Dear Capt. Paul:
Can you give me any coordinates for reefs in Big Lake? I’ve only been fishing there a short amount of time and I only seem to catch trout when the birds are working. I would like to be able to catch trout anytime.
Thanks,
Chris Comeaux
Capt. Paul’s response:
There is a newly constructed artificial reef in the lake near the West Pass and Turner Bay area. I don’t have a name on it yet, but the information that I obtained was that it is constructed of crushed limestone in a low-profile configuration to minimize the impact on other uses of the area.
The material was unloaded and placed on the floor of Calcasieu Lake at or about N30 03’ 20.114 x W93 18’ 26.509. I believe the datum used was NAD 27, but I have no positive information on that.
In addition, the artificial reef coordinator for the Louisiana Department of Wildlife & Fisheries indicates there are four new artificial reefs in Calcasieu Lake. They are as follows (coordinates in NAD83/WGS 84):
• Oyster Reef No. 1 (Lat: 29 50.9733’ N, Lon: 93 17.023’ W)
• Oyster Reef No. 2 (Lat: 29 50.965’ N, Lon: 93 16.905’ W)
• Oyster Reef No. 3 (Lat: 29 51.032’ N, Lon: 93 16.974’ W)
• Finfish No. 1 Reef (Lat: 29 58.185’ N, Lon: 93 18.062’ W)
Those buoys you may see in Calcasieu Lane that are marked “LSU RESEARCH GRANT” do not mark underwater reefs. These buoys house an array of special receivers to “listen” for speckled trout with transmitters.
These receiver buoys will be placed on channel markers in the Calcasieu Ship Channel and on buoys in the main body of the lake. Boaters and fishermen should not tamper with or moor to the buoys.
The Coastal Conservation Association (CCA) and LDWF also tag fish in Calcasieu Lake. These dart tags are placed in the same location on the fish, but have different text on them.
Fishermen who catch fish with these tags should release the fish alive and call 800-891-3977 to report the tag number and where and when the fish was caught. It is vital that these fish be released alive so that researchers can continue to collect movement data.
Fishermen who provide recapture information and release the tagged fish alive will receive Louisiana Sport Fish Tagging Program hats and T-shirts, and be entered in an annual drawing for GPS units and cash prizes of up to $500.
It may also interest you that I have a program that I call Capt. Paul’s Fishing Edge of GPS Waypoints for Lake Calcasieu (BIG LAKE) that is for sale at www.lasmag.com. The Big Lake EDGE program has more than 100 waypoints that are in and around the lake.
The programs give anglers an advantage in getting to and finding fishing spots, moving around and getting back from some of the more productive fishing areas in the state.
Capt. Paul’s Fishing Edge is a unique electronic media program that can be downloaded directly into various GPS units from the manufacturer’s mapping program or via several of Maptech’s mapping software programs. This technology saves countless hours of having to manually enter each separate waypoint value into the GPS receiver.
The entire procedure of loading more than 150 waypoints from an Edge file takes less than three minutes from the time you view the email file to the time that they are loaded in the GPS receiver.
Presently, I have 19 Capt. Paul’s Fishing Edge files. They include Barataria Bay, Lake Borgne, Calcasieu Lake, Hopedale to Bayou Terre aux Boeufs, Hopedale to the Mississippi Sound, Delacroix to Pointe a la Hache, Bayou Bienvenue, Port Sulphur, Lake Pontchartrain, Myrtle Grove- Lake Hermitage, Empire to Buras, Vermilion Bay, Leeville West, Leeville East, Lafitte, The Rigolets, Big Branch NWR, Bayou Sauvage NWR and Pearl River WMA.
For more information, go to www.lasmag.com.
Got a GPS question for Capt. Paul? Ask it at www.lasmag.com, and you may be featured in a coming issue.
