Plan on early start, early finish to beat the heat, guide says
Stand outside for one minute in the middle of a sunny August day and you’ll immediately go back into your cool A/C, curse the summer heat and swear you’ll never utter a negative word about winter ever again.
The boiling heat is just miserable for the fish and the fishermen.
That’s why Delacroix fishing guide Capt. Ahab Broadus does his best this time of year to leave the dock in the dark and get back to it before noon.
“I don’t generally fish in the afternoon in August,” Broadus said. “If you can be on the spot before the sun breaks the horizon, it’ll pay dividends this time of year with better quantity and quality fish.”
The speckled trout in Black Bay are present throughout the hottest season of the year, but the guide said the water depth he finds them in changes as the season moves along.
“You want to focus on those deepwater spots,” Broadus said.
He noted that places like Iron Banks and The Wreck are more productive than the islands.
Around the platforms, Broadus uses live shrimp on long leaders.
“(In June) we were using about a 2-foot leader, but in August we’ll go up to a 5-foot leader,” Broadus said.
When he finds the fish to be deeper than 5 feet, Broadus switches over to a sliding cork because they’re easier and less precarious to throw than a fixed cork.
Birds can be a reliable fall-back option for anglers struggling around the structures, but Broadus said he hasn’t been spotting many flocks over the course of the summer.
“I haven’t been seeing many birds this year,” he said. “The few we have seen have been diving on something, but it hasn’t been trout under them.”
In the summer, high-salinity water and speckled trout go together like bacon and shrimp. Because of this, Broadus likes fishing a certain direction of the tide.
“I like a rising tide later in the summer because it brings in saltier water,” he said.
Back in June, Broadus witnessed a situation firsthand that solidified the importance of having high-salinity water around the area you’re fishing this time of year.
“We happened to be sitting in a salty pocket of water, and the water in the livewell was clear,” he said. “A couple hours later, I couldn’t see the bottom of the livewell, and the fish shut down.”
Broadus said if you can tolerate the sweltering heat this month, the rewards can be well worth it.
“In August, everything is 2 to 3 pounds,” he said. “It’s like they came out of a cookie cutter.”