Unless you discover a spot that holds water during low tide, you might consider following my lead. Going that route will also give you a chance to enjoy some of the great fishing that the Delta offers -- just before the hunt, instead of after it.

CASTING OPTIONS
Without a doubt, lots of places hereabouts can give up fine catches of redfish, speckled trout and even bass at this time of year. Some of note: the Buras Canal at its termination in Hospital Bay behind Boothville, the jetties at Southwest Pass and during years when the river remains low and clear, the spillways down Southwest Pass and even the Jump. If you have hired a guide for a blast-and-cast trip, he will assuredly take you to others.

My all-time favorite winter redfishing spot is the Venice Dome oil field, otherwise known as "the Wagonwheel." Once classed as a "giant" among Louisiana's petroleum deposits, its reserves were developed and produced by means of wells drilled in canals that resemble a wheel complete with spokes.

Prior to Hurricane Camille in 1969, the field was operated by crews who lived with their families in a neatly laid-out camp at the end of the Tidewater Road. After the storm, the crews went on a seven-days-on/seven-days-off work schedule and moved their families to less-threatening grounds, and the houses were eventually sold and moved away.

Petroleum resources aren't renewable, and it finally came to pass that those in the Dome began to show signs of depletion. It went through a series of owners as both its overall output and number of producing wells declined, and prior to Hurricane Katrina, its marginal profits depended on a handful of wells and a very small contract crew.

Why this brief history of what was once such an influential part of the Delta? Well, if you look at a map or chart of the "Wheel," you'll plainly see the canals that once provided ingress and egress to the wells. Many of those wells have now been plugged, and the valves and flow regulators that complete the well at the surface -- the "Christmas trees" -- removed. After that, little or no oil-field traffic entered those canals, thus allowing the silt from the effluent of Red Pass to fill them in at least partially. You can't see that on a map.

You also can't see many of the changes in the marsh around the canals, which is their defining factor. Once you enter the Dome from Red Pass at the old docking area, maps are mostly good for rough reckoning of the canals' whereabouts; more precisely establishing their locations will require a depth recorder and your outboard's lower unit. However, the "main drag" -- the circular canal from which the others were dredged -- is fairly obvious. So motor along it at a careful speed until you come upon a spot at which your map indicates that a canal should be present. And lo and behold, some low, narrow, parallel myrtle-topped ridges will as often as not signal its presence.

Nevertheless, it's likely that the mouth of the canal is quite shallow. Therefore, trim up the outboard and idle into it -- you shouldn't get stuck -- and soon the water should deepen. And as you idle towards the end of the canal (where the wells once were, and, generally, the best spots), you'll notice a slight increase in clarity. At this time, though, that should have little effect on the fishing. Supplement your jigs with small dead shrimp; that should sweeten them up enough to entice the reds that are the Dome's primary target species. Suspend the jig around 2 feet beneath a 3-inch weighted popping cork, and you're ready for action.