Fish wait in and around cover to avoid current and surprise prey
Depending on the wind, Capt. Lloyd Landry of Outcast Fishing Charters takes clients to the Empire Jetty on the west side of the river a lot of days this month.
Speckled trout look for ambush points, and favor them on hard tides. Landry said this is one thing he always hunts for at the Jetty.
“I really look for an incoming tide until 10 o’clock,” he said. “Even with a high river, when you get toward the end of that tide, we have green water there.”
A lot of what attracts fish to the rocks is the ambush points the structure creates, according to Landry.
“I fish the points, and try to get on the inside current,” he said. “On a really hard incoming or falling tide, those fish don’t like to be in the strong current.
“They seem to hold when you’re looking at a point and the water is pouring around the side of it.”
Even though the hard current is what the specks are drawn to, they don’t necessarily hold directly in it.
“They can get out of that harder current and feed,” Landry said.
Landry advises to throw close against the rocks and let the bait drift back.
“A lot of times those fish will be in one area, like 2 feet off the rocks, and they’ll be a pile of them there,” he said.
Early in the mornings, Landry likes to throw topwater baits against the rocks. He said you don’t get many bites, but the ones you do get are big.
“I’ve had some customers catch some 5, 6 and 7-pound fish,” he said.
Once the sun gets up, Landry throws a 3/8-ounce, unpainted, black-nickel coated jighead teamed with a lemon head Matrix Shad.
“I’ve become diehard to those, no matter the water clarity,” he said.
When the fish aren’t on the rocks, you can simply drift down the beach, according to Landry.
“It’s a sand bottom, just like you would fish at Grand Isle,” he said. “In the last two years, they’ve built the beach back up going west from the Empire Jetty.”
When fishing in the summer, getting out early is important, but Landry feels it’s even more important to time your trips around tidal movement.
“I play the tide,” he said. “Most people get out there at the triple crack of dawn and try to beat everybody out there. By midday, everybody is gone.”
