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.[…]
Anglers looking for a few locations to catch bay cats, both blues and channels, should start on the west side of East Cote Blanche Bay near Point Moroon, at the mouth of Bayou Carlin, Humble Canal and Jackson Bayou on the west side of the Bay.[…]
Fish catfish with worms long enough and chances are quite good that many will die in the wax-coated cardboard or styrofoam containers they come in.[…]
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.[…]
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.[…]