Among the many devastating effects of Hurricane Rita just two years ago was the damage it did to the Mermentau River bass population. Bass have been almost non-existent up until recently, and now that they’re showing up again, they are making up for lost time.
Dennis Tietje lives in nearby Roanoke just west of Jennings, and he has been making several quick trips down to the Mermentau to catch a bunch of fish.
“What they lack in size,” he quipped, “they more than make up in number.”
Tietje had been telling me over the past few months that he had been smoking the fish. The daily reports started coming in at 42, then 29, back to 40, then down to 20. Most of these fish were admittedly in the 10- to 12-inch range, but Tietje had snuck up on a 3-pounder every now and then.
Having to see this for myself, Tietje and I made a trip to the Mermentau after an opening morning teal hunt on Sept. 15. The outlook wasn’t good as Hurricane Humberto had just days before dumped more than 7 inches of water on Southwest Louisiana. The creeks we crossed on the way to the Lake Arthur ramp were running muddy, but we forged ahead anyway.
Tietje’s Nitro eventually settled down at the mouth of a cut below Lake Arthur. We could see black water pulling into the river. It looked like our best option. My first cast was rewarded with a tap. A swing-and-a-miss followed, but at least we knew something was home.
Just over four hours later, we stopped the counting and the catching at 70 bass smashing Tietje’s one-day record of 46. The unbelievable bite happened within a 50-square-yard area at the mouth of this one cut. Rather than setting up on the cypress trees at the mouth of the cut, the fish were scattered on the flats between the trees obviously in great numbers.
“We caught a lot of small fish today,” Tietje said on the way back to the ramp, “and I think that’s a good indication of what’s about to happen on the Mermentau. These are fish that have hatched since Rita, and they should all be 2 pounds next year. After that, they’ll get into that bigger range that should make this river one of the best around.”
All of the fish weren’t small, though. We did stumble into a rogue 2- to 3-pound bass that must have made it through Rita without any problems. For every big bass we caught, though, we probably caught 15 small ones.
Tietje and I targeted the bass with Texas-rigged red shad Culprit worms and watermelon candy Zoom Critter Craws. We did catch a few on the Baby Chug Bug, and some bit a small chartreuse/white spinnerbait, but 90 percent of the fish came on the plastic.
“What’s funny about this river is that nobody fishes it,” Tietje said. “And there aren’t too many people who will believe that we caught 70 bass in one afternoon out here. All we can do is tell them, though. If they don’t want to believe us … well, I guess they won’t catch these fish.”