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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

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.[…]

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.[…]

Inshore Fishing

Summer cycle

Capt. Zutie Auenson has two fishing seasons. From sometime in September until late April, he charters from his permanent home in Golden Meadow.[…]

Inshore Fishing

Terminal tackle

What is on the business end of Auenson’s line varies very little. The vast majority of the time it holds a Carolina rig with a live croaker. The rig is simple — 18 inches of 30-pound-test monofilament.[…]

Inshore Fishing

Grand Isle trout

Zutie Auenson is clearly a man taken with Grand Isle, his April to September guiding headquarters. Although he is obsessed with speckled trout, he says that the island resort has it all.[…]

Freshwater Fishing

Where to go

Lake D’Arbonne is located near Farmerville in north-central Louisiana, and there are several public boat ramps providing easy access to the stump fields in the Stowe Creek, Terral Island and Bear Creek areas of the lake.[…]

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Stump field slabs

Every year during March and April, fishermen hammer Lake D’Arbonne’s shallow cypress trees and banks for spawning white perch (aka crappie or sac-a-lait). It’s a mad rush because you only have a few weeks to take advantage of the relatively easy bite.[…]

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.[…]

Columns

Dumb game laws

Louisiana Sportsman is of course the best outdoor publication around, but I do read a few others. So when the March 2012 issue of Petersen’s Hunting hit the mailbox I took a quick look at the petersenshunting.com page for the monthly highlights.[…]

Columns

Red tide falling

In February, the Wyoming state legislature considered an amendment to a bill requiring that state to purchase an aircraft carrier. Even though it failed, there were 22 legislators who voted for the amendment.[…]

Columns

The Ruger SR40c

A recent concealed carry class included a newlywed couple. The young woman was an attractive emergency room nurse with a winning smile, long brown hair and a dad who was a retired federal law enforcement officer.[…]

Inshore Fishing

Under Pressure

This is my son’s first year of playing kid-pitch baseball.

After looking like an all-star in the batting cages during his first practice, he stood on deck and watched the batter before him take a hardball to the lower back in his team’s first attempt to hit off of an inconsistent 9-year-old pitcher.[…]

Columns

Small, compact spinnerbait a hit

For a man who has been making some of the finest artificial lures in the country for 31 years, Texan Lonnie Stanley sure was talking excitedly — gushing, actually — at length a few weeks ago about his newest baby: a Wedgetail Mini Wedge Runner.[…]