Nobody would claim the fishing at the mouth of the Mississippi River is on fire, but if a recent trip with Captain Shawn Lanier (225-205-5353) was any indication, it’s possible to put together a nice day as long as you don’t get locked in to one spot.
After two days of brutal winds and weather, Lanier and I motored to Blind Bay to begin our day on Wednesday. We didn’t know what to expect since the wind had been blowing hard from the south on Monday and hard from the north on Tuesday.
We found the north end of Blind Bay to be relatively clear considering that all the water we passed through to get there had an ugly, muddy, grey color. As the water behind Lanier’s Sea Pro boat started churning up water that was closer in color to green than grey, we began to get a little excited.
“I’ll put the boat so we can fish the canes for reds and throw out in the middle for trout,” Lanier said as he dropped his trolling motor. “I think the fish are a little scattered right now, so we’ll just set up on a drift to see what happens.”
It didn’t take me long to put down my redfish rig as Lanier almost immediately began slinging 2-pound trout in the boat. He was fishing Tsunami soft plastics under a popping cork, so I grabbed my popping cork rig with a glow/chartreuse Saltwater Assassin Sea Shad and joined the action.
We made three or four drifts through the north end of Blind Bay with scattered action on each drift. After realizing that the bite there had died, we moved to Redfish Bay and just happened to make the right cast to the right spot. A flurry of action forced Lanier to drop his Power Pole, and we caught a mix of trout, redfish and sheepshead for about two hours.
Lanier eventually hooked into what he thought was just another “grilling size red,” but a flash of black proved otherwise. The big trout eventually made its way into the net, and I lifted Lanier’s 4- to 5-pound trout over the side of the boat. “She ate market shrimp,” Lanier laughed. “Can’t believe it.”
As it had done at Blind Bay, our luck eventually waned at this little broken island in Redfish Bay, so we made the run through rough water to the rock jetties at the end of South Pass. Lanier had slammed the redfish the day before by fishing Carolina rigged live and dead shrimp on the surf side of the eastern jetty.
The rollers were tossing us around as we tried to secure his boat with the anchor, and we eventually were able to make a few casts. The redfish were still there, as were some sheepshead and a few hardheads.
However the rolling waves made our stomachs roll more, so we packed it up and headed in with a box of redfish and trout that seemed to be more the exception rather than the rule on this particular day.
“That’s the way it is right now,” Lanier said as we motored back to Venice Marina. “You can catch some fish, but you’ve got to keep moving around to find the hot spots, and those hot spots don’t stay hot very long.”
