Action could ‘explode’ after first cool front, guide says
Speckled trout fishing on Big Lake this month has been relatively inconsistent, a guide said.
“One day I catch a limit of trout by 8:30 in the morning, and the next day I go out to the same spot and I don’t get a bite,” said Nick Poe, with Big Lake Guide Service in Cameron Parish. “It’s just that time of the year. I think they’re in the ‘let’s not eat until we get the first cold front’ mode.
“One day it’s as many as you want, the next day you’re struggling to catch 25,” he said.
During this month of transition, as speckled trout all along the coast begin to stage and eventually make their way back into the coastal marshes, Poe said the fish have been tough to find in quantity every day.
“There are fish everywhere. I caught fish everywhere I went this weekend, I just didn’t catch many of them,” Poe said. “There’s fish from one end of it (Calcasieu Lake) to the other. You can go and catch four just about everywhere you stop, so you better have a lot of spots.”
He recommended both Commissary Point and Long Point as potential places to put fish in the box. And while the Calcasieu Ship Channel hasn’t produced much lately, Poe said deeper reefs in the lake have provided the best results in about 6- to 7-feet of water.
“That’s where we’re catching most of our fish,” he said.
Poe said he prefers to fish plastics, with his favorites being the MirrOlure Lil John in glow and opening night, and the H&H Sparkle Beetle in clear and glow.
“I’m a firm believer that if they don’t bite that, they’re not really hungry anyway,” he said.
The good news is he’s caught more large trout (in the 5- to 7-pound range) this year than he has in the last several years, and the prevalence of shrimp in the marsh has him optimistic about the prospects for the coming weeks and months.
“As soon as that water drops, it’s going to push those shrimp out and we’re going to see something we haven’t seen in a couple of falls. I think we might be going back to a cycle of a lot of big fish like we had 10 years ago,” Poe said. “I expect the lake to explode the first cold front we get. We might be seeing some really impressive stuff later this fall.”
