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.[…]

Inshore Fishing

Terminal tackle

What is on the business end of Auenson’s line varies very little. The vast majority of the time it holds a Carolina rig with a live croaker. The rig is simple — 18 inches of 30-pound-test monofilament.[…]

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.[…]

Inshore Fishing

Summer cycle

Capt. Zutie Auenson has two fishing seasons. From sometime in September until late April, he charters from his permanent home in Golden Meadow.[…]

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.[…]

Freshwater Fishing

Bay Cat Hot Spots

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.[…]

Columns

Red tide falling

In February, the Wyoming state legislature considered an amendment to a bill requiring that state to purchase an aircraft carrier. Even though it failed, there were 22 legislators who voted for the amendment.[…]

Inshore Fishing

Under Pressure

This is my son’s first year of playing kid-pitch baseball.

After looking like an all-star in the batting cages during his first practice, he stood on deck and watched the batter before him take a hardball to the lower back in his team’s first attempt to hit off of an inconsistent 9-year-old pitcher.[…]

Columns

Small, compact spinnerbait a hit

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.[…]

Ask Captain Paul

High quality maps for your GPS unit

Dear Capt. Paul:

My Garmin GPSMAP 60csx has some downloaded maps from Garmin MapSource TOPO 1:100,000, but these maps aren’t very good for marsh fishing. My Blackberry cell phone gives me Google Earth, but it won’t stand up to rain/pounding and it doesn’t work where there is no cell phone service. Is there a way to get Google Earth maps on my map60csx?[…]

Contents

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.[…]