Lafitte’s redfish action can be as scalding as the weather this month — but just how hard you have to work to limit out is dependent upon the spring weather far up the Mississippi River.
Storm clouds loomed over Capt. Jason Shilling’s head as he idled away from Seaway Marina in Lafitte with the intention of heading toward Lake Salvador.
With an eye toward the threatening weather, Shilling explained that one of the reasons we were headed to Lake Salvador rather than some of his typical summertime redfish stomping grounds was because of the lack of weather way up north.
“This time of year, we’re usually not in Lake Salvador,” he began. “But with the mild winter we’ve had, we don’t have the Davis Pond diversion pumping right now because they didn’t have any snow up north.”
Since the Mississippi River wasn’t full and flowing at near maximum capacity, the diversion just north of Lafitte sat dormant.
The resulting lack of current that would typically be flowing through Lake Salvador allowed several things to happen last summer that allowed the much vaunted lake to get a little bit of its groove back.
“Since there’s not a lot of current coming through there to push out the redfish and muddy up the water, the fish have been able to stay in there,” Shilling continued. “The grass is growing. The mullet are in there eating on the grass. Lake Salvador is holding the fish.”
Shilling, his fishing buddy Gerald Roy and I proceeded to take full advantage of the redfish that were stacked up in Lake Salvador this time last year.
We didn’t even pay attention to the throng of boats that were obviously catching redfish by fishing dead shrimp on bottom.
“Yeah, there’s a little reef under there that’s holding some fish,” Shilling pointed out, “but we’ll come back to it later after the crowd moves on. I want to go over to the west shoreline to see if we can catch some on a spoon. There have been some (reds) pushing over there and chasing mullet around the vegetation.”
What a difference a year and Mother Nature makes.
The stability found in Lake Salvador last year was nowhere to be found this year.
Although the water had cleared up as of late May, the water flowing through the Jeff Davis Diversion earlier this year has already done its damage in the form of no grass and little bait.
There are a ton of redfish in Lake Salvador, but Shilling and others have noticed that they are running a little bit smaller than normal.
“We’re seeing a lot of 15- to 16-inch reds up there this year, where last year they were 21- to 24-inches,” Shilling noted. “I think in the great scheme of things, the fish are just a little bit behind this year because of our crazy winter.”
Although this past winter wasn’t very harsh as far as cold temperatures go, it was relentless.
“The fronts were back to back for a while there,” Shilling said, “and we were getting late-season fronts blowing through once or twice per week.
“In fact, on May 12, we had a front move through that dropped us down into the upper 40s in Lafitte.”
In other words, a winter like the one we just experienced here in Louisiana kept the water in Lake Salvador from stabilizing — and the lack of stable water meant that the early summer fishing this year was way behind last year.
“The fish just couldn’t seem to get into a pattern,” Shilling pointed out. “The water was up and down. It would stay low for three days, come back up and then get blown right back out.”
That’s not a good recipe for stable fishing patterns because of the weather’s effects on bait.
Shilling passed along that he knew of some shrimpers who were catching 70 to 80 boxes of shrimp a night in Grand Isle Pass at the beginning of May, but that last front that blew through during the middle of May for the most part wiped that out.
“If you don’t have the bait, you don’t have the fish,” Shilling went on. “That’s why Salvador was so good last year. There was a ton of bait in there, and the fish didn’t have any reason to go anywhere else.
“But when the bait is in and out, the fish are in and out, too.”
With the fish as scattered as the bait, Shilling said his best pattern has been to work for the fish.
Whereas last year he could point to some rippling water and tell his anglers to throw right there, so far this year he has had to put some time on his big motor and trolling motor.
“Everything is going to settle down, but we’re going to have to work for them,” Shilling said. “All that means is quickly fishing lots of places until you come across some fish.
“So far this year, we’ve either been burning the banks with spinnerbaits and spoons, or we’ve been point-hopping with shrimp.”
Some days, working for redfish bites has put Shilling burning banks and point-hopping from Bay L’ours to Lake Hermitage in a day’s time.
And the key to getting bites has been spending a little more time in spots that have paid off recently while quickly searching for new schools of fish.
“Nothing so far this year has been a one-stop-shop,” Shilling noted. “We have been moving and covering a lot of territory to put fish in the box.”
But things, they are a changing.
During late May, Shilling found noticeably warmer water and a lot more bait on top of the water in Bayou Rigolets.
“Maybe that’s a good sign that everything was just delayed a little bit because of our extended winter,” he said. “And there are some reports of better redfish deep in the marshes
“What that means to me is there are fish around, and they’re not going to be able to hide forever.”
And when they do show themselves, reds will find stable water and bait, and things will get back to normal around Lafitte.
During July, “normal” for Shilling means fishing Little Lake and the Bayou DuPont area, where he typically catches fish along any of the canals off the islands by trolling the banks.
“And you can fish the rocks at Bay L’ours and Round Lake, as well as the cuts around Brusle Lake,” Shilling explained. “Some of those places were holding nicer redfish in May, so they should really turn on during the summer.”
It’s astounding to think that weather so far up north could have affected the fishing so far south. But with the Davis Pond diversion open earlier this year, the snow didn’t have to fall in Louisiana for it to get our attention.
Perhaps the redfish simply took their own version of a Louisiana school system’s snow day when all activities are canceled because of a few flakes.
Snow days don’t last long in Louisiana, though, and neither does tough fishing in Lafitte.
When you start seeing those rubber-stamp weather forecasts, where one day looks exactly like the next, you can bet things are getting back to normal in Lafitte.
It might get a little warm, but in Shilling’s world, 90-degree weather affects fishermen much more than it affects fish.
And as long as he is catching fish, Shilling really doesn’t care what the weather does.
Editor’s note: Contact Capt. Jason Shilling with New Orleans Style Fishing Charters at 504-416-5896.
