Fishing

Record-breaking heat — and summer hasn’t officially arrived

Hydrating is important when temperatures soar because perspiration is the key to keeping your body from getting sick with sunstroke. When it’s hot and humid, you need to frequently replenish liquids lost to sweat. Avoid caffeinated and alcoholic beverages because both are diuretics that will cause you to urinate frequently. If you do enjoy these kinds of drinks, consume extra water to compensate.[…]

Features

Get the drop on Trestles specks

The legendary Trestles train bridge on Lake Pontchartrain is loaded with fish — and fishermen — every spring.  When the speckled trout bite is super hot and winds are calm, the 5-mile-long bridge often has a boat on almost every piling.[…]

Features

Pick your poison

I sure was happy when Jeff Poe pointed his boat’s pointy nose north out of Hebert’s Landing on Calcasieu Lake. In the early light, the sky to the south looked like a bruised eggpant — purple and ugly. […]

Catfish

Look, mom: No bait!

Catfishing is supposed to be all about a gob of slimy worms, or bloody chicken liver, or smelly cut bait — or better yet some concoction of secret ingredients, usually including spoiled sour cheese.[…]

Bass Fishing

Kahara Diving Frog

The Kahara Diving Frog is a great summertime bass lure, especially on waters that get choked with surface weeds this time of year. Unlike traditional hollow-body frog lures which stay on the surface full time, this one dives underwater, and even under lily pads every time the angler moves the lure.[…]

Features

Better late than never

Although he still gets up some mornings at 3 a.m. to participate in the rat race to go catch fish, Kevin Lawson admittedly isn’t as mad at speckled trout as he used to be.[…]

Bass Fishing

Perfecting your pocket hopping

Think of a scavenger hunt: You’re trying to locate a specific objective and the task requires a lot of looking. Random scrambling wastes too much time, so you try to mentally break down the search by likely parameters — where would the hunted items likely exist?[…]

Crappie/Bream

Flat out crappie

“The fish have it backwards when it comes to the weather,” Nick Young said as he cruised his big Ranger down the edge of the boat channel, scanning his electronics for suspended crappie.[…]

Columns

The silver king

When an angler sets a hook in a tarpon, there is an explosion. There’s no delayed action fuse in this fish. The water erupts and a platinum-silver streak shears the surface with the force of a depth charge exploding.[…]