Pools 1 and 2 of the Red River are starting to really deliver the goods, outshining their better-known counterparts.
As anglers across coastal Louisiana begin to think about fishing again, they might want to think about trying the eastern part of Lake Pontchartrain. According to Captain Greg Schlumbrecht with To Fish Charters (985-960-1709), the action is worth the drive.
“The marsh between Lake Catherine and Lake Borgne is just full of small trout,” said Schlumbrecht. “All the usual places like Bob’s Bayou, Unknown Pass, False Pass… any of those are holding lots of trout. There are a lot of barely keeper-size fish, but we’ve been catching some up to 2 1/2 pounds.”
Most of the trout in the marsh are stacked up in the deeper sections of these bayous and passes where they are suckers for Carolina rigged live shrimp worked on the bottom. Schlumbrecht said that if he were just going out to have a casual day on the water he would head to the marsh and get in on the fast action.
“That’s good over there,” he added, “but if you want to catch the larger trout you’ve got to get on the bridges (Train Trestle, Hwy 11, the Twin Span). There haven’t been as many fish on them as there are in the marsh, but the fish on the bridges are definitely larger.”
Schlumbrecht began catching trout off the bridges about two weeks ago. His first exploration produced 35 with a few that went over 5 pounds. Since then, the best action has been at the mercy of the tide and the wind, but when conditions line out just right, the big fish are still biting.
“I took my son just a few days ago, and we cleaned 7 fish that filled up two 1-gallon bags with filets,” said Schlumbrecht. “I think the best thing to do right now is bounce around on the bridges until you find a few off the big ones. They don’t seem to be very congregated right now, so don’t stick around in one spot very long.”
The larger trout have been biting well on Opening Night Bay Chovey soft plastics fished on 3/8-ounce jigheads, but Schlumbrecht revealed that the largest of his most recent fish annihilated the really long Sand Eels fished on the same 3/8-ounce lead.
“I guess it’s a case of using a bigger bait for a bigger fish,” Schlumbrecht concluded. “If you can get out there while the tide is falling, you’ll do a lot better. The million-dollar question on Pontchartrain, though, is when is the tide going to be falling. Here recently, we’ve been on a falling tide with a strong east wind, which actually pushed water in the lake.”