One of the most iconic opening lines from all of world literature comes from Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” The British author was comparing and contrasting life in London and Paris, but he might as well have been discussing inshore fishing during the month of December in south Louisiana. This is either the best month of the year, or the absolute worst, and sometimes it’s both. It all depends on the weather.

December is the most bipolar of the months. It can’t decide if it wants to be the most docile of falls or harshest of winters. Many years, local residents wear shorts to Christmas gatherings. Other Decembers are legendarily bitter. Take 1989, for instance. An Arctic blast steamrolled the area that year on Dec. 22, bringing snow and freezing local lakes and bays. Baton Rouge didn’t get above freezing for three days, and recorded a low temperature of 8 degrees F on Dec. 23.

Not exactly prime conditions for throwing soft-plastic baits over grass flats. Fortunately, events like that are the exception, but still, December is an enigmatic month, and local anglers can use its ebbs and flows to follow the fish.

Although the extremes can occur, the more general pattern is for cold fronts to push through once every five days or so, with nighttime lows kissing freezing on the second night after the front. For a day or two, winds will be out of the north, barometric pressure will rise and cold-blooded speckled trout will have the mental capacity of a can of spray cheese. Their brains just don’t work properly in cold conditions, and their bodies barely obey their brains, anyway. They’re like the iguanas in South Florida that fall from trees during cold snaps.

In these conditions, the fish stack up in deep-water thermoclines, and if the water there is warm enough, and you get a bait directly in front of their noses, you might get a bite every single cast. But many times, even if you stumble on a massive school, they’ll be physically incapable of biting a bait. That lasts for two or three days following the front, and then winds gain a southerly component, bringing air up from the warmer Gulf and driving daytime highs into the 60s and sometimes 70s. That’s when fishing can get really fun.

As soon as waters start to warm, the fish get frisky. Nature has taught them they have a limited window to get something in their bellies before the next front once again turns them into blithering idiots. Although deep thermoclines held the warmest of the water during the harshest of the cold, that’s no longer true. Flats exposed to the warming air, particularly on sunny days, heat up quickly, and the fish fan out over them searching for bait, mostly glass minnows and remaining white shrimp.

Fish in this mode are more aggressive and far less school-oriented, so the best way to target them is to repeatedly drift productive flats, throwing jerkbaits , soft-plastic paddletails on light jigheads, and shrimp-imitations under popping corks. And actually, if the warming trend is a little longer in duration and water temps on the flats reach the 60s, topwaters can become more productive than any other style of lure, particularly for big speckled trout.

That’s especially true on flats that feature scattered grass, pretty water and even just a few jumping mullet. It’s one of the most consistent patterns of the year, and is the main reason December rates so highly among hardcore anglers who ignore the hunting seasons to focus on the fish. For them, it’s mostly just the best of times.

The post Gulf Coast Wintertime Fishing appeared first on Sport Fishing Mag.

The word ‘relief’ has multiple definitions that seemingly have nothing to do with each other, and the most peculiar is “a difference in height from the surrounding terrain.” South Louisiana has no such relief. It’s as flat as Bangladesh, with the only difference in geographical height being the human-made levees that parallel the Mississippi River on either side, preventing it from spilling over its banks during spring floods, inundating homes and bankrupting insurance companies.

Saltwater Creeps Up the Mississippi to New Orleans

Because the region is so flat, the water in the Mississippi doesn’t actually fall into the Gulf of Mexico. It must be pushed with force from water upstream that is in fact impacted by the forces of gravity. But autumn is typically dry across much of the continent, and that means there ain’t a whole lot of water reaching the river — at least in relative terms — and most years, it’s not enough to hold the Gulf at bay.

At the river’s Bird’s Foot Delta, green, salty water takes advantage of the weakness, shoving its way as far upriver as New Orleans, some years even threatening the potability of the city’s drinking water. With that salty surge comes fish that aren’t generally associated with rivers — redfish, flounder and a whole lot of speckled trout — and best of all, because the banks of the river are armored, turbidity is never a problem. The river and its passes stay pristine, with visibility typically measured in feet, even after big blows associated with autumn cold fronts.

The river typically begins its annual descent some time in the summer, and by September, is below the 5-foot mark at New Orleans’ Carrollton gauge. That allows the passes and the river itself downstream of the Plaquemines Parish town of Buras to absolutely load up with redfish that move in to feast on estuarine bait stocks that spent most of the year growing in the nutrient-rich water, completely shielded from such predators.

Flounder also take root at points, drains and along edge walls in numbers that frequently defy belief. The species is typically an incidental catch for South Louisiana anglers, but in the autumn months at the mouth of the river, they are often targeted.

Louisiana Speckled Trout Fishing in Fall

In September and most of October, reds and flounder are the stars of the show, but annually in low river years, speckled trout join them right around the time kids are picking out their Halloween costumes. The specks set up along deep ledge walls in high-current areas, and ignore their bursting bellies to stuff their faces without ceasing. Though the techniques for targeting them can be unique, they’re the easiest fish in the world to get to bite.

