Columns
Take a holiday for sac-a-lait
Fishing is a lifetime pursuit; one never stops learning. Sometimes the education comes from books, videos or seminars. Sometimes it comes from the kids down the street.[…]
Columns
Currents
LDWF proposes its own raid
The Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries announced in December that it was implementing mid-year budget reductions of $2.2 million.[…]
Columns
A new year in paradise
The magazine in the doctor’s office referred to Grand Teton National Park as a nature lover’s paradise. No doubt it is, especially in the winter when the game descends the mountains and walks around with the humans.[…]
Columns
In the rearview mirror
After 34 years with LDWF’s Division of Law Enforcement, I retired as assistant chief in April 2011, and returned home to Gardner. My career with LDWF provided the opportunity to work with dedicated fish and wildlife enforcement and management professionals, elected and appointed officials and hunters and fishermen throughout Louisiana.[…]
Columns
Drift ‘Yaking
Anchoring and trolling are undoubtedly productive methods of fishing in Southeast Louisiana. However, wintertime ‘yak fishermen who learn to drift will find that this method can put fish in the box when nothing else will.[…]
Columns
Rusty gun syndrome
We were swapping out units: I was getting a newer take-home unit from one of the other guys. He was getting another unit assigned to him by the chief in our small-town police department.[…]
Columns
Trail camera scouting
This is my inaugural column in Mississippi Sportsman based around the general topic of trail-camera scouting. Each month I will share advice, tips, tactics, strategies and techniques regarding the use of digital scouting cameras that have proven useful to me over time in the successful pursuit of whitetail deer on my farm in west-central Mississippi.[…]
Columns
YUMbrella Rig
The newest wave of artificial lures has taken the fishing world by storm within the past few months.[…]
Ask Captain Paul
Blind datum
Dear Capt. Paul:
We recently conducted a navigation demonstration using a Rockwell PLGR II (military grade).[…]
Apex Predator
Quick Freeze: Tips for cleaning your deer and hogs
After wasting too many hours of my life deboning meat and killing too many animals to afford a butcher, I came up with a deboning solution that works like a charm.[…]
Apex Predator
Smokepole stalking success: Follow the bubbles
The last few weekends have netted me a bunch of meat.[…]
Bass Fishing
Instigator Lures spinnerbait
A growing number of bass fishermen in and around the Atchafalaya Basin are tuning into a spinnerbait that hums through the water much the same way a piano makes its melodic music.[…]
Columns
One gun theory
An old chestnut states “Beware the man with one gun.”[…]
Columns
Do we have a tiger by the tail?
Louisiana is a shrimp-crazy state. Until being battered by cheaper imports, shrimp fisheries were the backbone of the economies of many coastal communities. The value of the fishery dwarfed the others.[…]
Columns
The Gold Mine
If you fish the famed Sulfur Mine in Galliano, you likely won’t find any gold, but you will find lots of silver and bronze. This old industrial mine site is a perfect place to take your kayak for limits of wintertime specks and reds.[…]
Columns
Stop before you clean it
Strip… strip… strip.
My mind was setting the cadence for a very slow retrieve of my weighted fly. Holding to the bottom meant that any change in the slack between rod tip and water would either be fish or snag.[…]