Forecast means speckled trout fishing should be looking up
The sun and the tide were rising as wind sang through the fishing lines of the unused poles on the boat. It looked to be a promising blue sky Saturday (April 28), as birds fed on balls of shrimp where the water cleared in the growing salinity of Lake Robin. The wind was light with minor gusts, and current lines looked to funnel bait through bottlenecks over oyster beds. And the second cast of the day yielded a healthy speck that had struck the bait so hard that all 3 inches of the Minnow Magic Flurry Minnow disappeared into his croaking mouth causing it to bleed all over the angler’s new shirt.
“He just christened your shirt,” Capt. Jonathan Ryan said. “These trout are hungry.”
Be sure to watch the attached video to learn more about what’s been happening in Delacroix.
Clear skies, a rising tide and a southeast wind created good prospects for the day that lay ahead but by 3 p.m. there were only two specks, a red, a black drum and sunburn to show for the more than 70 miles traveled throughout the Delacroix/Hopedale area.
“Everybody gets skunked,” Ryan said. “It wasn’t a very productive day of fishing.”
Save for one guide who’d hit the birds early, the story at Sweetwater Marina was the same: It was a bad day for fishing.
“It looks like the only thing anybody brought home was just enough for dinner,” Ryan said.
Ryan and company had gone from Lake Robin to Lake Coquille to the Lake of Second Trees where they fished the coves.
“We needed more tide to flood the area,” Ryan said.
They then pushed on to Bayou Terre aux Boeufs and into the Twin Pipeline before stopping in Lake John. Then it was on to Lake Amadee and to Grand Point Bay, Point a la Hache, Third Bay and Big Four Bayou.
Nothing.
The southeast wind had not yet pushed in enough water to increase the salinity and clarify the water muddied by the northwest wind the week before. By the end of the day, they’d fished the entire water column with everything from red-and-white Top Dogs, chartreuse She Dogs and curly tailed double rigs to 1/2-ounce jigheads rigged with dead shrimp on the bottom.
They caught young school trout and hard heads but nothing to keep.
The good news is that the wind is still coming in from the southeast, which will only improve water conditions in the coming days. This, paired with the ability to fish with live shrimp this Tuesday and a forecast of clear skies should make for good fishing early in the week.
“If they’re going to use topwaters, they need to do it now,” Ryan said. “They’ll only be able to use them through mid-May.”
And finding success couldn’t more simple, he said.
“Look to fish the birds early and late,” Ryan said. “Use anything that looks like a shrimp or tip light-colored bait with shrimp. The bite is shutting down from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., so fishing the birds early and late is the plan.”