Regular anglers often cast double-rigged 3/8-ounce jigheads teamed with soft-plastic paddle tails, sometimes having to level up to 1/2-ounce heads when currents are particularly swift. Double hookups are common, and the fish are often the biggest specks anglers will catch all year, measuring 25 inches and weighing up to 5 pounds.

A Hot Seatrout Bite in the Mississippi River

Last November, fishing buddy Justin Bowles and I hit a ledge in the river itself near the popular port of Venice, and found action that could not possibly have been better. We cast downcurrent, and worked our baits up a ledge that clearly held a school of specks that numbered in the hundreds if not thousands.

I went with the double-rig setup, while Bowles opted for a drop-shot rig anchored by a 1-ounce bell sinker. As soon as our baits reached bottom, bites were almost instantaneous. We were, at most, five minutes from Venice, and it remained in our view the entire trip. The water beneath our feet was green, clean and pristine. In the autumn war between Gulf and river, the Gulf had clearly won every battle.

The post Louisiana’s Fall Fishing Bite appeared first on Sport Fishing Mag.

The introduction around two decades ago of small, live croakers as summertime spotted seatrout bait forever changed Texas coastal fishing and ruffled a lot of salty feathers. Croakers breathed fresh life into a formerly rough patch of hot-season trout fishing one livewell or yellow wading bucket at a time. That pulse has grown stronger with every subsequent season. And now, as gauged by the length of pre-dawn lines at bait camps, it may well be a majority of fishermen who proudly embrace their designations as “croaker soakers.”

And why not? They’re the ones catching the most fish through the hottest months. And they were catching all the more spotted seatrout, prime spawners, when the daily limit on trout was still 10 statewide. So many, in fact, that a sagging trout population in the early 2000s, as measured by annual gillnet surveys conducted since 1974, was attributed by many anglers as primarily the fault of little croakers on big hooks.

Finger-pointing occasionally turned into dockside shouting matches and sometimes worse between those who did and those who would never use croakers as bait. That level of confrontation has subsided, thankfully, mostly because the Texas Parks & Wildlife Department (TPWD) enacted countermeasures to repair a substantially broken population.

Texas Trout Numbers Aren’t What They Used to Be

As a test, in 2007, TPWD rolled out a five-fish limit along the lower Texas coast. It worked. In 2014, perhaps a little late, that five-fish bag was extended northward roughly to Matagorda. And in 2019, five fish daily became the rule along all 700-plus miles of Texas coastline.

The latest reduction, to three fish daily statewide against a 15- to 20-inch slot (with a special annual license tag for one over-slot fish that won’t be used often by Texas’ conservation-minded anglers), started this past spring. It came none too soon. From inception, croakers replaced light stringers with easy limits of prime, spawning-class trout. So easy, in fact, that many guides did and still do book two trips daily — sometimes with guaranteed limits. Croakers are that irresistible to speckled trout.

The fate suffered by spawning-class croakers was worse. There are enough, as we see by how many are caught and sold for bait each summer, but relatively few if measured against previous counts. Yesteryear’s croakers routinely weighed 2 pounds. In the dawn of summertime croaker soaking, in 2002, Texas even produced a new state record for the species. That beauty of a beast was 29 inches long and weighed 5.47 pounds. The record stands today, and I’ve neither seen nor heard of a croaker heavier than 3 pounds since.

It’s trout that rule in Texas, though, and the sinking of the croaker population hasn’t drawn many tears. So long as there are enough spawning croakers — perhaps opening a fish-farming opportunity — there will be buyers at any price. Early on, live croakers fetched maybe a quarter each, a little less if you wanted to load the well. Today, with demand on the rise and no comparable alternative, the little baits fetch as much as a dollar per croak.

Bait trawlers love their pay raise. Shorter drags, necessary to keep juvenile croakers alive, burn less fuel. Similarly to how Paul Prudhomme buried a leather-tough bull redfish fillet in rich spices, shrimpers have found a way to turn low-value bycatch into a high-profit commodity.

Refreshed Texas Trout Regulations

Instead of banning the popular bait, as suggested routinely in recent years, TPWD is rebuilding its trout population — in quantity and quality — by common-sense harvest reduction. No closed season, thankfully, but a shorter stringer that shifts from reactive to proactive on enhancement of this precious fishery.

There was a halfway organized movement to have croakers declared gamefish in Texas, the same status enjoyed by trout and reds. It got exactly as far — nowhere — as the idea of banning croakers as bait. Worth noting, requests for input from guides and recreational fishermen prior to writing this story fell mostly on deaf ears. Common goals heal many wounds, especially since Texas trout appear to be on a good track.

The focus now, with a no-nonsense limit in place that can’t help but improve this fishery by every measure, is on enhancement and on an excellent path to success. Even with croakers on every other boat, nearly every boat on some bays, the three-fish daily limit enables Texas trout to increase their population overall, and that top-end slot of 20 inches gives bigger fish the chance to become giants. Collectively, Texas trout fishermen are on board and eager to reap the benefits of their sacrifice.

The post The Great Croaker Debate appeared first on Sport Fishing Mag.

The razzle-dazzle of a slurping, clacking popping cork might seem off-putting at first, but its effectiveness and dominance as a fish catcher is indisputable. While particularly effective and popular in Gulf Coast states, the technique has followers in the Carolinas and beyond.

