If you want to get a friend or child interested in fishing, what’s one of the best things to do? Take them bream fishing. Just about anywhere there’s a puddle in the state, there are bream.
Not only are they plentiful, but bream are extremely easy to catch. Throw your live cricket under a small cork, and watch it plunge beneath the surface.
The recommendation also applies to red snapper, too.
That’s because the fish are so easy to catch right now, according to Capt. Chris Moran of Moran’s Marina in Port Fourchon.
“It’s good all year, but given that June is the time they let us fish, that’s when we catch them,” he said.
Although Moran catches snapper out to 80 miles, he said they can be found as close in as 6 miles, making them very reachable for bay boats on calm days.
And even though Moran has a big offshore boat, there are some days that the seas just don’t allow him to get in the big water.
“For almost every outboard that they make, it gets pretty miserable after 18 knots (of wind),” he said. “If its 15 to 20, but it’s mostly 13 to 14 all day, that’s not too bad.
“At 18 knots, I can make the day, but not every customer is accustomed to that, and I try to use the (weather forecast) to tell them to do something else.”
Moran said monitoring the current speed can really help anglers determine their boat positioning.
“The less current days we have, the closer you can fish to the structure,” he said. “When we have those 3- or 4-knot current days, you have to take into account the angle of your drift.”
Moran also noted that he almost never ties up to a rig, opting instead to hold position with his outboards.
Snapper are so abundant right now in the Gulf that pulling the big ones out of a school can be tricky because the small snapper will oftentimes get to the bait first. However, Moran said up-sizing your bait is a key factor to getting a trophy.
“(Last year) we would drop chunks of bonito the size of your fist, and the little ones would come tag on it, and finally a big one came and took it,” he said.
Moran also said he is a huge fan of big, live hardtails.
Having good electronics on the boat stacks the odds in one’s favor no matter what species is targeted for the day, and Moran said his depthfinder has become a vital part of his arsenal.
“I live and die by that thing,” he said. “I have it tuned in to where I can identify depth, and sometimes you can identify the size of the fish to a degree.
“The tighter the pattern, the smaller the fish, and the looser the pattern, the bigger the fish.”
Red snapper are almost always suspended at a certain depth, making it crucial to know what depth your bait is at all times.
“A lot of times what I’ll do is get a guy to drop to the bottom and tell him to give me a count,” Moran said. “One day, it might be a 50 count. The next day, it might be a 30 count at the same depth because of the current.”
