Instead of letting the rainy conditions deter him, Slidell speckled trout angler Buddy Hereford decided to take advantage of the vacant crowds at the Trestles. “The weatherman did a good job of crowd control today. There were only a few boats out there this morning,” Hereford says.  Buddy launched at Bayou Liberty and made his way to the 174 mile marker on the bridge.

 For the past few weeks this spot has been inundated with boats, but with the rainy conditions, Buddy says there weren’t any boats there. Unfortunately, there weren’t any fish either. “I started on the east side of the bridge without any luck so I moved to the west side and started picking through 11” specks,” he says. Buddy was jigging Matrix Shad in the Pink Champagne color when he decided to make a change. “A couple of years back I watched a troller picking up fish every 5-10 pilings - while I was struggling to get any. He was using dark bait first in line with a light colored bait behind. I decided to mimic his rig using a chartreuse beetle followed by a clear sparkle beetle and started catching doubles,” Buddy said. After that, it didn’t take long for Hereford to finish catching his limit and by 12:30 pm. Buddy hauled in speckled trout #24 and #25!


Heart-pounding action on Bonfouca

Sometimes we need to be reminded of just how good we really have it here in Sportsman’s Paradise. Mandeville Resident Randy Johnson is new to Louisiana and is starting to learn the rivers and bayous that meander across the North Shore of Lake Pontchartrain. “I went and explored Bayou Bonfouca and I had to just shake my head at the different amount of features these rivers on the north shore have,” Johnson said.  Randy launched at Heritage Park in Slidell and fished the area before the bridge without much success. He decided to make a run out to the lake. “I ran all the way to the lake and fished a little cut to the right by the mouth. I was making casts and into the mouth and working the Shu-Shu when this big wake came off of a stick near the mouth and slammed it! I have to tell you I honestly I didn't know what the fish was because while I was in bass mode, the surroundings looked as if I should be fishing with saltwater lures,” Randy said. What Johnson had was a redfish and he hauled it into the boat before it couldn’t straighten the worm hook that was tied to his line. After a few more casts with no results, Randy decided to head back up the bayou to try and find some bass. “I headed back upriver and saw some houses to the left where I was going to try and enter but I saw what looked like baitfish scattering at the mouth of the entrance,” he said. The anxious angler threw down his trolling motor and approached the scene. “First cast I skipped a Shu-Shu across the surface and heard a quick pop, like a suction blowup. My heart started beating and I slowed down the bait in anticipation of another blowup. Bam! he got! I reared back and hauled in a nice little school bass,” Randy said. By now Johnson, said he was shaking because he knew there more fish to be caught. “So now my blood is pumping! I knew there were more there.  I casted to the action and caught another one,” he said. Being new to the area Randy says he had to check the LDWF website from his phone in order to see what the daily limit was. He learned that he had his limit and after a few more catch-and-release bass, he made his way back to the launch. Johnson says he’s slowly learning the area and one thing he has learned on Bayou Bonfouca is that baitfish means bass! “Those bass were destroying that shad right in the open water,” he said. 

Right on cue! The Trestles are heating up and those warm weather limits are becoming more and more common place. Slidell angler Taylor Valios has been doing a lot of fishing on his off days recently, which keeps him at odds with his fiancé. “It keeps me in trouble with my fiancé most of the time, he says.  So, on his next day off, Taylor had a choice to make. “Sunday night I thought to myself, should I fish the Trestles, or sight fish reds?” The undaunted angler decided to load up his 15 ft. flat boat and fish the tracks. Along with a buddy, Taylor brought along a bucket of live shrimp and made his way to marker 174. “We got all the way to the 174 marker and trolled around there. The wind was coming out the SSE with a small incoming tide. Shrimp were popping on the top water enough to make an avid angler fill with excitement,” he says. They casted there rods with live shrimp on a Carolina rig, and it didn’t take long for the team to start hauling fish over the sides of the flat boat. “One after another, we pulled in fish using live shrimp - specs, drum, reds -all that the lake had to offer,” Valios says. The trip was so good that Taylor decided to head out the next day for a repeat performance. This time, he only brought 20 live shrimp. He says the action on this day was just as good, and by 7:45 am, he had 10 specks in the chest and was completely out of shrimp. The 24-year old reached down into his box and grabbed a bag of Matrix Shad. “Being that the water clarity was great, and the shrimp I bought from the bait shop were light brown, I decided to go with the Magneto Matrix color. “First cast - I let that bait sink to the bottom, popped it up, and could feel the spool on my Curado ripping drag. I'm looking for that STAR winner so I always get happy when drag rips,” he said. Valios flipped a 2.5 lb. trout into the boat and had his limit of specks by 10:00 am. While it’s probably best for Taylor not to give relationship advice, he does offer his thoughts on the next few weeks at the Trestles. “The Trestles and surrounding areas are only going to get better as we go through April and May. Grab your favorite baits and hit the water!


