Plan early trips for falling tide in Lake Borgne
Fishing is all about stacking as many odds in your favor as possible, and something you should certainly put in your favor this month is leaving the dock early. Not only do you beat the heat, but you also get a much better speckled trout bite, according to Slidell guide Capt. Matt McCabe.
“We’re only finding about an hour of falling tide every day,” he said in early July. “From what I’m seeing and what the tide tables are showing me, it’s going to be like the second week of October before we get the falling tide during the day.”
With that being the case, McCabe said it’s critical to go early so you can catch the last of the falling current.
“It’s falling most of the night, and we’re catching that tail end,” he said. “When it quits, it’s done — time to go redfishing.”
McCabe likes fishing the Lake Borgne platforms this time of year, and said which one he goes to is based upon the conditions.
“It’s just a matter of having some experience of fishing around them and knowing where the shell pads are,” he said. “You have to always play the current and the wind.”
McCabe throws live shrimp with his clients, but he said soft plastic lures can also be effective — although not as good as the real stuff.
August can be a downright tough month to speckled trout fish, so another thing that McCabe stacks in his favor is history of what has happened in past years.
“I always keep a log and write everything down: What the tide was doing, what the wind was doing, and I always refer back to that when I get into these months,” he said.
McCabe said when fishing in August, being mindful of the radar — particularly when you’re in a wide open body of water like Lake Borgne, is critical for safety.
“We start dealing with waking up in the morning, and there’s rainstorms all over at daylight,” he said. “If it gets on to 8:30, 9 in the morning, we just call it because if the rain does pass and the sun does come out, that water gets 88, 90 degrees and those fish are not going to eat.”
