Capt. Theophile Bourgeois led a boatload of anglers to an ice chest filled to the brim with speckled trout, redfish and bass Monday, and said the hot action out of Lafitte is just beginning.
“This’ll go on until the end of June,” he said. “You see all these little reds? These’ll be keepers in just a month or two.”
Bourgeois was referring to a high number of 15 ¾-inch reds that smashed the anglers’ baits in the ponds adjacent to Bayou Dupont.
The anglers, in town for an annual gathering of outdoor media and industry leaders, also caught a good number of keeper-sized reds in the beautiful shallow water.
The Dupont area is loaded with mullet right now, which is unusually early, Bourgeois said.
“Everything’s a month ahead of time because of the warm weather,” he said.
All those schools of mullet have drawn the speckled trout into the shallow waters, as evidenced by the fast action on Monday. The anglers caught several healthy trout on spinner beetles while fishing for reds. They soon switched to topwater Bomber Badonk-a-Donks, and were reveling in repeated surface explosions.
“I’m very happy with all the bait we’re seeing this year,” he said. “On a scale from 1-10, Lafitte is an 8 right now, and it’s only getting better.”
Best baits for the ponds are beetle spins (black/chartreuse Bomber Mud Minnows teamed with gold spinners), topwater Badonk-a-Donks (bone and mullet colors) and electric chicken Jerk Shads under rattling corks.
Reds will stay active in the ponds throughout the spring, summer and fall, but the trout will leave once the urge to spawn hits, usually sometime in May.
To book a trip with Bourgeois, call 504-341-5614.