Fly Fishing Eden Isles

If you’re a fly fisherman on the Northshore, the sight of pollen on the water and shallow water wakes will have you “breaming” with excitement. But perhaps nobody is more excited than Eden Isles resident Mike Fandal. Mike is an avid fly fisher and owns Old Town Fly Shop on Pontchartrain Dr. in Slidell. Mike says the hot bait right now is something he calls the “Eden Isles Special.” It’s a custom made soft popper and the fish are inhaling the surface bug in the Eden Isles canals. “It’s the best bream fly ever and will out-fish any fly on the market,” He says. Orange and black is the color combination that has been doing the best Fandal says. Along with the perch, Mike says he’s been catching some bass up against the wooden structures that are so predominate in this area. “Most of the fish I’m catching right now are up against the bulkheads or underneath the docks. I like to hit the bulkhead and let the fly fall. It imitates a bug falling from the structure perfectly,” Mike says.

 

Tournament Results

Bass Assassins held its tournament on the West Pearl and it was Jimmy Dorris who came out on top with a 5-fish limit weighing 10.2 oz.  Jimmy also won the big fish award with a lunker that tipped the scales at 5.3 oz. Blaine Williams took second with a bag weighing 8.15 lbs. 

Upcoming Tournaments

The next Liars & Lunkers tournament will be held on April 19th at Crawford's Landing in Slidell, La. For more information, please contact Chad Hartzog at 985-502-3217.

Bass Assassins will be holding its next tournament on April 19th on the East Pearl. For more information please call Chris Basey at 985-707-7857.

On your next commute over the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway, take a look over the guardrail. What you might see will make that trip to work even more difficult to bear. Every year it happens. The word “fishing,” takes on a whole new meaning for those anglers who target trout without casting a pole or setting a hook.  It’s trolling time!  16-year old Holton Martin is a junior at Mandeville High School and recently made a trip with his dad, Heath, to the 24-Mile Reef. It didn’t take long for the team to find what they were looking for. “We started trolling just south of the 4-mile hump and headed north, between the bridges. I don't think it was two minutes into our first drag when the first rod took a nosedive! 

 I pointed it out to my Dad and he reeled in an 18" Speck!” Holton said.  With the lower salinity readings in the lake, speckled trout have been on the smaller side so far this year, but there is something about trolling the bridge that brings out the big speckled trout. Holton’s next fish proved to be even bigger! “We were a little south of the 4-mile hump and I saw the rod bend.  I told my dad to reel it in, as I was the one driving, but he said he wanted me to get this one,” Holton stated. The youngster didn’t waste any time pondering the request. “I jumped off the wheel and grabbed the rod. It felt heavy and it took out some drag but I finally turned her head and got her to the boat. It was the biggest of the day – a three and a half pound trout!” he said. Holton says all the fish caught that day bit the chrome Rat-L-Trap’s they were dragging and he is itching to get back out to fish the bridge as soon as he can. “I can't wait to head back and give trolling another try,” Holton said.


Trestle Trout

Talk to any Lake Pontchartrain fisherman and they’ll most likely tell you that winds are crucial when making a decision to fish anywhere in the lake. Slidell speckled trout angler Buddy Hereford awoke one morning and based his entire trip on the wind readings. “I woke up at 4 am looking for a wind report. The Causeway was at 7 mph, Shell Beach was 3 mph, Mandeville was 3, and Slidell was calm so that looked good to me,” he said. Buddy launched at Bayou Liberty Marina and headed out to the Trestles to fish the east side of the bridge. “I was casting for 6:38 am and the first speck hit the box at 6:49 am,” Hereford said. From there Buddy worked the pylons monotonously picking up specks at a slow, but steady pace. Then the unpredictable winds over Lake Pontchartrain made their presence felt. “It got to be a pain keeping the boat positioned correctly so I moved to the west side and casted away from the bridge but only managed one speck. I started to make a run for the south end of the Trestles to find calmer waters but after the third BAM, I decided I had enough rockin’ and rollin’,” he said. Buddy ended the day at 10:15 am with 13 speckled trout and says the fishing got tough after the winds picked up “I missed a lot of bites due to not being able to see the bite. By the time I would feel something - it was the fish trying to spit the plastic,” Hereford added.

Spring has sprung, and with it comes the rising river levels here on the Northshore. But perhaps no river is monitored as much as the Pearl River. Local bass angler Clay Zeringue fishes numerous tournaments on the Pearl and says right now levels are normal but it’s important to keep an eye out for rain around a certain location. “The West Pearl River runs all the way up to Jackson, Mississippi. The only time we get affected is when you see a lot of rain up around that area,” Clay says. The Pearl is at 13 ft. right now but Zeringue says to monitor the rainfall to the north and you should be able to predict when the river will rise. “If that rain hits around Jackson, we’ll start seeing the river rise about six to seven days later,” he says. The Pearl is a popular destination for those who crawfish on the Northshore and Clay says the rising levels are important to be able to get around. “You really don’t want it to get below 10 ft.  When it gets below 10 ft., it starts getting hard to maneuver in the swamp,” Zeringue says.


