Features
High heat trout tactics
Sunscreen, wide-brim hats, those little handheld fans that blow a cool mist on your face … yeah, speckled trout will never benefit from such high-heat indulgences.[…]
Features
Bass Fishing
Pitch Black
The Pipeline Canal was completely impassable.
And with that, Patrick Engerran immediately resorted to Plan B.[…]
Features
Transformer trout
The sun was just throwing amber light over the horizon when my bone-colored Badonk-a-donk disappeared in a toilet flush.
And my grumbling over the 3 a.m. alarm disappeared like fog in a stiff wind.[…]
Bass Fishing
Shallow-minded tactics
Nature is dynamic; and like a well-composed symphony, its performance comprises multiple complementary elements that rise and fall at the conductor’s direction. […]
Crappie/Bream
Pop a ‘top’
It’s prime time to target Ouachita River crappie in the tops. Here’s how one noted angler catches his share of summertime slabs hunkered down in the brush.[…]
Crappie/Bream
High noon at Crackerhead
“There’s a good one,” he said, glancing over his right shoulder. “And there’s a good one,” he said, throwing an eye over his left shoulder. “That’s a good one, too,” he nodded at another one.[…]
Bass Fishing
Schools of thought
The siren song of schooling bass has lured many an unsuspecting angler to spend the rest of his days wondering what the heck just happened.[…]
Bass Fishing
The Record Keeper
The hits were explosive — water and pieces of vegetation flew wildly.
Or maybe it was Lyle Johnson’s violent reaction to the hits. He doesn’t like ‘em to get away, and he fusses at himself for every missed fis[…]
Features
Made in the shade
“I like fish that pull hard, ones that fight. I’m fishin’ for fun,” twanged Jeb Ard in a patented country accent. “If I want to eat fish, we go to a catfish buffet.”[…]
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.[…]
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. […]
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
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
River rattin’
“Ya ever been on the river before?” drawled the laconic 48-year-old.
“Nah,” I had to answer.[…]
Crappie/Bream
Look down for slabs
Jerry “J.T.” Thompson stared intently at the screen of his 12-inch down-scan unit as he brought the pontoon boat off plane.[…]
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?[…]