Trout, redfish action heats up as weather cools down.
It’s really cliché to say that the fishing in Delacroix heats up when the weather cools down, but clichés are overused for a reason. They are the truth. And it’s the truth that fishing the interior marshes out of Delacroix has improved dramatically since unseasonably cold temperatures blanketed much of Southeast Louisiana after this fall’s first few cold fronts passed through.
Capt. Chris Pike with Cast & Blast Charters (504.427.4973) says the hot action inside arrived just in time to keep him busy after teal season ended. And whether he’s after speckled trout or flounder, finding and catching fish hasn’t been much of a problem here lately.
I met up with Pike and a Stephen Pautler, a Canadian surgeon wanting to see how redfish stacked up against muskie, at Sweetwater Marina just about at the end of the Delacroix Highway. This was an evening trip, and Pike was excited to hit the water later because of the reduced fishing pressure and slackening winds.
“The trout are really getting into their fall patterns,” Pike told me as we motored down Bayou Gentilly. “They’re showing up in the interior bays like Lake Campo, Four Horse Lake, Lake Batola – all those normal fall and wintertime areas. We’re throwing a lot of plastics under a cork, but on warmer days you really want some live shrimp.”
We started out fishing the southern end of Lake Batola. A trio of anglers in a nearby boat informed us that we were too late because they had landed 30 speckled trout but that they had just shut off. Undeterred, Pike and Pautler continued casting their popping corks toward a line of crab traps being tugged to the side by the incoming tide.
Pike quickly figured out that the bite had slowed down somewhat, but what the trout lacked in quantity, they made up in size. There were a few popcorn trout mixed in, but most of what Pike caught wouldn’t even scare the 12-inch line on a fish ruler, although some would have pushed the other end.
We bounced around in some spots off of Lake Batola and caught a few really nice trout. However, Pautler wanted to check out the redfish bite, so Pike headed back closer to the launch.
“The redfishing’s great,” Pike said. “They’re schooled up pretty close to the launch … about a 10- or 15-minute boat ride. Little Lake Grand Lake – all those areas just throwing shrimp under a cork.”
Pautler wound up getting on a couple of bruiser-sized redfish that had him wishing he lived closer to Delacroix than the Great Lakes. Most of the reds we caught came about 30 minutes before dark, and every one came on shrimp under a cork, just as Pike had predicted.
“It’s only going to get better and better,” Pike concluded back at Sweetwater Marina. “The colder it gets the more fish are going to bite in these interior lakes and bays.”
A report from a trip made by Louisiana Sportsman’s Todd Masson can be seen here.
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