Check the tides before beach fishing
Virtually every magazine or online fishing article about south Louisiana speckled trout fishing in the summertime involves the need to set a very early alarm clock.
But Capt. Nash Roberts IV, who fishes the beach for trout in August, couldn’t care less about getting up early. He’s much more concerned with a variable in nature.
“I like to fish the last two hours of the rising tide and the first hour of the fall,” he said. “A lot of times in August, you’ve got a fairly late tide. It’s not necessarily an early thing.”
The rising tide, Roberts said, brings in a lot more food than a falling tide.
“You see a lot more bait on a rising tide,” he said. “I guess the rising tide pushing up against the beach pushes those mullet, pogies and sometimes shrimp (onto) the beach.
“I don’t mind a falling tide as long as it’s under a foot. A big falling tide muddies everything up.”
Another thing the rising tide does, Roberts said, is it brings clean water into the beach.
“When you’re wade fishing, you can catch them in dirty water, but out of a boat, you need to have clean water,” he said.
For those familiar with fishing the beach at Grand Isle, you know it has depressions and sandbars, but Roberts said the beaches in the Buras area are set up a little differently.
“They’ve done a lot of beach repair, so there are no more troughs — at least where I’m fishing,” he said. “We’re fishing right on the breaks.”
One of the keys to fishing the beach, according to Roberts, is to not fish in too deep of water.
“I find on the beaches the big fish are right up on the sand or on the break,” he said. “If you get beyond that, they’re little bitty fish.”
Live shrimp might seem like a go-to bait in this situation, but Roberts said if you throw those, you’ll be fighting undesirable fish.
“In August, there are so many (trash fish) I don’t throw shrimp,” he said.
Instead he Carolina-rigs croakers, pogies and mullet with a ¼-ounce weight, 18-inch leader and a kahle hook.
Roberts said the size of the speckled trout depends on the clarity of the water.
“If the water is really clear, you’ll catch nice fish,” he said. “The biggest stringer of fish I’ve ever caught was in August.”