Finding shrimp, feeding birds key to redfish- and trout-fishing success
Friday the 13th isn’t a day renowned for its good luck. If there is a community on earth that has a superstitious bent it’s the fishing community. Anglers are a fraternity of people with favorite hats, lures and unwashed shirts; they have honey holes, secret techniques and white bandit masks painted on sun burned faces.
There is, however, a marriage between the gris gris and the practical. Great fishermen know that luck has less to do with success than knowledge and skill.
After fishing Hopedale for 37 years, Lee Newman has a lot of both and he can attest to that.With trout in a typical spring pattern, an angler’s biggest obstacle is the weather.
“It’s been windy, super windy,” Newman said.
That didn’t stop him from landing a bunch of keepers on two consecutive weekends.
“A friend on mine has a camp down there, and he told me to fish topwaters,” Newman said. “I caught a lot of trout on April 6 fishing the rock dam and where the bayous connect to the lake. The mullet are gathering there, and the fish feed on the smaller finger mullets.”
He bagged the school trout on big-eyed chrome and black Top Dogs and She Dogs.
“I like for the lure to look like the mullets,” Newman said.
The following weekend, on a dreaded Friday the 13th, the wind was back but Newman wasn’t worried. He returned to the rock dam in a different spot and caught a mess of nice redfish, some sheepshead and two big trout.
“Any wind coming from the north or northwest is always a problem,” he said, “If that turns out to be the case, bring a cast net and fish protected areas like the rock dam or the river channel.
“The bait can be thick. The shrimp are popping on a falling tide, and I fish them under a cork. Trout hit them so hard they look like a jack breaking the surface; it’s really something.”
He followed that up with another good trip the next day. He had success with the school trout again. This time he fished under birds near Half Moon Pass headed toward Lake Eloi.
“The topwaters work well really early and really late with a south or east wind,” he explained. “Those are good conditions, and the water is clear in the lake and in the river channel.”
As for this coming weekend, Newman expects the wind to be ripping in from the west at 20 to 30 knots by Saturday at noon.
“Anybody going out to Hopedale this weekend better bring their weather gear,” he said. “It’s gonna be tough.”
