Levi Thibodaux will miss spending a lot of time in March on one of his favorite places to fish and catch bass near his hometown of Chackbay.
Thibodaux planned to leave Feb. 1 and won’t be back until late March because he’s fishing Major League Fishing’s Tackle Warehouse and Toyota series bass tournaments in Florida, South Carolina and Alabama, plus his final college event, the MLF Columbia PFG College Fishing National Championship at Lake Murray in South Carolina.
The 21-year-old LSU-Shreveport senior majoring in business doesn’t mind sharing his knowledge on where and how to fish Lake Boeuf. He honed his bass fishing skills on the approximately 2,000-acre lake between Lake Des Allemands to the north and the town of Raceland to the south.
Consistently fair to good bassin’ may have dropped off in the lake since the last named storm hit the region, but there still are bass to be caught out there, he said. And more bass are being put in the lake thanks to Responsible Anglers United, a local volunteer effort to stock bass fingerlings. The nonprofit group, he said, is working hard to “get it back where it used to be.”
Plan of attack
Thibodaux, a fishing team member at Thibodaux High School, then at LSU-Shreveport, said canals on the east side of the lake give up bass consistently to those casting lipless crankbaits, spinnerbaits and/or bladed jigs worked around deeper grass in the middle. He uses a ½-ounce chartreuse/white double-bladed (Colorado/willowleaf) spinnerbait, or a ½-ounce black/blue Chatterbait or a 3/8- or ½-ounce red Rat-L-Trap.
“Most of them (canals) are good, have grass in them … or did,” he said, adding average depth in the canals is 3- to 5-feet.
“If there is a warming trend, bass move up on the reeds, we call them ‘jons’ (Cajun French word),” Thibodaux said, noting he flips in ½- to 3-foot depths with either a ¾- or 1-ounce weight if there are lilies piled up in front of the jons or if there are no lilies a 3/8- or ½-ounce weight while targeting holes in the reeds and points. Most of the time he’ll have a Junebug Zoom Ultra-Vibe Speed Craw, a black/blue or hematoma Reaction Innovations Sweet Beaver or a ½-ounce black/blue or green pumpkin Hack Attack Jig.
He was flippin’ a Texas-rigged soft plastic in the jons his senior year at THS (Class of ’22) when he caught a 7.96-pounder that remains his PB.
Growing up on the lake
Thibodaux, who’s sponsored by Cajun Outboards, the source of his new boat this season, his first-ever Skeeter, and by Baton Rouge-based Zook Rods, said he began fishing the lake as a young boy with his father, Erik Thibodaux. The elder Thibodaux fished the lake and elsewhere to teach him the finer points of bass fishing.
His son learned well, proven by four high school national tournament appearances and back-to-back Louisiana High School Bass Nation AOYs. Some of his most successful days included trips to Lake Boeuf.
“I’ve spent a lot of time, many years there every spring,” Thibodaux said. “My dad took me when I was in elementary school. That’s where I started fishing. I fished my first tournament out there.”
One detail became increasingly clear to the young bass angler whose goal is to reach the MLF’s Bass Pro Tour.
“I find it’s best pretty much from the end of January to about May,” he said.
It’s time.
