Last summer, when our Backwater Charters boat captain, Devin Shaheen, turned north up the ship channel from Hackberry towards Lake Charles, instead of following the three other captains south into Big Lake, I must admit I thought, “uh oh!”
After all, when you think of great speckled trout and redfish fishing in southwest Louisiana, Big Lake is the first place that comes to mind; at least for out-of-towners that is.
Lake Charles was the host city for the 2023 Louisiana Outdoor Writers Association’s annual conference and a bunch of us were hoping to make good use of our time taking advantage of the stellar speckled trout fishing in the area.
Living three hours away, obviously I was no expert on fishing this region, but I guess my face showed my reservation, because that’s when Shaheen said, “The lake, it’s just a great big lake, and if you get a southwest wind like today, there’s really not that much area you can productively fish. Plus, you’ve got all the other boats trying to do the same thing.”
Come to find out, the 30-year-old Shaheen was born and raised in Sulphur, and had been in the woods and in a boat since he was 4 years old. What’s more, much of it in southwest Louisiana.
Confidence
Shaheen was confident choosing the northern part of the estuary to showcase the region. And as a bonus he assured us that we wouldn’t have a lot of competition, because he rarely sees a bunch of boats during weekday trips.
Geographically, the plan was to fish at various points along the ship channel and Calcasieu River from Moss Lake on into the city limits of Lake Charles beneath the I-10 overpass.
Shaheen pointed out that the lake waters around the metropolitan area of Lake Charles are quite shallow and typically in the 6-to-8-foot max range. For that reason, he prefers to fish the Calcasieu main channels closer to deep water.
“We fish right along the edge of the current where the ledge starts on the ship channel,” Shaheen said. “That’s mainly what the fish like up there in town. Off those ledges is where you generally find a good current break and you can’t really catch trout without current. So, basically, since the ship channel is part of the river, there isn’t as much current in the channel itself the further out you go. So, those fish don’t venture too far off the channel ledge.”
Shaheen also mentioned what became obvious the further north we fished — structure. Between the plants and loading docks there were pylons, rock embankments, docks, and rusted fabricated steel structures.
When combining this structure with water that goes from shallow to deep quickly and included a decent current, we had the perfect manmade habitat where we caught fish.
Didn’t take long
One of our first fishing locations was within a few hundred yards of the I-210 Interstate Bridge. It didn’t take long for our crew to start putting fish in the box.
During my travels through Lake Charles over the years, while driving over this bridge, I had enviously wondered what guys were catching down below. Now I know.
We also fished almost directly under the bridge. There’s some structure there in the form of pylons and what appeared to be an uneven bottom that looked like shallow rolling hills on Shaheen’s electronics. We picked up a few more trout but didn’t spend a lot of time in this location. There were other areas our guide wanted to check out.
Just past the I-210 Bridge we began fishing structure and drainages within spitting distance of the Golden Nugget Lake Charles Hotel & Casino. Along this part of the Calcasieu River there were places with riprap and pylon structures along with storm drains that poured water into the river.
The trout seemed to love these storm drains. On one particular drain, the water came out of the pipe with enough turbulence that confused and stirred up the bait, making easy pickings for hungry specks. The lesson? Apparently speckled trout like to feed around storm discharge drains.
Speaking of baits, while fishing we used both live shrimp and soft plastics. What’s more, method-wise, we fished these baits in four different configurations.
We fished the soft plastics with a ¼-ounce jig head under a popping cork and on a ¼-ounce jig head free lined.
It was essentially the same thing with the shrimp. Shaheen set up rods with wide gap hooks under a popping cork and rods with wide gap hooks free lined with live shrimp.
These four combinations proved to work equally well. No one was rushing to change their rigs and the fish didn’t seem to care what we threw at them.
Top color choices
The plastics we used were made by Down South Lures. One of Shaheen’s preferred colors when fishing clear water is Blue Moon, which the color pattern is actually a baby blue color on top, silver flaked color on the bottom and a chartreuse tail.
His other clear water color is Bone Diamond that is entirely bone colored with metallic flakes.
For dirty water, Shaheen fishes with a Down South Lures Dirty Tequila. This bait is almost gold in color with black and silver flakes and a chartreuse tail.
“Sometimes people will ask me for a certain color or a certain bait while we’re fishing and I’ll say, ‘Hey that’s not what I use,’ but I tell a lot of people it’s whatever you’re confident in,” Shaheen said. “If you’re confident in that, then you’re going to catch more fish.”
Moving further upriver, we went into Lake Charles where we fished around a sinker cypress tree in the main lake. Shaheen said he discovered the tree that floated up into the lake after Hurricane Rita in 2005 during a day that he was struggling to catch a redfish.
“I could not find a redfish or anything actually,” he said. “I was like, ‘Man, there has got to be a fish around here.’ I pulled up over by that tree and someone made a bad cast a little bit away from the tree and caught a trout. Everything we caught that day, came from that sunken cypress tree.”
Like many fishing spots, there’s often a name attached to them. Ever since that day Shaheen discovered the tree, he’s referred to it as, “the tree of life.”
From the tree of life, you can see the Horseshoe Lake Charles hotel (formerly Isle of Capri) and the I-10 Bridge that passes over the north end of the lake.
Channel hump
Short of our limits, on our way back south through the ship channel we stopped near the Rain CII Carbon site. Shaheen set his electronics on down scan and we slowly moved about until he had us locked in on a hump in the channel. Using the down scan technique, he said he has discovered several fishable locations along the Calcasieu River and ship channel.
The hump was loaded with trout, and it didn’t take us long to finish getting our limits of 15 each. As a bonus, one of our anglers, Goosie Guise, picked up a beautiful gold redfish off the hump.
Shaheen said the hump usually holds fish and it’s on the main channel.
“Fish are migrating up and down the channel and it doesn’t take them long to find it,” he said. “It’s just a little sweet spot that most always has fish.”
Though we weren’t fishing for redfish that day, there is good redfishing in this region.
“If you’re redfishing, you have to treat it as though you were bass fishing, because up there they act like bass,” Shaheen said. “If you see any trees in the water, or stumps or concrete – any structures — in open water it’s going to have a fish on it.”
One other technique we used was something every saltwater angler probably cut his teeth doing and that’s fishing under birds. Shaheen is someone who takes advantage of every opportunity when it stares him in the face. While running south back to Hackberry we came across a spot that had bait popping and birds diving. In short, we obviously wanted to make the most of it.
Even though we caught and released a lot of under-sized fish on our excursion, we had nonstop action throughout the entire day and put three limits of trout in the box. What’s more, all of it in sight of Lake Charles entertainment centers.
Lake Charles fishing is very accessible and so are things to do after a day on the water.
“You’ve got the night life,” Shaheen said. “You’ve got restaurants. There’s always some kind of festival or activity going on. You’ve got casinos. You’ve got nature trails if you want to drive down to Hackberry or Cameron. We actually do casino pickups. We get a gate code from the hotel itself to access their marina and we pick people up at the dock side from the Golden Nugget.”
Over the years I’ve spent a lot of time doing things in the outdoors around Lake Charles, from hunting to fishing, shooting to photography. One thing is for sure, the next time I pass through the “City Limits” of Lake Charles, limits are going to take on a whole new meaning!
