One of the things that separate professional guides from weekend anglers is the experience of time spent on the water. However, sometimes the fish do things that leave even the best guides searching for answers. Take my recent trip with Captain Jeff Poe of Big Lake Guide Service (337-598-3268) for example. We caught a limit of speckled trout at Big Lake, but we also lost more than a limit. It was enough to leave Poe scratching his head.We began our day fishing the north end of the lake with a combination of glow/chartreuse Norton Sand Eels on 1/8-ounce jigheads and Storm Thundersticks. The Thunderstick is a discontinued jointed jerkbait that Poe made famous recently with Kevin Ford on an episode of Louisiana Sportsman TV.
I caught a nice trout on my first cast with the Sand Eel, and brought him aboard against the protests of Poe. Apparently, I wasn’t supposed to catch one on the first cast, and Poe forecasted nothing but doom and gloom for the remainder of the day. Hey, I tried to shake him off at the side of the boat, but that little sucker just wouldn’t let go.
Soon thereafter, Poe got hooked up with what looked to be a trophy trout on the Thunderstick. He fought the fish as I started digging for my camera. I raised it to my eye only to snap a picture of a dejected Poe as the trout came unbuttoned. “That was a five or six pounder,” he wailed.
Poe continued throwing the Thunderstick and continued missing fish. Some would jump all over the jerkbait and never even touch it. Some would get hooked up only to come off about half way to the boat. Some would swirl on it four or five times on the same retrieve but never fully commit.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with these crazy fish,” Poe lamented. “We’re fishing around a ton of fish, and we’re getting their attention, but they’re just not wanting it. Sometimes, trout act like this when you’re attracting them more out of aggravation than hunger.”
Thankfully, we were around so many fish that the odds were definitely in our favor. Poe finally started landing a few on the Thunderstick and eventually realized that every fish he brought into the boat was foul hooked on the top of the head or on the side.
“That’s a sure sign they’re not really wanting to eat it,” he said. “They’re just slashing at it and turning away at the last second. We’re catching the ones that get just a little bit too close.”
Throughout the remainder of the day, Poe and I continued to work on them with the jig and the jerkbait. We wound up with a limit of trout with the majority being two to four pounds.
We continued to miss several fish because of the funny bite, but we also continued to land a good fish every now and then and eventually reached our limit. We caught all our fish over oyster reefs in about three feet of water, and all came on the Sand Eel and Thunderstick.
“It’s not too difficult to catch a limit at Calcasieu,” Poe said. “There’s a ton of fish in here, and there isn’t any reason to drop it from 25 to 15 like some are suggesting.”