Get out of the boat, and follow these tips to catch fish that’ll make you a STAR contender.
Taking a topwater to the crotch doesn’t sound like something a speckled trout angler would have to worry about. Sling a trout in the boat, let him flop around on the floor, grab him and unhook him. Throw him on ice and repeat while the topwater stays a safe distance away.
However, John Solari has taken a few topwaters where the sun doesn’t shine in the last year or two while reeling in speckled trout. Fortunately, neither he nor his posterity had much to worry about because the hooks didn’t go all the way through his waders.
Did I mention he was wading? If you know Solari, that fact was assumed. Solari and his good friend Stephen Lanza are quickly becoming known for catching big Calcasieu Lake trout while doing the stingray shuffle.
In fact, outside their studies at McNeese State University, their free time is spent fishing in the Coastal Conservation Authority STAR tournament, and they readily admit that they pre-fish for the tournament all year long. Their favorite way of fishing before and during the tournament is by jumping out of a perfectly stable bay boat and wading in the water.
Why wade fishing? According to Solari, it’s because they believe they are doing themselves a huge favor by concealing themselves in the water while carrying their fishing gear. Wade fishing allows them to quietly present big baits to big trout, and the STAR tournament, in the minds of these two young anglers, is all about big trout.
“You can catch big trout out of a boat,” said Solari, “but the odds aren’t in your favor. Bait and fish scatter when a boat drifts overhead much like they do when a pelican passes overhead. When you’re wade fishing, neither the trout nor the bait will spook. Trout will sometimes swim right by you because you’re a less-imposing presence in the water than you are in a boat.”
Wade fishing is an angler’s opportunity to blend into his or her surroundings much like a hunter would by climbing into a camouflaged blind. Small fish and animals might not mind too much that you stand out, but the biggest of each will mind, and they’ll hightail it to a more secluded area in an effort to get away from you.
Whereas many anglers pull up to a spot they want to fish and hurriedly make four or five casts before deciding that the spot doesn’t hold any trout, wade fishing anglers don’t have the luxury of abandoning a spot too quickly.
Rather than hop back in the boat and speed off to another spot, they know their best chance of catching a big fish is in making the most of the spot they are fishing right now rather than the one they could be fishing.
Lanza believes it’s not a style of fishing that suits every angler.
“We’ve seen a lot of new people out here wading the last few months,” he said, “but for whatever reason, they don’t seem to stick with it. You’ve got to have a lot of patience to do what John and I do because we’re specifically fishing for big trout. Rather than going out and trying to catch a bunch of fish, 10 bites would be a good trip for us.”
In other words, wade fishing requires a trophy-hunter mentality. He or she has to be willing to forego the masses for the few.
So how did Solari and Lanza acquire this trophy mentality? According to Lanza, it all started back when they saw the angling pressure increase.
“We knew we had to do something different to get away from all the boats,” he said. “And the more we waded, the more big trout we caught, especially when we waded really shallow water where it would be hard to get into with a big boat. The key to catching those really big trout on a consistent basis is to try to isolate yourself as much as possible.”
During the last couple of years, Solari and Lanza have learned a few things about wade fishing that will increase your chances of catching a big trout this summer no matter where you fish.
Their advice will help you catch big trout whether you’re fishing the flats on Calcasieu Lake, the surf at Grand Isle or even Breton Island. And they just might help you vault to the top of the STAR leaderboard this summer.
1. Wade near deep water
Prefacing that advice by explaining that an angler wading the flats off the ship channel would walk in over his head before falling down a drop-off, Solari and Lanza emphasized that wade fishing during the summer requires fishing a feeding flat that is near deep water.
“When the water gets hot, those big trout are going to hang out in the cooler, deeper water and move onto the nearby shallow flats to feed,” said Lanza. “When they get done, they’ll move right back to the deep water. Bigger fish, especially, have to have that access to deep water.”
Read the other seven STAR-winning tips in the Louisiana Sportsman archives.
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