Artificials work, but live bait good insurance
Capt. Bubby Lamy with In & Out Charters takes a lot of his speckled trout clients to areas like Isle au Pitre and Martin Island this time of year.
The waters around the islands are relatively shallow — 3 feet or so — he said, and believe it or not one of the most important factors to having success there is fishing a tight-lined jighead.
“A large mistake people make is thinking when you get into that shallower stuff that you only need to throw a cork because lots of times those fish will just be sitting all the way on the bottom and looking for something that is staying on the bottom,” he said.
Lamy concentrates his efforts on the oyster reefs and shell pads, and bounces a 3/8-ounce jighead off the bottom with a Matrix Shad soft plastic.
“If there’s no tide, then I’ll throw a ¼-ounce just so it will sink a little bit slower and hangout in the water column a little longer,” he said.
His favorite colors are ultraviolet and holy joely. However, he keeps another color handy that’s dynamite in clean water.
“Lemon head is a good one to have because in July when you do get those super clean-water days, it’s almost like a fluorescent green, and the lemon head works well in that fluorescent green water,” he said.
Lamy loves fishing soft plastics, but he said some days the fish respond much better to live shrimp.
“You can catch them on plastics in July,” he said. “Live bait is huge, and it’s a day-to-day differential. Today you can catch a limit on plastic, and tomorrow they won’t bite plastic at all, and the guy on side of you with shrimp is stroking them.
“I always say if you can get it, at least get some, or be OK if you catch way less than somebody else who has it,” he said.
Besides the oyster reefs and shell pads, Lamy said it’s never a bad idea to hit diving birds out there to see what kind of fish are underneath them.
“The birds are always a good sign of what’s going on,” he said. “This time of year, a lot of times under the birds you’ll find schools of catfish, but that’s not always the case,” he said.
