Let water green up after fronts for best bite
Bass-fishing reports from Venice have been pretty crazy, and Prairieville angler David Cavell said it’s better than you’ve heard.
“When (the water) turns green, it’s how many do you want to catch,” Cavell said.
It’s that caveat — “when (the water) turns green” — that is the trick because the Mississippi River has been bumping up and down over the past month or so.
And fronts can throw an added wrench into the works.
But when all the elements come together, the fishing can be off the charts. The avid tournament angler teamed up with friends from around the country to fish the waters around the mouth of the Mississippi River, and Cavell said fish literally poured over the gunnels of their boats.
“My boat alone caught 300 plus in four days,” he said.
Cavell said a big key is to wait a couple of days after a weather system moves through to allow the winds to subside and the water to start greening up.
“It gives that water time to calm down and the river greens up,” Cavell said. “All of a sudden, the river falls and everything just lights up.
“If you see a little hint of green in the water, you’ll catch fish.”
Now, here’s the other thing Cavell said a lot of anglers haven’t caught onto: Venice bass are not in the dead-ends and still water.
“They were either in the canes or on the edge of the canes, but they’re in the strongest current you can find,” he said. “There were people who didn’t catch anything, but guess what: They were fishing the dead-ends. People were passing us, probably wondering why we were fishing out there.”
His group fished the spillways, Joseph Bayou and Sawdust Bend when they headed south, but there were plenty of bass closer to the landing in places like Grand Pass and Camp Canal.
“Grand Pass in the pass itself — they’re right in the canal by the barges,” Cavell said.
He said windy days call for spinnerbaits, but flipping becomes the top producer when the post-front winds calm.
“Ninety-five percent (of our fish) came from flipping,” Cavell said.
They used soft plastics like Missile Baits D Bombs and Craw Fathers to snatch fish into their boats. Cavell rigged the lures beneath 1/2- to 3/4-ounce weights.
Best colors depend on the weather. Bright, sunny days call for bright blue or sapphire blue plastics. Black/blue lures work well on partly cloudy conditions, and black/red or Cali love colors are killer when clouds obscure the sun.
You don’t have to finesse the fish into biting.
“If I throw it in there and he’s not on it when it hits the bottom, I bump it a couple of times and move on,” Cavell said. “If you get around them they’re going to bite.”
While Cavell just put his head down and covered water, the most-productive stretches were within 50 yards of points or irregularities in the banks.
“You might be going down a bank and wonder why you haven’t caught any fish, and then you catch a few and look back and say, ‘Look at that divot in the bank,’” Cavell said. “You wouldn’t necessarily see it when you have your head down fishing, but you can look back and see it.”
And they caught some solid fish.
“We had a couple of 4s, but everything was in that 2- to 3-pound range,” Cavell said.
