Freshwater Fishing
Stump field slabs
Every year during March and April, fishermen hammer Lake D’Arbonne’s shallow cypress trees and banks for spawning white perch (aka crappie or sac-a-lait).[…]
Freshwater Fishing
Catfish
Back to basics
Whether it’s blue catfish or channel catfish, Central Louisiana’s coastal bays in the springtime are teeming with both. Toss in the occasional flathead, and what you have is the skinning pliers Ictalurus Trifecta of North America.
From the Atchafalaya River to East Cote Blanche Bay, nearly every bayou, canal or unnamed tributary that empties freshwater is a potential location to drop anchor and tightline for catfish in this region.[…]
Freshwater Fishing
Back to basics
Whether it’s blue catfish or channel catfish, Central Louisiana’s coastal bays in the springtime are teeming with both. Toss in the occasional flathead, and what you have is the skinning pliers Ictalurus Trifecta of North America.
From the Atchafalaya River to East Cote Blanche Bay, nearly every bayou, canal or unnamed tributary that empties freshwater is a potential location to drop anchor and tightline for catfish in this region.[…]
Freshwater Fishing
Goggle-eye chunky in Basin
I’ve always been taught catching a fish on the first cast is bad luck, so when my cork dipped beneath the surface of the water this morning (May 4) I was a little hesitant to set the hook.[…]
Freshwater Fishing
Popping out poppers and other popular patterns
My colleague and accomplished fly tier, Reb Stewart recently gave me a box of foam-bodied poppers and various insect patterns. The colors looked good, the legs and antennae, etc. all set just right.[…]
Contents
Bear Bayou Bream Basics
The anchor hadn’t settled on the bottom good before my wife made her first cast toward the trees along a stretch of Bear Bayou we regularly fish. As normal, she wasn’t playing around.[…]
Freshwater Fishing
Favorite bream rig
Fishing bream doesn’t take any special equipment or bait. A small trout worm on a No. 4 Aberdeen-style hook is preferred.[…]
Contents
Pocket Perch
When I first moved to New Orleans as a (very) young man in the mid-1960s, I just knew that I was a fishing hot dog. I thought I knew all there was to know about catching bass, bream, white perch and catfish — and that’s where the fishing world ended.[…]
Contents
Double dipping
The craggy man at the bow controls of the boat turned off the boat’s engine. He lit a cigarette and scanned the points formed by the intersection of the Texaco Canal and Grand Bayou.[…]
Freshwater Fishing
The scribe
Jim Looney is more than the average angler, with 12 fishing booklets to his credit. The books focus on how to catch bass, bream and sac-a-lait in the Grand Bayou-Lake Verret area, as well as the Atchafalaya Basin, and redfish and speckled trout in Pointe au Chien.[…]
Freshwater Fishing
No fancy stuff
Modern bass fishermen are known for their endless array of fancy and expensive equipment. Fishing with Jim Looney is like a throwback to a simpler time, a time when it seemed like any angler could be reasonably confident of catching bass.[…]
Freshwater Fishing
The 14-inch minimum:
The 14-inch-minimum-size limit on all black bass — both largemouth and spotted — in the Atchafalaya Basin, Lakes Verret, Palourde, Fausse Point/Dauterive areas has been in effect since the aftermath of Hurricane Andrew in 1992.[…]
Contents
Stump field slabs
Every year during March and April, fishermen hammer Lake D’Arbonne’s shallow cypress trees and banks for spawning white perch (aka crappie or sac-a-lait). It’s a mad rush because you only have a few weeks to take advantage of the relatively easy bite.[…]
Freshwater Fishing
Best equipment
While shiners can be used to fish for post-spawning crappie, most fishermen ease through the stump fields fishing about 10 feet deep with jigs.[…]
Freshwater Fishing
Where to go
Lake D’Arbonne is located near Farmerville in north-central Louisiana, and there are several public boat ramps providing easy access to the stump fields in the Stowe Creek, Terral Island and Bear Creek areas of the lake.[…]
Contents
A Man and a Fish
Following my GPS, I tentatively nosed my truck through the fortress-like gates of Mariners Cove in Slidell. When the man invited me to hunt alligator gar in the canal behind his house, I had just kind of assumed that the trail would lead me to a rural backwater retreat in the salt marshes between Slidell and Lake Pontchartrain.[…]