My baptism into popping corks occurred on my first-ever trip to the toe of the Boot State. Fishing the turbid open bays close to the Gulf, anglers in our boat caught oversize redfish hand over fist until we begged for mercy. What was the best rig for redfish that day? A flashy cork, about 4 feet of leader and a jig-and-bait combo. A topwater plug or “tight-lined” soft plastic did not attract the same interest from the bull redfish we were targeting.

Ever since, I’ve been hooked on corks in off-colored water, paired either with natural baits or lures. It’s my go to redfish rig, and sometimes the popping-cork rig is the only presentation a redfish or speckled seatrout will hit. The main draw of the popping cork is an attention-getting clacking or clicking sound created by beads hitting a foam cork along a metal through-wire. Second, when a cork is jerked by the rod tip, the lure or bait presentation jumps off the bottom like a fleeing bait. A weight attached to the bottom of the cork adds casting distance and stability; swivels at the top and bottom of the wire serve as line ties for the main line and leader. The sound mimics fleeing shrimp, crabs, baitfish or even other game fish attacking prey. Some models of corks also throw a disturbance splash.

When and Where to Use Popping Corks

Popping corks are prime to use when water conditions are choppy or turbid, with the best depths from 2 to 6 feet. “If you tie a leader much longer than 6 feet, then casting is difficult with 7- to 7½-foot rods,” says Capt. Ray Markham, of St. Petersburg, Florida. Use light leader material, such as 15- to 20-pound fluorocarbon, in clear water, but bump up to heavier leader in specific situations.

“You can use 20- to 50-pound leader, no problem, with a popping cork, especially in dark-colored water,” says Capt. Richard Stoughton, of Charleston, South Carolina. “I’ve even used 80-pound around structure like docks with success. I tie long leaders in spring and shorter leaders in fall, mostly because fish move into deeper waters in the spring.”

Anglers on the boat should cast ­different-colored corks so they can pick out their own float in a crowd. Markham prefers to throw less-noisy corks when fish are skittish.

“Where I fish, there isn’t much boat traffic, but the more traffic, the spookier the fish and the less noise I want from my cork,” he says. “Mostly we catch trout and redfish, but incidental catches include bluefish, snook, Spanish mackerel, snapper, grouper, cobia and others.”

Stoughton prefers to use corks because of the motion of lure imparted by the cork — if done correctly, when a cork is twitched or popped the lure will jump in a vertical motion. When an angler stops popping the cork, the artificial shrimp, jig or live bait will settle back to the bottom. He prefers to impart a double-pop action so the lure jumps twice and then falls.

“Often, I’ll add an egg sinker below the cork on the leader,” says Stoughton. “Pass the leader through the egg sinker twice so a loop wraps around the weight and holds it in place. Don’t let the egg sinker slide too close to the shrimp or jig because it will affect action negatively. Split shot can fall off the leader when a seatrout shakes its head near the boat.”

Some captains will tie their braided main line directly to the top swivel; others add a trace of leader material first. “I use braided lines on my rods, but tying directly to the top swivel of the cork can cause tangling issues,” says Markham. “Instead, tie a short piece of 30-pound fluorocarbon or some other stiff leader that stands away from the cork.”

Popular cork makers include Bomber, Cajun Thunder, Comal Tackle, D.O.A., H&H Lure Co., Red Alert, Four Horsemen and plenty of others. Soft lures to tie below the cork include artificial shrimp from D.O.A., Berkley Powerbait, LiveTarget, Berkley Gulp!, Savage Gear and Z-Man lures. Also, soft plastics pinned to a jig head are popular. But watch out: Sometimes trout or redfish will attack the cork itself. Try casting out a topwater in those situations for exciting surface strikes.

Using Popping Corks With Live Baits

Capt. Jeff Poe, of Lake Charles, Louisiana, ties on a specific type of cork for those customers who want to use live baits, such as shrimp, crabs or fish. “We use spinning tackle with football-shaped weighted corks that have beads on either end,” says Poe. “Their weight makes it easier for our clients to cast farther. Whoever casts farthest wins with the most bites, usually.” The average depth in Calcasieu Lake, where he fishes, is 6 feet, so a cork works anywhere in the lake.

“The deepest water where I’ve ever caught fish with a cork is about 35 feet,” says Poe. “That was around an oil platform in the Gulf. I’ll try a cork anytime I feel I’m around fish but we’re not getting the amount of bites I expect. Corks are a great way to catch fish in dirty water, as the noise attracts and the float suspends your bait in the strike zone.”

Poe strays away from corks in strong current because in those conditions fish hold tight to the bottom. He also won’t tie on a cork near large schools “because as soon as a fish eats your bait and pulls your cork under, other fish will attempt to eat your cork.”

