Speck fishing going crazy on Barrier Island
One would be hard pressed right now to find an inshore pond, lake or bay where the speckled trout aren’t jumping all over your baits. Some have even compared fishing right now to what it was like just after Hurricane Katrina.
However, as good as the saltwater fishing is right now all across coastal Louisiana, there may be no hotter spot than Raccoon Island just south of Caillou Bay out of Bayou DuLarge.
“Fishing right now is just off the charts,” said Capt. Marty LaCoste with Absolute Fishing Charters. “We (hadn’t) been able to get out to the island because of all the wind, but the last four or five days we’ve been able to get out.
“And between all the guides, I think the number was 1,425 fish we’ve brought in the last four days.”
LaCoste has strictly been fishing double rigs out at Raccoon Island the past few days. Glow and chartreuse Bayou Chub minnows have been most productive, but he and his customers have also done well on purple and chartreuse, avocado and a new Bayou Chub color called Cajun Pepper.
I made a quick trip with LaCoste a couple days ago, and we started on the north side of the island, which was the lee side with calm water. However, we didn’t stay long. LaCoste wasn’t happy with our lackluster catch on the calm side, so he idled around to the south side of the island to fish the surf.
We started out on the rock fairly well, and LaCoste was able to pick up a few trout by letting the current just kind of wash his double-rigged Chubs parallel to the outside of the rocks. Even that didn’t satisfy his unquenchable thirst for a fast bite, so we moved between the rocks and the island.
“This has been the ticket inside these rocks,” he told me as we found a quick bite that disappeared even quicker. “I was hoping we could get on them on the back side, but if we’ve got to fish in this wind to catch them two at a time on every cast that’s just what we’ll have to do.”
I landed a double almost as if on cue, and my son Matthew and nephew Zach hooked up with their own fish. LaCoste landed a couple, and then it just quit.
My double made LaCoste think we had finally found the spot, but he wound up searching around between the rocks and the island to see if we could find them again.
About 15 or 20 minutes later, we realized that LaCoste’s Blue Wave 2400 Pure Bay boat had drifted right on top of the fish back when we had first found them. That’s what had shut them down. The bite started again, and we landed 75 trout by 8:15.
And LaCoste estimated that we landed 80 trout in a 30-minute stretch.
LaCoste insisted that we get our fish off and our baits back in the water as quickly as possible to keep the bite going, but even this frenzy eventually slowed down a little bit. We started fan casting around the boat and filled out our limit of 100 speckled trout by 9 a.m.
“This is what we call a BURN HACK!” LaCoste cackled as we pulled in our last trout. “We’re burning them and hacking them.
“I don’t know what the water is going to do if they open the Morganza Spillway, but if the bite stays like this, you can bet Raccoon Island is going to stay off the charts all summer long.”
Check out Absolute Fishing Charters or call Capt. Marty LaCoste at 985.856.4477.
