The sounds are unmistakable. SSSLURP! POP! SMACK!
When bluegill rise to grab surface meals, they know they’re vulnerable to bass, ospreys, herons and other predators. Therefore, they have to be sure of a worthwhile payoff, and nature provides plenty in the way of aquatic insects and other bugs that fall to the water’s surface.[…]
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.[…]
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.[…]
Fishing bream doesn’t take any special equipment or bait. A small trout worm on a No. 4 Aberdeen-style hook is preferred.[…]
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.[…]
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.[…]
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.[…]
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.[…]
For a man who has been making some of the finest artificial lures in the country for 31 years, Texan Lonnie Stanley sure was talking excitedly — gushing, actually — at length a few weeks ago about his newest baby: a Wedgetail Mini Wedge Runner.[…]
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.[…]
Once again, the weather prognosticaters had proven that their job is better left to leaf readers and Ouija boards.[…]
It was late evening in the early summer. The five men assembled on the back deck of the Petrus family camp, set on a hill slope overlooking Lake D’Arbonne, were engaged in a masculine redneck ritual. Bobby Petrus, a.k.a. “The Claw,” was grilling meat, and all of them were exchanging humorous insults.
The rough-and-tumble humor, mixed with an equal blend of braggadocio and self-deprecation, was delivered with powerful North Louisiana twangs in what a Cajun or a New Orleanian would consider a foreign language.[…]
Catfish noodlers, grabbers or wrestlers, whatever you call them, take advantage of an important trait in the biology of North American freshwater catfish. They need to spawn in cavities of some kind.[…]
Catfish noodlers use a variety of man-made objects to entice flatheads into confining spaces where they can be grabbed. The “Women, Whiskey and Wrastl’in” crew have settled on bathtubs as their favorite. Preparing one takes substantial work.[…]
“Wrestl’in” catfish demands a few specialized tools. The piggin stick, described elsewhere, is important for more than riling up catfish. It is used in communication.[…]
Pelayo motioned me over with frantic gestures and wide eyes. Then he managed a frozen smile and turned back to the conversation with Artie’s spanking-new brother-in-law, Steve.[…]