Comparing Different Styles of Popping Corks

Anglers will notice a host of different-style corks available from a number of makers, with the most common styles shaped like an egg, a cigar or an ice-cream cone with the point bitten off. Each foam cork is different in how it’s built, so personal preference goes a long way in deciding how much you’re willing to pay, what style of cork you want, what type of beads you want, and through-wire ­material stiffness and durability. Here’s how some manufacturers describe their corks:

Bomber Paradise Popper

Bomber says: “The Bomber Paradise Popper’s wire is titanium. It springs back to shape. I have seen these corks with the paint and part of the cork gone, and they still produce fish. All of the other components are plastic or brass. The Popper is tested not to break at less than 70 pounds of pressure, and many don’t break until under more than 90 to 100 pounds.”

D.O.A. Popper Clacker

D.O.A. Lures says: “Between the cigar, oval and popper D.O.A. Clacker corks, some make less noise and have a different pitch in the sound they create. The popper style is louder and deeper in tone but also produces a big splash when worked aggressively. Due to the internal weight, the popper is durable and gets less wire bend than do other styles of D.O.A. corks.”

Red Alert Speckanater

Red Alert Lures says: “There are two unique features about my popping corks. One, the beads used are hematite, which creates a very distinct pitch like a shrimp slapping its tail. Steel inserts in the foam cork also contribute to the sound. Two, the through-wire is rated at 250 pounds but not rigid, with 100-pound swivels at the ends for a longer‑lasting cork.”

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The ultimate goal of Elon Musk’s SpaceX is to one day establish a colony of humans on Mars, a planet 140 million miles away. Reaching the Chandeleur Islands is only slightly easier. Formed more than two millennia ago when the Mississippi River was dumping sediment into its St. Bernard lobe, the Chandeleur chain is a 60-mile stretch of sand, shell, mangrove and dune grasses. It more resembles an unexplored moonscape than a popular fishing destination.

That’s partly because the area was included in the Breton Island Reservation by President Theodore Roosevelt more than a century ago, and development of any kind — even primitive camping — is illegal there. But it’s also because the Chandeleur chain is so freaking far from absolutely anywhere. Though it’s part of Louisiana, the nearest ports are actually in Mississippi. Still, it’s a 30-mile run over open water from Gulfport.

Boats that can handle those big offshore swells may not be best for exploring the shallow-water grass flats that seem to go on forever behind the protection of the islands. That’s why for many anglers, the best way to fish the islands is to plunk down a wad of cash, hop aboard a mother ship and fan out over the flats on skiffs with tiller-controlled outboards. A number of outfits along the Mississippi coast offer the service.

A DIY Chandeleur Island Fishing Trip

Other anglers with more of a DIY mindset wait for days with perfect conditions, load up on fuel and roar across Breton Sound in their bay boats. That’s what outdoor television-show host Kevin Ford and I did with our good buddy Capt. Justin Bowles during a June trip not too long ago. We had a night reserved at the Chandeleur Islander, a jack-up barge that provides hot meals and bunks for visiting anglers, so our plan was to scout on day one while fishing from the boat, in hopes of locating an area to wade-fish the morning of day two.

Most fishing plans, of course, require some adjustment on the fly, but this one worked to pure perfection. We launched along the Mississippi coast, and after a ride out that was a little bumpier than ideal, we arrived at the Chandeleurs mid-morning. Even though all of us are jaded lifelong anglers, we still stood in marvel at the sight of gin-clear water over seagrass flats as far as the eye could see.

We employed a hit-and-run strategy, fishing for a few minutes in a number of different areas, looking for the right mix of water clarity, depth and bait. Though we caught tons of fish from the boat, it was mostly a scouting mission to locate an area that would give us a reasonable chance of success while wading the next morning.

Great Fishing at the Chandeleur Islands

Lucky for us, it was an embarrassment of riches, with almost too many options to choose from. We all agreed on what we figured would be the No. 1 spot, and then spent the waning minutes of the day catching speckled trout within sight of the Islander. The next morning started well before dawn with way too much breakfast and that nervous chatter that always precedes fishing trips in new areas. We loaded our gear, and with only a hint of twilight to the east, we scooted down to the area we had found the day before.

With Bowles’ bay boat securely anchored, we fanned out over the grass flat, while a constant cacophony of nesting-shorebird calls washed across the flat surface. Before I even made a cast, I knew this was going to be one of the best fishing trips of my life. Everywhere around us, speckled trout were crashing into schools of mullet, emitting that characteristic pop sound big trout make when they suck in bait, water and air.

The fish clearly couldn’t tell the difference between our topwater plugs and the real thing. The explosions were relentless, and we all caught speckled trout almost every cast for the next three hours. It was epic.

But really, for the Chandeleur chain, it was just ordinary. The area is so vast, unspoiled and underfished, trips there that rank as the best of your life are the rule rather than the exception. Plant your toes in the sand at the right spot, and you simply won’t be able to believe how many fish can crowd into one area. I’ll be back out there soon — assuming Uncle Elon doesn’t come through with that ticket to Mars.

The post Wade Fishing the Chandeleur Islands appeared first on Sport Fishing Mag.