Mississippi River Levels

Four years ago the Bonne Carre Spillway was opened, virtually ruining all saltwater fishing throughout Lake Pontchartrain. With the harsh winter up north, all eyes are on the mighty Mississippi once more as river levels are slowly rising. But there is some good news. Forecasters say they do not anticipate having to open the spillway this year even with the heavy snow up north.  Jeff Graschel is a hydrologist at the National Weather Service and says river levels are normal for this time of year. “Right now we're only expecting just a seasonal crest at New Orleans at 14 feet, which is kind of typical that we have this time of year," Graschel said.

 

Ethanol Bill

A bill to eliminate the mandate to use corn ethanol in fuels looks to be on its way to passage. U.S. Senators Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) and Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) are working to repeal a law that drives up the cost of fuel and causes thousands of dollars of damage to outboard engines across the state of Louisiana.  The Toomey-Feinstein Corn Ethanol Mandate Elimination Act of 2015 would abolish the corn ethanol mandate in the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS). Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) is also a cosponsor of the measure and says “In 2005, Congress bought into the corn ethanol mandate for billions of dollars, and taxpayers have been stuck with a lemon ever since. Congress can no longer justify a policy that props up the ethanol industry at the expense of taxpayers, consumers, the hungry, and the environment. I am pleased to join my colleagues on both sides of the aisle in supporting the full and immediate repeal of the corn ethanol mandate.”  The Environmental Protection Agency is scheduled to release the Renewable Fuel Standards in June of 2015. Until then, sportsman across the state will continue to suffer the consequences of the corrosive fuel blend.

After a long cold winter it looks like the proverbial “switch,” has been flipped! Speckled trout anglers are seeing good numbers of trout in their boxes for the first time in a long time. Covington kayak fisherman Jeff Kreller recently made a trip after a friend texted him a picture of a trout he had just hauled into his kayak along the Lake Pontchartrain shoreline. “My buddy beat me to the water and sent me a picture of a beautiful pig he caught along the shoreline so I threw everything into the truck and got out there a little after 8:00 am,” He says.  It didn’t take Jeff long before he had his first trout in the boat. “I got my first hit within five casts and then had my first hookup two casts later,” Jeff says. 

The tenacious kayak angler immediately picked up on a pattern as he noticed the fish where coming from the slicks. “There was a slight ripple on the surface. It was like little 4”-6” tiny confuse waves everywhere, but if you payed attention you can just barely notice small slicks. We were working those slicks and that’s where we were having the most success,” he says. Kreller says the catch frequency wasn’t consistent but more in spurts. “We would get into them all of a sudden and it would be bam, bam, bam! We would put a few into the boat -then wait about 15-20 minutes and then bam, bam, bam! They’d be there again. That was pretty much the pattern for the whole morning,” He says. Within three hours Jeff had his limit of specks and had released several tagged trout. Jeff participates in the Tag Louisiana program held by the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries. In 2014 he had tagged and released over 100 speckled trout along the Northshore of Lake Pontchartrain and qualified for the Century Club – an achievement that is rare amongst kayak anglers. Jeff says he has learned a lot about the movement of speckled trout in the Lake from this program.  “I love to learn about trout. To see how far my fish go and to see how far trout actually travel,” he says. Kreller says he believes the bite will continue and the shoreline is a popular “highway” for these moving fish. “I think the trout are cruising the shorelines, checking things out, grabbing something to eat, and then they are moving on.  I don’t think they are in that stage where there are staying put along the same shoreline,” he says. 

Northshore resident Bert Gauley saw the power of fishing first hand when his son and daughter made trip together in search of sac-au-lait and bass on the Blood River in Tickfaw. Bert says the brother and sister don’t always see eye to eye so when his son wanted to go fishing, he came up with an idea.  “I had some chores to do Sunday afternoon and my son was giving me that ‘want to go fishing look’- so I asked him if he wanted to go. Of course he said yes, so I said ‘okay, as long as you bring your sister’. He and his younger sister do not get along very well so I figured this would be perfect! They would have to work together to catch fish,” Gauley said.  The planned worked perfectly as Halli and Laiten teamed up to catch a mess of sac-au-lait and bass. “They actually caught some fish and had a good time despite the high water. I couldn't be any more proud of how they got along,” Bert said. Gauley says his kids caught them on blue and black 1/16 oz. jigs that were rigged  18”-20” under a cork.