Calcasieu Lake

Calcasieu Lake covers close to eighty square miles and averages about a metre deep. You could wade a long way out into it.

It is not really a lake either. This is the broad part of an estuary, brackish water sitting where the Calcasieu River meets the Gulf, with a channel at the southern end letting the tide move in and out. Locals call it Big Lake. Anglers call it the speckled trout capital of the world, a claim the shallow marsh edges and oyster reefs go a long way toward earning.

The name came from the Atakapa. French speakers wrote it down as Quelqueshue, after a leader called Katkosh Yok, from katkosh meaning eagle and yok meaning to cry. Crying Eagle. The river that carries the name runs two hundred miles south from Vernon Parish, past the city of Lake Charles, before it gets here.