Striped Bass: 81 pounds, 14 ounces

• Gregory Myerson
• Long Island Sound, Connecticut
• August, 4 2011

Who better to ask about the next World Record striped bass than the current record holder. It’s been over a decade since Greg Myerson caught one of the world’s most famous fish and he’s ready to set the next mark. “If they ever lift the slot limit, I’ll catch the next world record, too,” he says. His boasts aren’t hot air, Myerson holds the several striped bass records and striper tournament trophies. Myerson credits the deep ocean bottom and strong tidal currents off Connecticut and Rhode Island for bringing a steady stream of bait and big bass. “Big bass don’t like to move a lot so they are looking for a live lobster.” Myerson even predicts how the next world record bass will be caught; he has developed a rattling sinker that imitates the sound of a startled lobster. “The fish hears the sound and comes to investigate, that’s where he finds my eel.”

Red Drum: 94 pounds 2 ounces

• David Deuel
• Avon, North Carolina
• November 07, 1984

Forty years ago, Frank Folb was working at the tackle shop that weighed the World Record red drum. Today, Folb has retired from tackle shops and taken up gardening, but he remembers the day the world’s biggest red drum was hanging from the scale. “Gosh, it was a fat fish,” he recalls. He says David Deuel fought the trophy drum down the Hatteras Island beach almost a mile before landing it. Due to the current slot limit on redfish, the red drum record will most likely never be broken. Back in the heyday of beach drum fishing, Folb rigged up a mobile scale to weigh a potential record on the beach. “We never had a fish large enough to break the mark,” he says. Folb has heard credible stories of redfish passing the length and girth test, but the fish were released. Despite the difficulty in setting a red drum record, Folb believes a 100-pound redfish is swimming somewhere off the Virginia or North Carolina coast.

Common Snook: 53 pounds, 10 ounces

• Gilbert Ponzi
• Parismina Ranch, Costa Rica
• October 18, 1978

The oldest record on the list is one of the most coveted. While Florida accounts for the largest population of snook anglers, Costa Rica holds the all tackle world record. Stuart-based Capt. Mike Holliday has landed snook up to 40 pounds, but beating the record in his home waters is almost impossible to imagine. “The next record will come from Costa Rica,” he says. Holliday explains the warm Latin American climate allows the snook to feed year-round and reach extraordinary size. Why hasn’t a bigger fish been caught in Costa Rica? Holliday says the fish in the 1970s and 80s were bigger. “People used to brag about the 40-pound club, now they brag about the 40-inch club.” Once again, fishing regulations are the biggest obstacle to breaking the record. Slot limits throughout the snook’s range keep the record safe from American anglers.

Spotted Seatrout: 17 pounds, 7 ounces

• Craig F. Carson
• Ft. Pierce, Florida
• May 11, 1995

Capt. Mike Holliday has personal experience with the World Record spotted sea trout. “I interviewed the guy who caught it,” he remembers. The long-time contributor to local and nationwide publications was on the beat when the fish was caught. “Craig Carson was visiting from Daytona and caught the fish on a Zara Spook off Dynamite Point.” Even though he didn’t witness the weigh-in or see the actual fish, looking at photos of the catch gives Holliday suspicions. “It doesn’t look like a 17-pound trout,” he insists. And the angler weighed the fish on a grocery store scale. And then there’s the incredible size. Holliday shakes his head, “I’ve never heard of a trout even close to 17 pounds.” The speckled trout record has stood for almost 30 years and Holliday thinks it will never be broken. “I’ve fished the same area for decades and caught one fish over 13 pounds,” he says.

Tarpon: 286 pounds, 9 ounces

• Max Domecq Rubane
• Guinea-Bissou
• March, 4 2003

Close your eyes and picture a 300-pound tarpon jumping through the air, diving under the boat and rolling on the line and you’ll understand the difficulty in breaking the silver king’s world-record mark. Zack Bellipigna, angler recognition manager at IGFA, is confident the record can be broken. “As sure as I’m sitting in my chair, there is a 300-pound tarpon swimming off the coast of Africa right now,” he insists. Bellipigna attributes the long-standing record to a lack of angler interest. “Hardcore tarpon anglers are more interested in setting line-class records in the Keys or along the Gulf Coast than going to Africa and catching a giant tarpon.” Bellipigna says IGFA’s Grand Slam awards are also seeing a lot of interest. “Catching a tarpon and two other trophy species in one day is a hell of an achievement but it is achievable.” Still, many of the line class records pale in comparison to the massive 286-pound beast.

The post Waiting for a World Record appeared first on Sport Fishing Mag.

The word “artificial” is inherently pejorative. If a food company includes artificial colors or flavors in a particular product, it’ll bury that fact in the list of ingredients. Highlighted on the front of the package will be something like “Packed With Vitamin C,” rather than “Now With More Artificial Flavor.”

That’s true for everything but fishing. Having success with “artificial” lures is viewed as affirmation of skills, and anglers across the fruited plain regularly entreat fisheries managers for more artificial reefs. Louisiana’s Department of Wildlife and Fisheries (LDWF) has responded to that demand in recent decades by dropping limestone, shell and even bridge rubble in select areas across the coast, and since the state provides easy-to-find coordinates on the LDWF site, the reefs are regularly visited by hopeful anglers.

Still, none is as regularly productive as the 15 miles of artificial reefs in eastern Lake Pontchartrain that were designed for transportation and commerce. Attracting fish is just a happy accident.

