A calm day has been a rarity since January, but that hasn’t kept some anglers from smacking the speckled trout and redfish. Some, like Captain Eric Dumas at Lake Pontchartrain have even found that the fish bite better in the wind.
Dumas called me a day after smoking some big trout on the Causeway while filming an episode of BIGFISH TV to let me know what was going on. Turns out that he couldn’t help himself, and he went back later that same evening with Louisiana Sportsman publisher Tony Taylor, his wife Ann and Louisiana Sportsman TV host Kevin Ford.
“We caught 3, 4, and 5-pound trout all morning bouncing around with C.T.,” Dumas said. “Then we wound up with two over five later that same day with Tony, Ann and Kevin. The thing is on the Causeway right now, if there aren’t some big rollers crashing the pilings, I can hardly get bit.”
Having Dumas tell me this while we were bouncing along the Highway 11 Bridge left me with a sinking feeling that we were fishing the wrong bridge. We needed a few “sure things,” though, so we decided to fish out of the wind, as least as much as we could, on the south shore of Highway 11.
“Trout are acting crazy over here right now,” Dumas went on as he slung our first keeper into his Ranger bay boat. “The bigger trout here have been on the train trestle, but they’ve been spotty over there. Highway 11’s got more consistent action, but the fish are running a little smaller.”
The tide was falling hard as we helped a few popcorn trout shake off before they got the chance to slime us up, so Dumas thought we should zoom over to the trestle to see if we could catch a couple larger trout. He headed straight for the south shoreline to get us out of the wind as much as possible, it was out of the southwest, and we found a couple Mississippi boats trolling back and forth.
The size of the trout immediately increased as our first 3-pounder began its protest of the ice upon which it flopped. Dumas struggled to hold his boat in a “fair” position so we could both hit the pilings with our Opening Night Chartreuse Tail Deadly Dudley Bay Choveys rigged on 3/8-ounce jigheads.
I was fishing 30-pound Power Pro with about a 3-foot leader of 20-pound test monofilament, but I eventually lost my leader. Not wanting to struggle to tie on a new leader, I tied directly to my lure with the Power Pro. Against conventional Lake Pontchartrain wisdom, the trout didn’t seem to care one bit as I matched Dumas fish for fish on the train bridge.
“Let’s head back over to 11,” Dumas suggested as he pulled his trolling motor in. As if he didn’t hear my complaints about the smaller fish, he pushed the throttle forward and off we went. “A buddy of mine caught a big trout off the drawbridge yesterday… could have been seven pounds. Let’s see if we can find that fish’s sister.”
A vicious strike followed by an initial battle that made his hands start sweating made Dumas think just for a second that we had made the right choice. It became evident in the next few seconds that this was no giant trout; it was a bull red.
“Never caught one of those off Highway 11,” Dumas said as we continued to fish around the drawbridge until the glowing orange sun finally succumbed to the western horizon. “Maybe he’s here because of all these smaller trout. We’ll have to hit the Causeway another day. I’ll wait for a good windy day and give you a call.”
Waiting on a good windy day? That shouldn’t take very long.
Contact Captain Eric Dumas at 985-705-1244 or www.livingadreamguideservice.com.
