Bass Fishing
D’Arbonne After Dark
Dale Taylor had been slinging his black buzz bait all night long. Gayle, his wife, had turned it in long ago, and was resting peacefully on the back deck[…]
Bass Fishing
Bass Fishing
Cool School
The memories of the summers of my youth growing up in rural North Louisiana are as vivid today as they were then — no school for three months, shoes and shirts tossed in the closet, cut-off jeans the only required apparel until September.[…]
Bass Fishing
Buzzbait Bonanza
The sun was barely peeking through Venice’s roseau canes, but chirping could already be heard in the canal.[…]
Bass Fishing
Number of Nice Ones
The time of year was mid-summer. The time of day, dawn. The fishing hole, Lake D’Arbonne.[…]
Bass Fishing
Yo-Zuri introduces soft-plastic crank
A different look and a different feel are the selling points of a new crankbait on the market.[…]
Bass Fishing
Sweet Home Alabama
I fell in love with the Ouachita River exactly one week after I pulled up stakes in South Louisiana and headed north. This affair began as my first trip to the river ended with a 7-pound bass on the proverbial “last cast.”[…]
Bass Fishing
Healthy Margins
The three of them were able to keep their little secret for a week or so. Eventually, though, word leaked out, and the trio found themselves with plenty of company.[…]
Bass Fishing
Tinkering with confidence
I had to look on the package to see if this would be OK or not. I mean, remove the hooks and put on red ones? Bend something, tweak this, and change that? Is it legal? No one ever told me I could do this before.
Well, the manufacturer did not say to keep away except for tying it on and casting it out, so it must be allowed, right?
Modifying your current stock of fishing lures may just be the most-important thing you do, ranking right up there with changing your line and cleaning your reels.
Sure, fishing is fishing, but we’ve all been there on days when our favorite lure just didn’t quite get the job done.
The idea of modified lures came from a good friend, Scott Louviere, who presented me with one as a going-away present last summer. Like me, Louviere likes to fish for bass in the Acadiana area.
[…]
Bass Fishing
Prehistoric Pearl
As the Pearl River flows past the town of Bogalusa on its way to Lake Borgne, the winding path provides a state line for Louisiana and Mississippi, but the scenic beauty offered by the river is boundless.[…]
Bass Fishing
Lure Review
The Texan whose artificial lures speak for themselves with their productivity, so much so that they have become a staple in the tackleboxes of pros and weekend anglers alike, can’t help but be proud of a spinnerbait series that’s hooking up bass from Texas to all points of the compass, including Louisiana.[…]
Bass Fishing
Living the Dream
I admit, when it comes to bass fishing I am only a novice at best. That doesn’t keep me from daydreaming, however, that I just might be able to hang with some of the pros if the conditions were right.
Like most fish stories, this “hanging with the pros” stuff sounds like stretching a 14-inch fish into another category. But isn’t a guy entitled to his dreams? Moreover, I realize that if I were a betting man, I certainly wouldn’t be betting on yours truly. Yet, note that I said, “I might be able to hang … if the conditions were right.”
My first condition would be to fish the canals south of the Intracoastal Waterway and east of Bayou Sale Bay. It is in these canals that I dream of going pro.
The second condition would be making sure I was ready to start fishing the moment the tide started to fall. The short time frame where the tide sort of stands motionless is when you should be running to the canals to rig up your favorite bait.
[…]
Bass Fishing
Rockets to Ribbits
It was a steamy summer afternoon, and we were fishing in Mama’s Pond in the western Atchafalaya Basin. The water was just high enough to back into the trees and bushes along the shoreline.
My partners and I were throwing chartreuse buzz baits into the cover as far as we could, and we got a few good strikes on top. Still, in some spots, we could see about 8 more feet of good-looking water that we couldn’t touch with those buzz baits. That was 8 feet of fish-holding water that we couldn’t access, and it deeply annoyed us.
We all fiddled with some of the lures in our tackle boxes, and the three of us probably all gave a frog or a rat bait a brief look. It was weedless and maybe suitable for the situation, but that kind of lure is more of a novelty isn’t it? It catches fishermen, right, not bass?
That was our thinking, and it probably cost us dearly.
[…]
Bass Fishing
Perfecting Patterns
Roland Martin is given credit for having coined the phrase “pattern fishing” during the 1970s. He was one of the first anglers in the country to understand that replicating the exact set of water conditions like depth, cover, structure, temperature, clarity and current prevalent when he got a bite would lead to many more bites.[…]
Bass Fishing
ReAction frog sounds like a buzz bait.
The guru of soft-plastic lure manufacturing always figured he probably had another hit on his hands with the Ribbit.[…]
Bass Fishing
Paradise Parks
Louisiana’s state parks offer outstanding bass fishing in the spring and throughout the year. Here’s Louisiana Sportsman’s top-five picks, and tips on how to fill the livewell.[…]
Bass Fishing
HoneyBuzz attracts bass like bees
When Dave Trantham finished compiling a checklist from other bass anglers on what they wanted in a buzz bait, he started designing one that has created quite a buzz from coast to coast.[…]