Who says you have to head outside to catch fish this month?
No, this is not the latest Matt Damon movie, in the Bourne Conspiracy and Bourne Supremacy series of Hollywood fare. This Borgne is not a conspiracy at all, it’s an alternative. An alternative to what?
An alternative to the long, gas-consuming haul to the far outside wells and rigs, where many of us head to find speckled trout. We follow the conventional wisdom, which is that in the hot summer months, trout head to the deeper water of the sounds and big bays, and ply the depths around structures like wells and rigs.
And the conventional wisdom has the advantage of years of proven experience. We know there are fish in the outside waters because we fish there, and we catch them there. This time, each year, we automatically begin the outside trek to find the big numbers and sizes we seek.
Normally, in the greater New Orleans area, we figure we have two options for summer specks. It’s either the outside waters or Lake Pontchartrain.
But there is yet another viable alternative — Lake Borgne, which is accessible from Chalmette, the Rigolets or Hopedale. Before Katrina, Shell Beach offered the quickest access to Lake Borgne.
Unfortunately, Campo’s Marina in Shell Beach was destroyed by the storm, and the Campos remain undecided about rebuilding.
For the uninitiated, Lake Borgne is a large saltwater bay, about 27 miles lengthwise, running southwest to northeast and 15 miles north to south at the widest points. Located some 15 miles east of downtown New Orleans, it’s bounded by Orleans Parish and the city of New Orleans on the northwest.
Lake Borgne is a western arm of the Mississippi Sound and a link between the Gulf of Mexico (through Mississippi Sound) and Lake Pontchartrain, to which it is connected by two navigable passes: The Rigolets and The Chef.
The Biloxi Wildlife Management Area is located on the southeastern shore; the Intracoastal Waterway parallels the northwest shore; and the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet canal (MRGO or “Ship Channel”) parallels the southwest shore. The big lake is home to speckled trout, redfish, flounder, sheepshead, drum, and numerous other saltwater species.
I had an invitation to fish the lake with an old friend, Capt. Mike Herrmann (504-256-7226), who likes to toss topwater baits into the schools of mullet that hang on the edges of the lake. The wee hours of the morning provide the best action for the technique, so I met him at the Breton Sound Marina just as the sun began to peep over the horizon.
We loaded our gear into the boat and turned west at the MRGO for the 5-mile run to Shell Beach and the lake. Once in the lake, we headed slightly north of east toward Jahnke’s Ditch, just below Bayou St. Malo.
Jahnke’s is a long reef that extends out 100 yards or more into the lake. The reef has broken skegs and bent up many a prop as unsuspecting boaters ran over it, unaware that the hard shell bottom jutted that far out and that far up.
The lake was calm, almost glassy, with just enough wind to produce a slight ripple, and sections of the white shell reef could be clearly seen protruding above the surface.
We stayed south of the reef and motored to the shoreline, where Herrmann and Brian Graves, our partner in this venture, got out of the boat. Even there, the water is very shallow, so I wouldn’t advise this approach in a boat that draws more than 18 inches of water. I’ve seen other anglers ride their boats right up onto the reef, and then dismount and wade fish the length of it. But they were in old flatboats and didn’t care what the hard shells did to the bottom of their rigs.
Herrmann and Graves each had a rod and reel combo armed with a topwater plug, and Herrmann had a wader’s fish net/basket tied off to his waist with a collapsible landing net perched on top.
As soon as they walked onto the reef they began throwing their baits into the schools of mullet that seem to perpetually remain there. The target was the big trout that like to hang along the reef, feeding on the small mullet within the schools.
Herrmann fishes this area regularly, and says wading the reef rather than trying to fish it from a boat gives you a distinct advantage.
For one, you can sneak up on the fish, he says, which, no matter how hard you try, you just can’t do in a boat.
“The water here is just too shallow and too clear to sneak up on the big trout,” he said. “They are super skittish to begin with. I’ve caught many smaller trout here from a boat, but I’m not hunting small trout. I’m looking for 4-, 5- and 6-pound trout. I’ve caught them up to 7 and almost 8 pounds here, and I’ve heard of trout going 9 and even 10 pounds coming from right here. Granted, they’re rare. But they’re here, and they are very easily spooked.
“Also, these mullet are always moving. They swim from one side of the reef to the other, constantly. If you were in a boat, you’d have to keep moving to try to stay with them. And even if you troll, it makes noise.
“When you wade, if they move, you just cast to the other side. No problem.”
Herrmann often catches fish while wading when the boat fishermen around him are striking out.
