Specks thick around rigs; live bait is best option.
Lakes Pontchartrain and Borgne have been getting an underserved bad rap since the opening of the Bonnet Carre Spillway several weeks ago. Nervous anglers have been watching the mud line creep eastward across Pontchartrain, but those in the know have discovered that mud hasn’t as shut down the trout bite.
“Guys in Venice have been dealing with mud for as long as they’ve fished down there,” Capt. John Falterman with Therapy Charters said. “And that hasn’t stopped them. They’ve learned that beneath the ugly surface is the green water that trout love. Just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not there.”
Falterman, like many of the other guides who run out of places like the Rigolets Marina and Dockside Bait and Tackle, has found that the speckled trout have not quit biting because of the opening of the Bonnet Carre Spillway.
Many anglers seem to be staying home because they think they won’t find anything but gar and catfish; the marinas have essentially been deserted compared to the activity they would typically see this time of year, and there are short lines to launch and to get live bait.
However, those anglers are missing out, Falterman said.
“We caught 69 speckled trout and 18 white trout three days ago,” he told me as we idled away from Rigolets Marina on Friday (June 3). “I fully expect to go out today and prove that the fish are still here and that they are still biting.”
Our first stop was a rig in Lake Borgne known as the Tulane Rig because of its green and white tanks. This is where Falterman had caught his fish just two days before, and he thought they might still be around. The water wasn’t muddy at all, and Falterman pointed out that he could see the bottom of his trolling motor down in 18 or 20 inches of water.
For whatever reason, we just couldn’t get on them at the Tulane Rig, so Falterman made a short run to another rig that he didn’t have a special name for. Falterman’s son Jacob and I immediately hooked up with quality trout by fishing live shrimp on a drop-shot rig on the down-current side of the rig.
Over the course of the next hour or two we scraped up enough trout to call it a successful day on the water. With only 22 trout, we didn’t slam them like we thought we might, but Falterman had proved that the opening of the Bonnet Carre had not shut down the fishing on the Lake Pontchartrain basin.
“The Trestle and Twin Span are where they’re supposed to be right now,” Falterman told me as he docked his Skeeter bay boat. “But it’s been hit and miss out there. You catch them well one day, and get a total strike out the next.
“Lake Borgne is your best option. It’s going to hold fish, with white trout and speckled trout moving through. Hit the rigs and jump around, and you can put a box together. It’s just going to take some bait, and it’s going to be a mixed box.”
And the next night, Falterman called to let me know he and his charter customers had caught a four-man limit of 100 trout the very next day.
Contact Falterman at 985.649.FISH for more information.
