Anglers have high hopes for August fishing
Many bream fishermen have had to take a wait-and-see approach to catching bream and other perch for the first six months of the year in the Lower Atchafalaya Basin.
Bill McCarty of Morgan City, one of the region’s bona fide bream masters who has spent countless hours fishing the south end of the spillway with family and friends, waited quasi-patiently for the Atchafalaya Basin water level to settle down within its banks. Based on the river forecast, the desired water level won’t be reached until late July or early August.
As McCarty and hundreds of others chomp at the bit to sample this year’s bream population, he laments the fact few, if any, chinquapin have been caught over the past 3 years in areas he likes to fish, particularly Flat Lake. He said it has been the worst stretch of chinquapin fishing success in his life, while noting the last time he caught a chinquapin was in June 2021 when he fished Flat Lake with a local outdoors writer and 15th Judicial District Division I Judge Tommy Duplantier.
“I hope it gets better than the last couple of years,” said McCarty, who started fishing in the nation’s last great overflow swamp at age 7. “Hopefully, this year will be better. It ain’t fun when your cricket isn’t getting pecked on.”
Get on the water early
The 55-year-old owner of WHM Services LLC remains optimistic that bream and goggle-eye fishing success should be fair to good after the Atchafalaya River falls to a fishable level, preferably from 3.5- to 4-feet at Morgan City. At the time of his report, July 1, the river stage at Morgan City was 5.3.
“I’m going to expect to catch a mixture of bluegills, hopefully chinquapin, goggle-eye and, hopefully, sac-a-lait on laydowns, a sac-a-lait or two while fishing for bream,” he said.
The key to putting bream in the ice chest is to get on the water early in the morning and head to Grand Lake, his favorite starting place, and offer a brown/orange tube jig with a chartreuse Crappie Nibble. He adjusts the cork to where the artificial lure disappears from sight, whether 15 to 18 inches, depending on the water clarity.
He’ll target any outside trees with grass around them with the tube jig. Obviously, worms and crickets trigger bites, too, but he just prefers artificials, adding that mostly smaller perch bite live bait.
Gearing up for goggle-eye
If he’s targeting goggle-eye specifically, McCarty relies on a Texas-rigged Zoom Speed Craw, a popular soft plastic for bass, on a 3/0 hook under a 3/16-ounce worm weight.
“If I don’t get bit there (after 1, 1 ½ hours), I go to Duck Lake and try the cypress trees,” he said, explaining he begins fishing on the southeast end and works his way north around the lake. He warned boaters to be careful because huge, sunken cypress trees were cut on the upper end and the tops of the stumps are just underwater.
“If it (water clarity in the lake itself) is not pretty, I go into the canals around Duck Lake — Mystic Gris, Bayou April or, even, Little Bayou Sorrel — again looking for pretty water or grass around cypress trees,” he said. “If that fails, I’ll be heading farther south to Bear Bayou, which has three good canals … right, left and middle. Fish cypress trees and grass. The key is pretty water. And then Flat Lake.”
He likes to fish cypress trees plus any vegetation that can be found in the northeast corner of Flat Lake. Bigger bream are deeper, while smaller bream often can be found in shallower water between Bear Bayou and Bayou Grosbec.