Champagne talks timing, tactics and water temps
Game One of the 2015 World Series is set for next Tuesday, Oct. 27 — but don’t expect this year’s fabled “World Series Trout Run” on Lake Pontchartrain to perfectly coincide with baseball’s Fall Classic.
Chas Champagne, noted speck fisherman on the lake and owner of the popular Matrix Shad and Vortex Shad soft plastic paddle-tail lures, said fall trout action over the last several years hasn’t really heated up until November – in spite of the persistent “World Series Trout” moniker.
“It used to start Oct. 1 and really peak out around the World Series, but the last four years there’s been nothing to catch as far as trout on the bridges in early October,” Champagne said. “But once the World Series starts or is just over, they’ll show up overnight.”
Their later-than-usual arrival at the Trestles, the Highway 11 bridge, the Twin Span and the Causeway has become the norm in recent years, which Champagne says shortens the window of opportunity for fall trout action on the lake.
“With them not being there now — and they probably aren’t going to show up until around Nov. 1 — if you get back-to-back big blistering cold fronts out of the northwest in the second week of December and that water temperature gets in the lower 50s, it’s over with,” he said. “It’s just short-lived nowadays.
“Instead of getting like a 10-week fall run on the bridges, we get a four- or five-week run.”
Regardless of how long it lasts, the calendar is steadily inching closer to Champagne’s favorite time of the year to fish for specks in Lake Pontchartrain — Thanksgiving week.
“That’s a damn good time to fish around here,” he said. “We love April and May, but there’s so many boats that time of the year. So November, Thanksgiving, and early December — the fishing is pretty much just as good as April or May, but half the fishermen are deer hunters and duck hunters, so you don’t have to deal with them.
“Same fishery — less competition.”
So what creates the whole “World Series Trout Run?” Champagne says it’s all about water temperature in the lake.
“The water has to get below 70 degrees for a consistent period of time,” he said. “Peak water temperature would be 64 or 65 degrees. When it’s like that for two weeks straight, that’s when it’s going on around here.”
The water temperature also explains why specks can turn on overnight at all of the bridges almost simultaneously.
“My personal theory on it is when the water temperature gets cool enough, the sun creates heat on that cement, and that heat travels down into the leg pilings, which either the fish like or the bait likes,” Champagne said. “That’s what keeps them there. It’s got to get cold enough on a consistent basis to where the fish and the bait start using those pilings for warmth.
“That’s what I truly believe.”
When it does turn on, Champagne will be using a ⅜-ounce Goldeneye jighead with his favorite color Matrix or Vortex Shad.
“The color doesn’t matter as much,” he said, noting that black-and-chartreuse lures are used mainly for redfish, and purple-and-chartreuse is more of a dirty water bait. “The water is usually pretty clear, so we’ll use a lot of natural-looking stuff.”
Jigging the lure and maintaining contact with the bottom is key when the bite kicks in, he said.
“Everything is on the bottom. They’re all about 5 feet from the bottom all the way to the bottom, somewhere in there. They don’t really suspend on the bridges all that much,” Champagne said. “That’s why the bridges are so complicated to fish. You’ve got to hold that contact with the bottom in 10- or 12- or 15-feet of water with current, waves and all that.
“People have trouble with it. It takes time to get used to — it’s just such an abnormal way to speckled trout fish.”
Having said that, he said inexperienced anglers will typically fare better on the Trestles than on the Causeway, where precision casting and the angle of the cast are at more of a premium.
“Once you figure out the Causeway, they’ll be on the exact same spot on every piling all the way down the bridge, but the pattern changes everyday,” he said. “With the Trestles, you just back off the bridge and throw at it — it doesn’t really matter if you throw left, right or straight at it. They don’t pattern themselves as much, so a novice is going to have a lot better chance of success on the Trestles.
“The Causeway really takes some skill.”
Recent east winds have pushed water levels up about 2 ½ feet higher than normal, but Champagne is confident the “World Series Run” will once again kick off around early November.
“I’m not even worried about it yet. We have so much shrimp and bait in the lake, I ‘d be shocked if we had a terrible season. The redfish are already doing what they typically do this time of year, so everything should be setting up,” he said. “If we can get a big northwestern front to come through, the water will drop 2 feet overnight. When that happens, it will push all the pogies and shrimp into the lake and things will probably get right and kick off into full swing.
“November 15 is magic time. I’ll be fishing almost every bleeding second I can starting Nov. 1.”
