The Northshore Fishing Report

Scene Set for Fantastic Fall!

9/5/2018

Keith Lusher

The once very dependable speckled trout bite that appears every fall along the Northern shoreline of Lake Pontchartrain from Bayou Liberty to the the Causeway veered off course a tad last year. Muddy water from the Bayou Bonfouca Marsh Restoration Project mixed with unseasonal winds left anglers perplexed trying to figure out the bite west of the Trestles. This year things are looking to get back on schedule as the water is as clear as we’ve seen in years. Andy Jones of Wicked Charters says he’s excited about the upcoming fall fishing season. “There are two factors that I’m looking at that tells me this is going to be a fall to remember. One is the amount of bait in the water. This is the most bait I’ve seen in the water in 4 years. There are schools of baitfish EVERYWHERE! The second reason is the water clarity.

Lady fish like this one caught near the Rigolets are a nuisance but may be a good sign for fall

We’ve finally got that dark clean green water in the Lake and that’s something that we didn’t see last year,” Jones says. Captain Andy says the he hasn’t seen the trout show up yet but it won’t be long before the trout get jealous of all the ladyfish eating the bait. “Those ladyfish are everywhere and once the trout move in it’s going to make for an interesting scene here on the Northshore. There’s going to be bait flying everywhere,” he jokes.
Forrest Green is perhaps the most avid Bayou Lacombe trout fisherman and says he’s been fishing everyday. “I haven’t seen the trout move in yet but the conditions are the best I’ve seen in years,” Green says. In addition to baitfish, anglers are seeing shrimp popping on the surface in Bayou Lacombe all the way to Goose Point. “The other day I went to throw my trolling motor down and when the motor slid down a little hard and made a clank. I noticed shrimp on the bottom scatter along the bottom,” he says.

Return of the Flounder
For most anglers flounder is a byproduct of saltwater fishing. Amongst an ice chest full of speckled trout and redfish there is usually at least one or two flounder mixed in. Anglers have seen a decline in the number of founder caught in the past few years. This fall things look to get back on track as the flounder are slowly showing up in fishing reports. John Guillot made a trip to Mud Lake and says there were flounder everywhere. “That’s the first time I saw founder surface feeding! They were everywhere! The ones we caught hit the bow and spit up baitfish and I think its only going to get better into the fall,” John says.

Sac-a-lait Seminar
For those interested in learning more about how to fish for crappie there will be a sac-a-lait seminar held at Fat Jack’s Restaurant in Slidell on Saturday, October 6 from 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. Avid crappie angler John Guillot will host the event. Food and drinks will be served. Also a free raffle will be held. To reserve a spot please visit NorthshoreFishingReport.com for tickets.

Angler Catches 8.9 lb. Bass at Lock #1

8/9/2018

Keith Lusher

Lock #1 was the site of the recent Liar’s and Lunker’s Thursday evening bass tournament. Local angler Morgan Schutte and his father Phil, routinely fish the tournament and Morgan says with the summer heat the turnout for the tournament and the results usually suffer. “It’s tough out there right now with the water temperatures so hot. My screen was reading 94 degrees surface temperature,” he says.
The blast off was at 5:00 p.m. and Morgan and Phil’s first stop was a routine spot. “It’s a favorite tree of mine that I stop at. It’s usually good for a keeper,” he says. After a few cast’s Phil was able to manage the teams first bass. A 1.25 lb. keeper that he attached the first cull tag to. The team had their first keeper even as boats were still passing from the blast off. The evening was starting out good and would get better within the next few minutes. The team moved to their next spot. It was a shoreline lined with lily pads that Morgan was familiar with. Morgan was throwing a buzz bait and casted in an opening in the pads. “3 cranks on the handle and he slurped it under,” Morgan says. At first, the bass angler didn’t think it was anything out of the ordinary because of the ferocity of the splash, but then he realized that the fish had some size. “I set the hook and felt the resistance and that’s when I knew that I had a good fish,” he says.

