125, 125, and 75… that’s the count for Captain Marty LaCoste of Absolute Fishing Charters (985-856-4477) the last three days. Speckled trout have invaded the nearshore rigs below Bayou DuLarge big time in the last week or so, and anglers are catching them two at a time.
LaCoste and I hit the rigs yesterday to see if he could maintain such an impressive pace. With three anglers in the boat, we thought we might box our 75 and be back in before breakfast. While we stopped off for some live croakers on the way out, they never made it in the water until we had our limit.
The croakers were for a trip out to the Ship Shoal lighthouse to see if we could scare up a trophy trout or two. On the main rigs in the Ship Shoal block, however, all we needed was a few bags of the watermelon/red (avocado in the local vernacular) Berkley Gulp! Goby scented soft plastics.
After we arrived at rig 26, LaCoste tossed me a small bag with two jigheads in it and instructed me to tie to the monofilament loop between them. The jigs were tied together to form a tandem rig, and we added the Goby to one and a Gulp! Swimming Mullet to the other.
“You’ve got to let it go all the way to the bottom, and just kind of drag it back while keeping the slack out of your line,” LaCoste instructed. “The bite can be a little finicky… that’s why you want to keep the slack out.”
We immediately started picking up fish and had about 15 in the box before a crew boat pulled up and tied up right over where we were fishing. The commotion slowed the action for a little while, but the hungry trout couldn’t keep their mouths closed for long. They started biting again almost directly under the boat.
“Sometimes the boats will shut them down for a while, but they kind of get used to it after a while,” LaCoste said. “The important thing to remember is to keep moving around the rig until you locate the fish. Once that school shuts down, move around again to see if you can pick up another school.”
LaCoste’s advice rang true as we moved from corner to corner on the rig. Some corners were hot, and some were not. We eventually settled on a giant school of trout that were about a cast length off the rig. That’s when the action picked up dramatically.
We landed fish two at a time on the tandem rigs for about 30 minutes to reach the magic 75 mark. At its peak, the bite was extremely fast with many trout hitting our tandem rigs as soon as they hit the water.
“When it’s like this, it really doesn’t matter what you throw,” LaCoste added. “But when it was slower, I think that Gulp! Goby really paid off. The avocado has been hot, but I think we could have also caught on black/chartreuse and purple/chartreuse today.”
The run out to the lighthouse produced a few larger trout, but none of the giants we were looking for. Our Carolina rigged croakers produced blue fish, giant lady fish, some 3-pound trout, a couple small Lemon Fish, and a shark or two.