Louisiana’s Bridge Fishing

Interstate 10, Highway 11 and a train trestle all span a roughly 5-mile gap over Louisiana’s most famous coastal lake. Commuters and engineers see these bridges as a connection between the cities of New Orleans and Slidell, but to anglers, they are just really expensive fish-attractors.

Every year in the spring and fall, speckled trout and flounder join the redfish, sheepshead and black drum that spend all year hiding behind the bridge stanchions to ambush baitfish and shrimp being pushed by tides around the concrete. When the trout arrive, word spreads quickly among the south Louisiana fishing community, and hordes of marauding anglers descend on the bridges.

By far, the train trestle attracts the most attention. Its stanchions are far more tightly packed and are surrounded by scattered rip-rap. This combination attracts more fish than the other two bridges, and consequently, that attracts more anglers. On a calm weekend day in the spring or fall, a latecomer can find it almost impossible to shoehorn within casting distance of the bridge, since most anglers will be soaking live shrimp while on anchor.

As such, trestle diehards prefer to go on weekdays with marginal wind, when they can work stretches of the bridge with artificial lures. The most popular are 3 ¹⁄₂– to 4¹⁄₂-inch paddle tails fished on ³⁄₈– to ¹⁄₂-ounce jigheads. Standard protocol is to set up on the down-current side of the bridge, and cast as close to the stanchions as possible.

How to Fish Bridges

But, as frequently is the case in fishing, sometimes the rules don’t apply, and the fish are located far off the stanchions or on the upcurrent side. Trestle veterans test all possibilities before abandoning the bridge to try their luck at Highway 11, Interstate 10 or the nearby marsh.

Depths across the span of the bridge range from 8 to 16 feet, and contact with the bottom is almost always essential. Most successful anglers hop the lures back to the boat, allowing them to settle back to the bottom after each hop.

Bites are often subtle ticks that test anglers’ skill and the sensitivity of their equipment. That’s true even though the speckled trout that populate the bridges are consistently some of the largest available to Louisiana anglers. Though the trestle seldom delivers fish over 6 pounds, an average speck there is about 2 pounds.

As a general rule, fishing is best in the spring on a rising tide that’s bringing bait in from outside waters and in the autumn on a falling tide that is sucking white shrimp out of the backwaters. But great trips can still be had on opposite tides during the respective seasons. In the spring, the speck run lasts until about the middle of June, when mature fish move to the salty waters of the big bays and sounds to lay eggs and fertilize them. They typically return sometime in October.

Nearby launches are located in Slidell (Eden Isles and Bayou Liberty) and New Orleans (Rigolets, Lake Catherine and Irish Bayou). The eastern shoreline of Lake Pontchartrain provides reasonable protection on a wind with any east in it. Westerly winds are like kryptonite to the lake’s bridges, dirtying the water, shutting down fish and making for a bumpy, miserable experience. Fortunately, predominant winds in the spring and fall are out of the east, and good days at the bridges are far more common than bad ones.

The post Artificial Structure Attracts Spring Specks appeared first on Sport Fishing Mag.

During the winter months, mama croakers spew their eggs into high-salinity offshore waters, where they’re fertilized by daddy croakers, and then, in the afterglow, both mama and daddy head off to find something to eat, leaving the youngsters to fend for themselves. Maybe it’s parental malpractice, but Mother Nature shrugs. She couldn’t care less.

Along the Louisiana coast, the larval and post-larval croakers are pushed by the tides into shallow waters, where they use seagrasses and detritus to hide from predators and feast on rotifers, copepods and even the very detritus that serves as their home.

Eventually, though, the fish outgrow the marshes, and begin to migrate in the spring. That’s when they face a murderer’s row of speckled trout — and unwittingly provide anglers with some of the best fishing action of the year.

Croaker Chaos

For the growing croakers, big spring tides are both a blessing and a curse. Riding the conveyor belt of the tides is how juvenile croakers make their way into the bigger bays, but these strong currents also slam the fish into ledge walls that disorient them and make them easy prey for specks. This, in turn, makes the trout easy prey for anglers.

It happens every spring in South Louisiana, and is most consistent in brackish marshes, where juvenile croakers proliferate. Anglers who want to maximize their productivity simply ride around looking for what locals call “boiling water.” Boiling-water areas show upwellings on the surface, where hard currents hit ledge walls and are forced upward. These are most commonly found in winding bayous with 10 to 20 feet of depth. Not every ledge wall will hold fish, but a high percentage of them do, and an angler who hits enough of them will certainly find a bite that has him posting pictures on social media.

Best baits, far and away, are 3½-inch soft-plastic paddle tails that most accurately mimic the size and action of the migrating croakers. Louisiana anglers fish those on ⅜-ounce jigheads, and will sometimes add a ¼-ounce jighead-and-paddletail combo fished as a double rig when currents are particularly swift. Figuring out how fish orient at each ledge wall is part of the fun, and shrewd anglers will frequently change their angles to find feeding specks. Hooked fish regularly upchuck juvenile croakers onto the boat decks of successful anglers. Often these fish are so recently ingested, they can be thrown overboard, where they swim down, probably to be eaten by another trout.

