Prien Lake holds few secret spots. It is roughly 6 feet deep in most of its bed, except where the Calcasieu River channel courses through near its western bank.
Its bottom is mud and oyster shell.
Lee Trahan, the most experienced of the trio on Prien Lake catches most of his fish by trolling, seemingly at random all over the lake.
“Naturally, I have found some productive spots,” Trahan explained. “But I’m old school: no electronics. I know where the fish are, but not always why they are there.”
He trolled with two rods: one rigged with a MirrOlure MirrOdine trout-colored suspending lure and the other with a glow-colored H&H split-tail beetle on a ¼-ounce jighead.
He always mounts the grub tail sideways on the jighead because he “likes how it swims better.”
When he finds the fish hit one lure better than the other, he picks up and stows the other rod.
“When you start catching fish here, it gets a little crazy, so it’s better with one rod,” Trahan said.
He sheepishly admitted to losing rods and reels.
“I get excited, and my hands get slimy,” Trahan said. “But I got five of them back with a homemade drag my father built for me from steel rebar.”
He doesn’t lose them anymore, though. In what may be the tip of the day, he showed off his Blakemore Rod Floaters mounted just above his rods’ reel seats.