Trout bite hampered by persistent winds, dirty water, LaCoste says
Strong south and southeast winds out of Dularge have dampened the speckled trout bite and forced fishermen to move into interior duck ponds to target redfish, according to a local guide.
“You can’t catch trout in 30 mile-per-hour winds,” said Capt. Marty LaCoste, with Absolute Fishing Charters. “The weather is messing everything up. The fish are all offshore, so you can’t really go with all this wind — it’s too rough.”
Not only has the persistent wind prevented offshore trips, but it’s taken a toll on the water clarity, he said.
“The main thing with all this wind is the water will be all dirtied up. So even if it calms down by the weekend, I don’t think the fishing will be any good because the water’s all dirty,” LaCoste said. “It’s going to take several days for that water to get back like it needs to be before the trout start biting again.”
Redfish, however, are another story. LaCoste is still having great success catching reds with Matrix Vortex Shad in purple haze, blazin’ hornet and Spartacus on a 1/4-ounce jighead.
“You can catch them in any shallow water duck pond from Lost Lake all the way to Lake DeCade,” he said. “We’re using gold spoons, too, because the grass is coming up in all the ponds. It’s starting to make it tough, so we’re going to have to start going to weedless stuff.”
No matter if he’s targeting specks or reds, LaCoste uses either pink or green 30-pound Fins Windtamer braid without a leader.
“I tie all my stuff direct,” he said. “Now you could go to a different area and it might matter, but over here it doesn’t.
“If you go to Lake Pontchartrain, you can’t do that. In different areas, you have to have a leader, but over here you don’t.”
One possibility for specks this coming weekend — and he stressed it was only a possibility — would be to find a spot behind Isles Dernieres with live bait.
“If you’re fishing out of Cocodrie, if you can get behind the islands and have some protection and have live shrimp, you might have a chance at catching trout,” LaCoste said. “It’s a possibility with live shrimp, if you find some protected water that still might be clean.
“Open water, I think, will be out of the question unless it miraculously cleans up somehow.”