Morgan celebrates after horsing in this lunker

Morgan decided to horse him in as his 50 lb. braid sliced through the lily pads. Morgan lowered his rod into the water in an attempt to not let the fish jump and managed to get him 6 ft. away from the boat until it made it’s first jump. “That’s when I realized just how big this fish was,” Morgan says. As the fish neared the boat, Phil grabbed the net and scooped him in. Morgan hooked the fish on his scale and the screen read 8.9 lbs. “The fish barley fit into the live-well. It was bent and It’s tail was sticking out of the water,” Schutte says. Only a few minutes into the tournament the team had a total of 10.27 lbs. with only two fish.
In the Liar’s and Lunker’s Thursday evening tournaments, the stringers are 3 fish as opposed to the Weekend tournaments which call for a 5-fish limit. Morgan and Phil only needed one more fish to catch in order to have their limit. But while they were focused on catching that next fish, they should have been worried about losing one of the fish they already had. “That first fish we tagged jumped out when I opened the live-well to check on the bigger fish, Morgan says. The fish hit the floor and flopped into the water as the Morgan scrambled to grab it. Luckily the cull tag kept it from getting away and Phil steered the boat towards the float bobbing up and down in the water. “The fish kept diving when I tried to grab the float so on the next pass I knew I needed to be faster,” he says. Morgan ran to the front of the boat and went to scoop up the float. As he did he lost his balance and ended up in the water. After grabbing the float and tossing the fish onto the boat his dad helped him back in.
The excitement ceased soon after and the team returned to fishing but struggled the rest of the afternoon and decided to quit while they were ahead. “We decided to just go ahead and weigh in half and hour early,” the drenched fisherman said. In the end Morgan and Phil weighed in 2 fish for a total of 10.27 lbs. and won first place in the event. Morgan says it’s an afternoon he’ll never forget.

Shedding light on Bayou Cane

7/31/2018

Keith Lusher

The Northshore offers the greatest span of rivers within a 50-mile radius than any other span of land in Louisiana. It’s this reason that bass fishermen have some many options. From Manchac to the Pear River system, our rivers offer some of the best options available for those fishing bass tournaments or just looking to catch a few for the ice chest. I’m sure you’ve heard of the larger waterways that hold fish such as the Tchefuncte River, Bayou Liberty and The Tangipahoa River, but I’d like to shed a little light on a very underrated tributary here on the North Shore. Stretching just over a mile from launch on Highway 190 to Lake Pontchartrain, Bayou Cane in Mandeville presents bass fishermen with some very unique options. I recently made a fishing trip with Todd Oalman who fishes the bayou often and says that Cane is one of his favorite places to fish for bass. “I’ve fished Bayou Cane so many times it’s almost always productive,” Oalman says. We started our day early before the sun was over the horizon. With the high projected to be 97 degrees, we both knew that our time to fish was limited to a small early morning window before the heat set in.

The Trace Bridge hovers over Bayou Cane just after the launch at 190

We motored to the mouth of Cane and Todd stuck the nose of his flatboat into the marsh. As the sun peeked over the horizon behind us, the action started on the waters surface. Bass chasing baitfish turned two calm fisherman into excited kids and we started casting out into the mouth. We both were using “Salt and Pepper” Saltwater Assassins with a Chartreuse curly tail. Todd says this is one of his favorite baits to use here. “If you rig it on a worm hook without a weight I find that you can work this bait very slowly on the waters surface so you’re not constantly reeling in and throwing out,” he says. It didn’t take long for Todd to put the first fish of the day in the boat. a 12” bass that slurped up his lure just under the waters surface.

Todd Oalman catches the first bass of the day at the mouth of Bayou Cane

We continued to fish the mouth of the bayou for another hour and ended up with 6 keeper bass in the ice chest. We then moved to the next drain in the marsh. “I like to start at the mouth and then work my way steadily back to the launch,” Todd says. The drains that protrude from the marsh typically attract bass because of the cleaner water and the baitfish that congregate in the are. As we fished these drains we picked up one or two bass at every drain making for a consistent morning. But as we felt the sun trying to beat down on our necks we both knew that the bite would be ending shortly. “It doesn’t take long! I’ve seen it time after time - you’ll be catching fish steady and all of a sudden the bite dies,” Oalman says. After we put our 15th bass of the day in the box, we couldn’t manage another one for over an hour and we decided to call it a day.

Todd Oalman and Keith Lusher head back to the lunch with an icebox of bass

Once again Bayou Cane provided a steady bass bite and a box of fish. “It’s probably the least fish bayou here on the Northshore and I don’t know why. It’s easily one of the most consistent and productive bayous tat we have here,” Oalman adds.

Frog Bite on the Tangipahoa

7/16/2018

Keith Lusher

With the summertime heat comes the incredible bass bite that can be had by using plastic frogs. Todd Oalman of Ponchatoula made a trip to the Tangipahoa River and says the bite was consistent all morning. “I had lots of blow-ups from 6:15 a.m. to 10:00 a.m.” Todd says. Oalman fished south of Black Bayou and the Cow Pen and ended up catching 14 bass mostly between the 1 lb. range. The biggest bass of the day weighed 2.5 lbs. Todd says he noticed the fish moving from the shallows as the day progressed. “During the early morning hours the fish stayed behind the lily pads but as the temperature got hotter they moved to the opposite side of the pads toward the river,” he says.

