About 200 years ago, the Baratarians, buccaneers under the command of Jean Lafitte, sailed the legendary waters of the bay that now bears their name, smuggling Spanish gold and other contraband goods through these labyrinthine channels.

Lafitte maintained his headquarters on Grand Terre Island across Barataria Pass from Grand Isle, the only occupied barrier island in Louisiana today. His ships docked at Grand Terre, which separates Barataria Bay from the Gulf of Mexico. Lafitte’s men sailed up Barataria Bay into what was then Barataria Bayou. Now, the dredged Barataria Waterway flows past the town that bears Lafitte’s name. From there, they entered Lake Salvador, Lake Cataouatche and numerous bayous southwest of New Orleans that eventually lead into the city.

Supposedly, Lafitte amassed a huge stockpile of gold and jewels in the course of his nefarious business dealings, and legend has it that he buried the cache somewhere on one of the numerous islands in the Barataria Estuary. Two centuries on, nobody’s discovered Lafitte’s trove.

But nowadays, another kind of gold rush is on in the waters of the Barataria Estuary. Today, the golden hue of interest is the glitter of redfish swarming the fertile waters once plied by Lafitte. These marshes, canals and lakes provide some of the best redfish action in North America.

Lafitte would probably recognize much of the lower bay today. Vast marshes broken only by an occasional camp or oil-field structure extend from horizon to horizon. However, the many canals dug to reach the precious black gold make the area a maze even more complex today than it was in the Baratarians’ days.

Those canals have contributed to the massive erosion suffered by the region. On the one hand, Louisiana contains about 40 percent of the wetlands in the contiguous United States; on the other, about 80 percent of wetlands loss in the United States takes place in the Bayou State, with somewhere between 25 and 35 square miles of Louisiana marsh eroding into the Gulf of Mexico annually.

Ironically, that loss improves fishing — at least for now. Erosion turns vast chunks of marshland into an archipelago of small soggy islands that provide edges and shorelines along which baitfish, crabs, shrimp and other morsels for predators thrive, attracting redfish in huge numbers. But if the marsh continues to dissolve into shallow open flats, the fishing is destined to decline in quality.

At the moment, however, you won’t find any better habitat for redfish than southeast Louisiana’s coastal marshes, which stretch from Vermilion Bayou to the Mississippi River Delta south of Venice and up the east side of the great river to Delacroix and Hopedale.

“Before the last storm, this shoreline extended farther out into the lake,” said Capt. Phil Robichaux of Robichaux’s Saltwater Guide Service in Lafitte, about 40 minutes from downtown New Orleans. “See that bulkhead out in the lake? I remember when that was the shoreline. It’s awful how much marsh we are losing to erosion here. The storms killed much of the vegetation where redfish hide — but we’ll give it a try.”

Robichaux stopped along a shoreline in Little Lake, a wide, shallow estuary just southwest of the town of Lafitte along the Barataria Waterway. Several small tributaries punctuate the shoreline, facilitating an influx of bait and creating workable ambush points. The water being cold and muddy, the captain suggested a slow, deliberate approach. He attached a white grub to a popping cork rig and tossed it toward the mouth of a little bayou entering the lake. Almost immediately, the cork went down.

“We’ve got fish here,” he said. “White is one of the best colors down here all year long. We’ll fish along this shoreline. If we don’t catch any more fish, we’ll move. If someone catches just one redfish along a bank, there’s a reason the fish is there. Sometimes, anglers catch two or three on the second pass. If there is something that attracted one redfish, it will attract more.”

As water warms in the spring, redfish move from the deeper canals into the shallow lakes and marshy ponds, growing increasingly aggressive. Often, anglers catch them in less than 2 feet of water. Sometimes, anglers can spot redfish sunning themselves in shallow water, backs or tails exposed, as they cruise the shorelines looking for crabs, shrimp, baitfish or other succulent items to gulp down.

“In cold water, sometimes you almost have to hit redfish on the head to make them bite,” Robichaux observed. “Slow down the retrieve when fish are not as aggressive. Leave a little slack in the line and only move the bait a few inches at a time.”