The Calcasieu Lake complex is chock full of everything an angler looks for when choosing which lake to fish. There are more shrimp in the lake than ever before. There is plenty of salt water and an abundance of crabs. And Capt. Norman Rester with A-Speck Charters (318-481-0049) said there are tons of speckled trout.
“There’s more of everything than we’ve had in the lake in years,” Rester said. “We pulled in 64 just the other day and filled up a 115-quart Igloo. The bird action is really hot and fast right now, and the entire lake is just jumping. There must have been 20 flocks of birds working in West Cove yesterday.”
Rester expects the bite to switch to live bait in the near future, but that hasn’t been the case so far. Plastics are banging the trout right now, and Rester said a simple change of color could mean the difference in little trout and big trout.
“I’ve been catching small fish on pearl/chartreuse,” Rester said. “But the larger fish are coming under the small fish on dark colors like black/chartreuse. It’s really odd, but I always seem to catch the bigger fish on dark colors.”
It was hard for Rester to pinpoint an exact location to try the trout because they’re biting all the way from Turner’s in the north to the old jetties and South Bay. West Cove isn’t just full of birds, either. That section is just full of fish.
“There are also some reds starting to show up on the south end of the lake,” Rester added. “They’ll get better and better as we move on into the middle of summer. Just get out there and watch for the birds in open water. The reds are unmistakable. You’ll see them popping all over the place out there in open water.”
Effective June 20, the trout limit at Calcasieu will be 15 with a minimum length of 12 inches. Only two of an angler’s trout can measure more than 25 inches. Rester said he doesn’t expect that to change too much as far as catching fish, but he does believe it may turn people on to keeping larger fish.
“It’s not going to be adverse as far as my customers go,” he said.