Spring Seatrout Success

Depending on water temperature, the bite will begin around the first of March and stretch almost to the summer solstice. By then, most of the mature specks have moved offshore to spawn, leaving behind only the undersized immature fish, along with a host of pests, like hardheads and gafftops.

But during the run, the specks are shockingly large for Louisiana marsh fish. An 18-inch average is about the norm, and several fish in the schools will stretch between 20 and 24 inches. In comparison, anglers fishing marsh lakes and expansive bays during this same time of year will typically be plagued by undersized and barely legal fish.

Though specks are the primary beneficiaries of the croaker migration, other species also notice and take advantage of the easy meals. Redfish are ever present, and the pattern delivers far more bites from black drum, flounder and largemouth bass than unfamiliar anglers might expect. Given the onslaught, it defies belief that any croaker survives to reach offshore waters and complete the spawn cycle, but clearly a whole bunch do. Despite getting no help from their parents.

The post The Best Spring Seatrout Bait appeared first on Sport Fishing Mag.

You’ll find anglers on bridges and beaches, bait shops open long before dawn, big tackle stores that carry enough gear to outfit a fleet of sport-fishers, and a line-up of fishing tournaments year-round. Numbers tell the story, too.

Jacksonville has the highest rate, per capita, of fishing license holders of the four biggest Florida metropolitan areas. That beats Tampa-St. Pete, Orlando, and Miami-Fort Lauderdale. Jacksonville takes the crown for the hardest-fishing big city in Florida.

The region’s rivers, maze-like marshes, bays, the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW), jetties, beaches, and offshore grounds form a network of waters unlike any other in Florida. Two spring scenarios to target are shallow-water redfish and trout, and offshore, schools of migrating dolphin swarming at the Ledge.

Catch Seatrout and Redfish in Jacksonville

Big tides breathe life into Jacksonville’s extensive marsh-and-creek system.

“We have a 5-foot tidal swing, on average, every 6 hours, so the locations to fish are constantly changing,” says Capt. Buzz Brannon, who’s guided anglers in Jacksonville for more than two decades.  He runs an 18-foot Beavertail Vengeance in the shallows, stalking reds, trout, flounder, and other species on spin and fly. One of his favorite bites is for “hillbilly bonefish,” what some folks call redfish when they get them in the grass on big tides, he says.

For seatrout, Brannon likes dusk and dawn, low-light times. In the spring, when the finger mullet show up, both trout and redfish take topwater lures. “Anything with a hard edge along the St. Johns will be holding mullet,” he says.

Fishing the city’s infrastructure — bridges, docks, seawalls, and industrial installations along the water (where legally accessible) — produces a variety of species. Both natural and manmade habitats hold good fish in Jacksonville, one of the city’s many surprises for visiting anglers.

It’s been the best year of redfishing Brannon has seen for quite some time. In 2012, an increase in the redfish bag limit to 2 fish per person took a toll on the redfish. In September 2022, the bag limit was lowered back to one redfish per person, and since then, the fishing has been steadily improving, Brannon says.

The nourishment of those rich waters flowing in the St. Johns generates and draws abundant life to the nearshore and offshore waters, including a pelagic fishery that’s been a standout hotspot in recent years— the Ledge.

Big Dolphin off Jacksonville

About 55 to 65 miles off Jacksonville, depending on the marina’s location, the continental shelf slopes down from 120-foot depths and then drops off to 175 feet deep — the Ledge. The Gulf Stream runs nearby, and when its warm waters or any of its warm eddies circulate over the Ledge’s structure, prey, and predators get drawn into those dynamic flows. In winter, these waters hold good numbers of big wahoo, ranging up to 70 and 100 pounds, often caught high-speed trolling and more recently, Capt. Tim Altman of Hoodoo Charters says, by live-baiting.

“Guys are having incredible days for wahoo at the Ledge slow-trolling live baits like blue runners and bonito,” says Altman, a multiple-time wahoo tournament winner and a fanatic for those fish.

Capt. Altman runs 11-hour charter trips to the Ledge for pelagics including wahoo and dolphin aboard his Saltwater Challenge, a 36-foot Contender with triple Mercurys. In April, the game switches to catching big dolphin.

“We’ve crushed it the last few years for big dolphin at the Ledge, lots of them,” he says. “We’ll start going out for them between April 12 and 15, and the biggest fish are early in the year. We get a good month and a half of solid dolphin fishing.”

His good news about dolphin fishing may surprise people who’ve heard about a lack of fish in recent years around South Florida and the Keys.

“I’m aware that South Florida has seen a real decline in their dolphin fishing, especially around Key West, Marathon, and Miami. I can’t explain the difference in Northeast and South Florida fishing,” Altman says. “The old-school guys say the migratory pattern for yellowfin tuna has changed, so maybe that’s the case with dolphin, too, or maybe the currents have changed.”

Dolphin at the Ledge

Altman and his crew leave his Amelia Island marina at 5 a.m. and head out to the Ledge for an 11-hour trip. He’ll check RipCharts on his phone and screenshot the image of the temperature breaks at the Ledge. On his Simrad he also has SirrusXM weather for sea surface temperature readings offshore. He’s looking for temperature breaks with ocean water temps 76 degrees and warmer, weed lines, and edges.

