Crappie/Bream
Tip of the day
Dave Pizzolato discards the plastic pegs that come with his corks and replaces them with the tapered tips of wooden chopsticks. “If the peg comes out, plastic sinks but wood floats,” he grinned.[…]
Freshwater Fishing
Crappie/Bream
Pizzolato’s Top 7 tips for Old River
1) Learn to tight-line. Using a cork doesn’t allow fishing to be done deep enough to fish the 12 to 14 feet needed on the most important fish-holding structure — piers and pilings in front of camps.[…]
Crappie/Bream
Slick tops and spiders for Ouachita crappie
This time of the year, fishing has slowed down quite a bit, but it isn’t the fish — it’s the fishermen. You’ll find crappie fishing the Ouachita River.[…]
Columns
So what’s a sunperch?
Louisiana’s bream fishermen have a pile of fish to choose from. Tops on the list are bluegills and redear sunfish (also called lake runners or chinquapin). And fat-bellied goggle-eyes are always in the mix somewhere. In a lot of places, you can throw in some green sunfish (slick perch) or red-spotted sunfish (stumpknockers). […]
Crappie/Bream
Push-poling for slabs
With the advent of today’s electronics, this national champion crappie angler says old-fashioned spider-rigging is a thing of the past.[…]
Crappie/Bream
Jigging up Old River slabs
Determining when to fish Old River isn’t guesswork. Dave Pizzolato watches river gages, specifically the Mississippi River station at Baton Rouge.[…]
Catfish
Three cited for allegedly shocking fish on the Ouachita River
Enforcement agents with the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries cited three Columbia men for allegedly shocking fish on the Ouachita River in Caldwell Parish.[…]
Freshwater Fishing
LDWF schedules August drawdown on Henderson Lake
In conjunction with St. Martin Parish Government, the town of Henderson and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries will be conducting a drawdown on Henderson Lake beginning in August.[…]
Crappie/Bream
Hit the Basin now for beastly goggle-eye, bluegill
Darren Cooper and I sat in Doiron’s Store at 6:30 a.m., waiting for an early morning thunderstorm to pass over the lower Atchafalaya Basin. It had been several years since we had gotten together to catch bream in the huge swamp — and a slowly falling Atchafalaya River gave great promise to our day.[…]
Crappie/Bream
What’s a “top”?
A top is simply a submerged brush top, the top of a bush or tree or a fallen tree with lots of submerged limbs. Tops sometimes lay where they fall, and other times current washes them onto sandbars or into river lakes.[…]
Crappie/Bream
How to catch your own grass shrimp
Leonard Kleinpeter stresses that a proper dip net is needed to effectively catch grass shrimp from their preferred habitat, dense beds of coontail and other aquatic plants. […]
Crappie/Bream
The man and his boat
In spite of having lived a high-powered life, Leonard Kleinpeter is living proof that effective fishing doesn’t demand investment in an expensive fiberglass bass boat.[…]
Crappie/Bream
The plaque in the swamp
Bass, crappie and bream fishermen who frequent the canals of Crackerhead can’t help but to have seen a solid brass plaque mounted on one of a pair of modest-sized cypress trees standing in the water off a canal bank.[…]
Crappie/Bream
Tip of the day
He smelled so good I wanted to lick him.
Leonard Kleinpeter has just sprayed himself with bug repellant, but not the stinky stuff in a can.[…]
Crappie/Bream
Geared up and ready to go
With tackle stores full of a thousand sizes, shapes, styles and colors of crappie jigs and fishing equipment, you could spend days or weeks just trying to figure out what to fish with. Or you could just let Bobby Phillips tell you his favorite go-to gear, and copy this veteran guide’s success.[…]
Crappie/Bream
The Ouachita’s long and winding path
There are more than 90 miles of Ouachita River between the Arkansas line and the Columbia Lock and Dam in Northeast Louisiana. The river lakes, bayous and cuts off the river are too numerous to mention. But the nice thing is that good access is available up and down the river, and prime fishing isn’t far away. […]