Veteran tournament angler shares his tips for fishing the Atchafalaya Basin
A Lafayette bass angler likes the many options he has to catch bass in September when he launches his boat out of a landing along the West Atchafalaya Basin Protection Levee in St. Mary Parish.
Billy Billeaud, who has fished various major bass fishing circuits for years, has enjoyed some memorable smackdowns on the west side of the Atchafalaya River this time of year from Beau Bayou to Verdunville. He expects more of the same this September, particularly along the G.A. Cut, identified on most maps as Lake Fausse Pointe Cut.
Billeaud, 64, talked about the prospects while waiting for a storm to pass while he was at Woman Lake in Minnesota, where he was preparing to fish for a Bassmaster Open tournament Aug. 14-16 at Leech Lake in Walker, Minn.
Billeaud’s most recent trip in the Atchafalaya Basin was with his wife, Michele, on the second Sunday in August. They caught an estimated 20-25 bass in a few of his favorite places out of Myette Point Landing in the Atchafalaya Basin, where he started fishing at 9 with his father, the late Louis “T-Coon” Billeaud.
So many years later, Billeaud knows the bayous, swamps and borrow pits harboring bass. Getting to them gets iffier and iffier each year once the nation’s last great overflow swamp falls and gets within its banks. Siltation changes the landscape each year, often making many more potential honey holes difficult or impossible to access safely.
Water movement
Billeaud prefers to fish areas where there is current, like the G.A. Cut, but at the same time he said as many or more bass are caught by others in places where there’s little or no current. Nevertheless, there’s water movement in those areas such as Charenton Lake, Duck Lake and Flat Lake, to name a few.
“The G.A. Cut can be real good from south of Myette Point and working your way up to Bayou Benoit,” Billeaud said about the long, deep channel.
It’s a major north/south “highway” for boats running between the levee and the river. Billeaud has slammed the steel home on plenty of bass along that stretch while flipping a Zoom Z-Hawg or a Zoom Brush Hog, either one in black/blue or green pumpkin. He fishes the soft plastics tied to either 25-pound test Seaguar InvizX fluorocarbon line or 65-pound test Cortland braided line under a 3/8- or 5/16-ounce worm weight. The heavier, braided line is for hauling bass out of hyacinths and other vegetation, he said. He concentrates his efforts along the shoreline in 4- to 5-foot depths around any kind of structure in the water.
“I find there are always fish shallow,” he said, noting he usually tries a 10-yard or so stretch and if he doesn’t get bit, picks up the trolling motor, cranks up and moves “to the next thing that looks good.”
Baits to use
Other artificials that produce along the channel are Chatterbaits, bladed jigs and crankbaits, according to Billeaud. If G.A. Cut bassin’ isn’t on, he’ll try Beau Bayou, Charenton and Grevemberg.
Billeaud’s go-to baits? He said artificials he counts on in those other areas are a 3/8- or ½-ounce “Brett’s bluegill”-colored Z-Man Chatterbait, 3/8- or ½-ounce chartreuse/white double-bladed (one red) War Eagle spinnerbait for dirty water and double-bladed shad-colored War Eagle spinnerbait, or a chartreuse/blue or chartreuse/black with four black stripes Bandit crankbait, or similarly colored square-bill crankbaits.
“I used to catch a ton of fish in Beau Bayou back in the day before it got so shallow,” he said. “It was a hotspot for years.”
