Events & Announcements

Bridge construction on Pointe-aux-Chenes WMA

The Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries (LDWF) is advising the public that bridge construction across the eastern water control structure on the Montegut Management Unit has closed that structure to public access on Pointe-aux-Chenes Wildlife Management Area (WMA).[…]

Catfish

Back to basics

Whether it’s blue catfish or channel catfish, Central Louisiana’s coastal bays in the springtime are teeming with both. Toss in the occasional flathead, and what you have is the skinning pliers Ictalurus Trifecta of North America.

From the Atchafalaya River to East Cote Blanche Bay, nearly every bayou, canal or unnamed tributary that empties freshwater is a potential location to drop anchor and tightline for catfish in this region.[…]

Freshwater Fishing

Back to basics

Whether it’s blue catfish or channel catfish, Central Louisiana’s coastal bays in the springtime are teeming with both. Toss in the occasional flathead, and what you have is the skinning pliers Ictalurus Trifecta of North America.

From the Atchafalaya River to East Cote Blanche Bay, nearly every bayou, canal or unnamed tributary that empties freshwater is a potential location to drop anchor and tightline for catfish in this region.[…]

Freshwater Fishing

Goggle-eye chunky in Basin

I’ve always been taught catching a fish on the first cast is bad luck, so when my cork dipped beneath the surface of the water this morning (May 4) I was a little hesitant to set the hook.[…]

Freshwater Fishing

The 14-inch minimum:

The 14-inch-minimum-size limit on all black bass — both largemouth and spotted — in the Atchafalaya Basin, Lakes Verret, Palourde, Fausse Point/Dauterive areas has been in effect since the aftermath of Hurricane Andrew in 1992.[…]

Freshwater Fishing

No fancy stuff

Modern bass fishermen are known for their endless array of fancy and expensive equipment. Fishing with Jim Looney is like a throwback to a simpler time, a time when it seemed like any angler could be reasonably confident of catching bass.[…]

Freshwater Fishing

The scribe

Jim Looney is more than the average angler, with 12 fishing booklets to his credit. The books focus on how to catch bass, bream and sac-a-lait in the Grand Bayou-Lake Verret area, as well as the Atchafalaya Basin, and redfish and speckled trout in Pointe au Chien.[…]

Contents

Double dipping

The craggy man at the bow controls of the boat turned off the boat’s engine. He lit a cigarette and scanned the points formed by the intersection of the Texaco Canal and Grand Bayou.[…]

Contents

Pocket Perch

When I first moved to New Orleans as a (very) young man in the mid-1960s, I just knew that I was a fishing hot dog. I thought I knew all there was to know about catching bass, bream, white perch and catfish — and that’s where the fishing world ended.[…]

Contents

Outer limits

This is it: You don’t have to wait any longer.

The month we long for with impatient anticipation throughout the entire year has finally arrived in all its spring glory.[…]

Contents

A Man and a Fish

Following my GPS, I tentatively nosed my truck through the fortress-like gates of Mariners Cove in Slidell. When the man invited me to hunt alligator gar in the canal behind his house, I had just kind of assumed that the trail would lead me to a rural backwater retreat in the salt marshes between Slidell and Lake Pontchartrain.[…]