First Redfish on the Northshore
Ethan Legath recently moved to the North Shore from Livingston Parish and decided to try and learn the area in Slidell. He doesn’t own a boat so any fish he caught Ethan knew would have to have to come via bank fishing. He started by fishing on the northern shoreline of the Hwy 11 Bridge. His day started out rough so Ethan made a location move. “After battling ants and catch nothing but hard heads, I moved to a spot between the Highway 11 Bridge and the Twin Spans by the wall” Says Ethan. That’s where he found what he was looking for. "After fishing for about thirty minutes I hooked a nice 19” red. Then thirty minutes later I caught another one that measured 18”, Legath says. Ethan was fishing on the bottom with market shrimp and says the water was moving good and was clean. Before leaving he caught one more 20” redfish. “This was a learning experience for me as I have never fished this area from the bank. I'm impressed with three reds in about an hour in one spot,” Ethan says.

Early Appearance
Sam Coco Jr. fishes from the bank in his neighborhood of Oak Harbor in Slidell and says that he’s noticing Jack Crevalle appearing earlier than expected. He was fishing at one of his favorite spots and “After a few casts - all of a sudden the shoreline across from me exploded! It was Jacks running mullets,” Sam says. He watched the action for about a half hour and made a few casts to try and catch one but couldn’t manage to entice a strike. Sam says this is the earliest in the summer that he’s seen them active. “This is early! I usually don’t see them until August,” he says.

Causeway Report
The water around the Causeway has been recovering since the opening of the Bonnet Carre Spillway this past spring. Frank Foster took his kids to the Causeway to try and catch a few bottom feeders with market shrimp. The family started at the 8-mile hump and fished the pylons with a Carolina rig. The team ended up with 2 slot reds and a croaker but Frank says the action was steady. “We had a decent amount of bites that we couldn’t hook up on and had two fish break off after wrapping the line around the pylons,” He says. While the kids were fishing with shrimp on the bottom Frank tried jigging a Lemon Head Matrix on the bottom but didn’t manage anything.

Chef Pass Bass

7/8/2018

Keith Lusher

More and more we’re starting to see reports of bass being caught in what was traditional saltwater territory. Jack Tucker of Madisonville made a trip to Chef Pass and says it wasn’t popping corks or sparkle beetles they used, but spinner-baits and buzz-baits that did the trick. They started the day at Chef Pass at 7:00 a.m. and had no problem finding the bass. “We were throwing both spinner-baits and buzz-baits and numerous times were catching doubles,” Jack says. After making a move Tucker and his friend found even more fish. “We decided to run down to Proctors Point and the fishing was even hotter than the air! We kept bouncing in and out of cuts on the rocks throwing chatter-baits and spinner-baits,” Jack says. At the end of the day the team ended up with 20 keeper bass and 3 redfish with several of the bass being over 2 lbs. For those interested in catching sheepshead jack says, “the sheepshead have moved up to the rocks. We probably saw a few hundred in schools of 10 or so each with some real nice ones mixed in. I might take my little deck hand tomorrow with some market bait and chase them black and whites!”

Return to the Water

John holds up a beautiful bass caught at West Double Bayou

John Zeringue of Denham Springs hasn’t been fishing in a while. “It’s been quite a while since I've been on the water - the Saturday after Thanksgiving to be exact,” Zeringue says. After the birth of his second child the only fishing John has done is in some neighborhood ponds. But John was finally able to get back on the water and did so with his Father-in-law. The team originally wanted to go to Shell Beach but was hearing some less than stellar reports from the area and that there was a fishing rodeo being held there, John decided to change his plans. “I called an audible and headed for the Rigolets,” John says. They started with live shrimp under a cork in a marshy area that allowed them to stay out of the wind. “We fished that spot for the next couple hours catching bass, croakers, specks, reds, a couple bluegill, and a couple bream,” Zeringue says. After the bite died down they decided to head to West Double Bayou. "I idled by each cut to look for bait movement. When I found one, we stopped and fished,” he says. The team finished off there portion of live shrimp catching a mess of bass and ended the day around noon. They finished with 8 bass, 2 redfish, 1 speckled trout, 1 flounder, and 1 bull croaker.

Fishing License Reminder
With all the independence Day festivities this past week, you may have overlooked the fact that your fishing license for 2018 has expired. The Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries reminds all sportsmen that all 2017-18 recreational fishing and hunting licenses will expire on June 30, 2018. Licenses for the 2018-2019 seasons are available for purchase beginning June 1 and are valid until June 30, 2019.

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