“During dolphin season, as we get near the Ledge, I’ll put out small Nomads or a horse ballyhoo skirted with an Ilander on a planer with wire to target wahoo. Beyond the Ledge, we’ll run everything on the surface.

“Some days skirted stuff works, but I don’t believe there’s anything more effective for dolphin than a properly rigged, chin-weighted, split-bill ballyhoo,” he says. “When you see that big dolphin coming, or if you get a hit, you free spool it for 15 to 25 seconds, and I’m telling you that works.”

The dolphin come through in packs, and between times Altman and crew can also bottom fish for triggers, snapper, grouper, or whatever’s in season. They’ll likely have sardines in the livewell and they’ll chum dolphin by their boat with cuttlefish or squid, keeping a lookout, ready to throw a live bait to any big fish coming to the boat.

“You’ve got to be ready for those big fish. You’ll have a bunch of schoolies, the boat’s kicked out of gear and you’re live-baiting. The fish get all around you. Then you’ll see the dolphin scatter and that’s indicative of a shark or a big dolphin coming in to tear them up. I’ll tell you it’s incredible when you see that big dolphin coming through the water to you. Man, that’s fun.”

Jacksonville Florida Fishing Captains

• Capt. Tim Altman, Hoodoo Charters, (904) 859-6314, www.hoodoocharters.com
• Capt. Buzz Brannon, Northeast Florida Angling, (904) 570-7878, www.northeastfloridaangling.com

Bait Stores

•             B & M Bait & Tackle, Jacksonville, (904) 249-3933
•             Brown’s Creek Bait & Tackle, Jacksonville, (904) 757-1600
•             FishBites Trading Post, St. Augustine, (904) 217-8012

Note: Special thanks to the FWC and its licensing department for the analysis of its data on fishing license holders by municipality across the entire state of Florida.

The post The Hardest-Fishing City in Florida appeared first on Sport Fishing Mag.

I’m clearly a glutton for punishment. For most anglers, fishing trips involve making a milk run of spots that have delivered for them in the past, and hoping that at least one of them will hold feeding fish on that day. It’s an efficient strategy that certainly increases the chances for success. But to me, it’s as boring as reading a book on String Theory.

The joy for me in the sport of angling is not in reeling in a fish but rather in overcoming the challenge of figuring out the fish. Each bite is just confirmation that the fish were doing what my analysis determined they should be. Once the fish is hooked, I’d just as soon hand the rod to someone else to reel it in.

Because of that, I rarely fish the same spot twice, preferring to hit new areas that require me to read the water and make exploratory casts to determine if my hypotheses were correct. Since my home state of Louisiana has 2.5 million acres of coastal wetlands, the options are almost endless for anglers like me who want to channel their inner Vasco da Gama.

As such, most of my fishing trips actually begin at my desk staring at Google Earth on my Mac. I look for areas rich in hydrographic features that should deliver based on expected conditions on the day I’m fishing.

To me, one of the most predictable occurs during or immediately following an atmospheric feature that most south Louisiana anglers despise — a west wind. Breezes with a compass reading anywhere from about 225 to 315 cause water in Louisiana’s marshes to flee like tourists the day after Mardi Gras. Lakes, bays and lagoons that may have produced fish the day before a westerly wind will be as fishless and nearly as dry as the Mojave.

Since those are the areas that most anglers fish, west winds are as popular in south Louisiana as bland gumbo. But those fish have to go somewhere, and to me, a west wind merely serves to concentrate them and make them easier to catch. That’s particularly true with speckled trout and redfish, although the strategies I employ to find them differ slightly. 

If I’m hoping to get a speckled-trout fix, I scan the satellite images and make note of medium-sized bayous that drain marsh lakes or lagoons. From September through May, specks will stuff their faces in these water bodies. They will retreat to the nearest deep water when forced to by Mother Nature. Although major bayous with depths to 20 feet are certainly worth checking, the sweet spots for me are bayous with 6 to 10 feet of depth. Invariably, once on sight, I’ll make my first cast at the first bend of each of those bayous.

If I’m craving the hard hits and strong pulls of redfish, my game plan varies slightly. What I look for in my map study are small bayous that connect two marsh ponds. Redfish seem to always want to be as shallow as possible, often hunting for snacks in water no deeper than the height of their bodies. So when ponds get dry or too shallow to swim, the fish stack up in absurd numbers in these small bayous that measure only 2 to 3 feet deep.

Often the challenge is getting to these tiny waterways in the low-water conditions, an obstacle that’s overcome with the use of a mud motor or with nerves of steel while running an outboard over glorified mud puddles. The latter is the method I employ, so a push pole is standard gear on my boat. It’s saved me from spending the night in the marsh more times than my wife will ever know.

Admittedly, not every medium-sized bayou that drains a marsh lake will hold speckled trout, and not every small bayou between two ponds will be crowded with redfish. So I find several before I ever pull my boat out of the garage, and I’ll hit them all in a day’s fishing. Ground truthing my hypotheses is what makes this sport fun.

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