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Plan B
You only turn 26 once.
That line of reasoning was enough incentive for Leslie Owens to plan a blowout birthday bash.[…]
Inshore Fishing
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Grandfather Rigs of Black Bay
It’s funny how our memories retain bits and pieces of our past, and how we are able only to remember mere fragments of the days, years and decades gone by.[…]
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Washed Out
We had worked half the bay methodically, but with little success. Al Dusang landed one 16-inch redfish, and we had seen several others waking along the shoreline.[…]
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Timbalier Time
Boats stream across Timbalier Bay as the weather warms up and dreams of big trout draw anglers to the barrier islands, but guide Chad Dufrene doesn’t follow the pack.[…]
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The Lafitte Lowdown
Maybe it’s just me, but it sure seemed like a long winter. Some of the poor folks up north dubbed it “the winter that wouldn’t die,” which sounded more like a pathetic plot in a Grade B movie than a weather condition.
And even though this winter finally lost its frosty grip on the thermometer, it left behind these blustery, nagging, unending winds specifically to pester and harass us fishermen.
But the long winter drought is over, the sun has steadily warmed up the water, the shrimp are beginning to make their annual appearance, and the trout are slamming baits all over the Southeast Louisiana coastline.[…]
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Not a Novelty
The small cove on the eastern end of Calcasieu Lake looked much like any other stretch of uninhabited shoreline. It wasn’t so much of a cove as a dip in the largely featureless stretch of bank.[…]
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Map Feature: Sabine Lake
The heavy fog, which had inundated the extreme southwestern part of the state, was just beginning to break when the 9-pound redfish began its assault on the southern end of Sabine Lake, trying in vain to render the colorful MirrOlure useless for the remainder of the day.[…]
Columns
Right approach solves weedy dilemma
Don’t know about you folks, but I’m really looking forward to settled weather.[…]
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The Scoop on the Skinny
Spring inshore fishing can be such a tease. Specks are ready for their reproductive business, but extreme changes in the weather make fish extremely mobile, rendering even the most up-to-date information obsolete.
But that compares little to the games redfish play as they ease into the warm-weather pattern. Reds are more than willing to mass in the shallow ponds and show themselves in all their bronze glory, but getting them to bite is an entirely different matter.[…]
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Poor Man’s Lobster
The morning hadn’t gone well. We’d only caught one speckled trout — the only bite we’d had.[…]
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Insight on Cocodrie’s Inside
It was a typical Louisiana spring day — the wind was howling to beat the band, and the water was, well, less than clear.[…]
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Dirty-Water Reds
We’d just passed the Blue Angel at the entrance to the Naval base when I finally started dozing off. The truck cab was dark and the radio low.[…]
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A Fickle Lady
In the days before any European set foot in the New World, the shorelines surrounding Lake Pontchartrain were inhabited by several Native American tribes. Bayougoula, Mougoulacha, Chitimacha, Colapissa, Quinipissalive and the “corn-gatherers,” or Tangipahoa Indians, fished the big lake they called “Okwa-ta,” the wide water.[…]
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2005 Speck Forecast
As a biologist, Jerald Horst has cut out the livers of speckled trout, and examined them under microscopes.
He’s run his fingers through gravid ovaries packed with ripe, orange roe.
He’s opened stomachs to discover their contents.
But there was nothing scientific about Horst’s reaction last month when a trout as long as a man’s arm carved a hole in the water with its gaping maw, and sucked in his She Dog.
The sounds were loud enough to be heard on the other side of the small marsh lake — first from the fish crashing the bait, then from Horst, who jumped to his feet and squealed like a schoolgirl who just caught a glimpse of her favorite boy-band member.
After several earlier near-misses from other fish, Horst practiced great restraint in letting the big trout take the bait for a second or two before yanking the rod upward like Paul Bunyan starting a swing of his axe.
The light-action rod bowed like a noodle, its tip seeming to crawl along the line, refusing to miss a moment of the action.
A veteran angler who has logged more hours than he’d ever admit in the surf at Grand Isle, Fourchon and Elmer’s Island, Horst had caught bigger trout in his life, but this one was special, just like all fish lured to the surface by a topwater plug.[…]
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Scaredy Rats
Capt. Theophile Bourgeois has no couth.
He lacks respect for tradition.[…]
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Rig Rodeo
The number on the cell phone said Pelayo was calling, from HIS cell phone. I flipped the little sucker open.[…]