High tides make backwaters accessible, camp owner says
Everyone knows a falling tide is the best-case scenario to catch quick limits of redfish. So what do you do if the forecast calls for an extended period of daytime rising water levels?
As is the case right now if you head to Pointe-aux-Chenes you can still find plenty of action. And it might even be a benefit, especially if you don’t have a flats boat.
“High water is a a good and bad thing,” said Denham Springs angler Darren Cooper, who owns a camp minutes from Pointe-aux-Chene Marina. “It allows you to get into areas you normally can’t get into with deep-draft boats, but it also means fish can get back into the grass where you can’t get to them.”
The key to rising-tide success at Pointe-aux-Chenes is to understand the hydrology of the area.
Cooper said anglers can find two different situations, depending on whether they are north or south of the marina.
South of the marina, water will leach deep into the cord grass and allow fish to root around and feast on crabs and snails. So, while deeper-draft boats can move into the ponds, fishing can be tough.
But the waters north of the marina stay out of the grass until the tides are at their highest.
“You have a bank up there, so fish can’t get back into the grass as much,” Cooper explained.
He surmises that’s largely due to the fact that water is funneled through Cutoff Canal, which joins Bayou Pointe au Chien at the marina.
“The water cannot run out of that bottleneck fast enough,” Cooper said. “You always have water movement because of that bottleneck.
“You can go south and the water will be coming in, but at the marina it could still be moving out.”
So the angler, who fishes out of a customized Gator Trax capable of slipping into shallow flats, will head to ponds north of the marina during rising-tide periods.
Cooper’s success generally comes on paddletailed plastics on jigs.
“I’ve tried spinnerbaits, but I haven’t had the success I’ve had with those (jigs),” he explained.
That being said, the author caught a number of redfish over the weekend using a gold-bladed ChatterBait.
How good can the action be? Cooper and the author caught their 10-fish two-man limit by 8 a.m. Saturday morning.
