as I call them, had it down pat with artificial lure selection and patterns, mostly in grassy areas in 5- to 7-foot depths. Jacob got one between 6 and 7 pounds on a 3/4-ounce Rat-L-Trap, which he threw most of the time Wednesday and Thursday.

Even a flat tire on the boat trailer to start the day Wednesday didn’t dampen the trip.

My stay ended after a fairly productive morning trip with Jacob on Friday to Toledo Bend. My fishing season didn’t end but a great outing with friends did.

DON SHOOPMAN is outdoors editor of The Daily Iberian.