Several times their topwater plugs exploded in froth and frenzy, as trout aggressively attacked them. Not every hit resulted in a hookup, but how the fish manage to escape all those treble hooks is a mystery to me.
The ones that didn’t get away jumped up immediately on the surface in the shallow water and fought like bass, shaking their heads and performing aerial acrobatics all the way in.
And that’s where wade fishing gets tricky. If you’re in a boat, you set your rod down and grab the landing net. But if you’re standing knee deep in water, you can’t sit anything down. So you hold your rod with one hand, grab the landing net off the floating ring with the other, and scoop the fish as you maneuver him in. Easy.
Then, you tuck your rod under your arm, hold the net with one hand and try to unhook all those treble hooks from the fish and the net with the other hand.
Keep in mind, the fish isn’t exactly cooperating, and you have no extra hands to hold him steady with while you try to unhook him without hooking yourself. Still easy?
Now try it when two people have hefty fish on the line simultaneously, and both share the same landing net. For awhile, it looked like a Chinese fire drill, as Herrmann and Graves wrestled with fish, treble hooks and nets, but they quickly adjusted and landed both fish successfully.
They both managed to put some very nice trout in the basket, but they weren’t the mules we hoped for.
The week before, Herrmann and I waded the reef and caught several larger trout on topwaters in the early morning. But the wind started kicking up and the water got too dirty to see our feet, so we retreated to fish from the boat.
Just when it looked like the trout action was really turning on, jacks moved in. Herrmann fought one for almost 20 minutes, and just when it seemed he was turning and tiring the powerful fish, it exploded in a huge splash of blood. A shark attacked it, right there in that shallow water, almost where we were standing just minutes ago.
That little incident didn’t keep us out of the water though. Because here we were, a week later, wading the same reef. But as for me, I want to be able to see where I step on the bottom, and I don’t wade out deeper than my knees.
If you decide to try this, I also advise you to wear wading boots or old tennis shoes with socks, not surf shoes or sandals of any kind. Those are fine for walking in sand, but not on a shell reef, where the shell grit will get up inside and cut your feet.
And Herrmann says to remember that you have to be fully equipped when you wade-fish. At the very least, you’ll need to carry pliers, a landing net and a floating hoop basket to put your fish in.
Herrmann says the biggest fish of the year are usually caught in April and May, but big trout will patrol the reef all summer long, or as long as the mullet remain.
“The trout disappear when the mullet do,” he said.
And the optimum time of the month to up your odds of catching really large fish, is to fish three days before or after a new moon or full moon.
“Check the records, and you’ll see that 75 percent of the world-record fish were caught within three days before or after a new moon or a full moon. That’s something to remember,” Herrmann said.
His favorite bait: Top Dog Jrs. in bone/chrome, mullet with a white belly, or chartreuse on cloudy days. Herrmann says he also uses Zara Spooks in the shad or mullet colors with a white belly, and he fishes topwaters with 17-pound mono, and a 2-foot-long, 25-pound mono leader.
“Heavy line actually floats, and makes for better action when fishing topwaters,” he said.
By mid morning, the action had stopped, and it was time to move on.
We piled back into the boat and headed west toward a set of wellheads that were barely visible in the distance.
Once there, we found the rig already occupied by Capt. Hil Wegener, another old friend, who was guiding a trip, and he and his crew were putting trout in the boat.
Wegener said the rigs in Lake Borgne have been on fire this summer, producing loads of nice-sized trout. Wegener said he either hooks onto the structures and fishes out or anchors up and fishes toward them.
“We’re catching fish at many of the structures in the lake. They’re at the big rigs and at the small wells. If you don’t find them at one rig, move to another. Usually you won’t have to move around too much to find them,” he said.
Wegener says the key right now is live bait.
“Shrimp, croakers, finger mullet, pogies, whatever you can get. Buy it or toss a cast net, because you’ll have trouble catching fish for the remainder of the summer without it,” he said.
And Wegener likes to fish the live stuff under a sliding cork.
“Use your depth sounder, and set your bait so it suspends between 12 to 24 inches off the bottom. You can also use a Carolina rig but you’ll hang up more on the bottom debris,” he said.
Wegener says Proctors Point has also been productive this year, yielding trout, redfish, drum and flounder.
So, next trip, before you make the long haul outside, consider the Borgne Alternative. Who knows, maybe it’ll even be Hollywood’s next blockbuster.
Capt. Mike Herrmann can be reached at (504) 256-7226; Capt. Hil Wegener can be reached at 985-674-5180.
