Keith Lusher Jr The heat is on! And the speckled trout bite that anglers have enjoyed this spring is all but an afterthought. It’s the harsh reality of fishing Lake Pontchartrain. 90 degree water temperatures = Speckled Trout Lockjaw! Charlie Polito of Hammond recently made a trip to the Trestles where he quickly found out that he picked the wrong bridge to fish that day. “We started out on the train bridge Sunday morning. We saw lots of boats but no bent rods for about an hour,” Polito says. That’s when he and his son decided to make a run to the Twin Spans and the decision payed off. We had decent luck on the Twin Spans south of the hump. We only managed a couple specks, but got a good number of drum and sheepshead,” he says. Charlie says they also added some redfish, and flounder to the box. “We put a few reds and flounder in the cooler. We used live shrimp for the sheepshead and live or dead shrimp for everything else,” Polito says.
Bayou Cane Redfish
Bayou Cane Redfish
Zack Liberto Zack Liberto of Mandeville has been catching redfish along the Causeway, but decided to try something different on his latest fishing trip. “I went for the change of pace today and headed out to Cane Bayou in my mud boat to fish the shoreline of Lake Pontchartrain for reds,” he says. Zack started throwing top-water lures and spinnerbaits along the shoreline and finished with a healthy box. “I threw top-water as well as spinner-baits from Cane Bayou to Goose Point and finished up with 8 reds, 2 flounder, and a lost 14 inch trout,”Zack says. Liberto says he was using a mullet colored Top Dog and Matrix Shad on a spinner.
Pearl River Bass
Pearl River Bass
Robert Gauley of Maurepaus recently made an overnight garfishing/frogging trip on the East Pearl but and says the water was high and muddy. “The water in the East Pearl was sort of high and moving out rather quickly. It wasn’t exactly ideal conditions but we had already made the 45 minute trip over there, so we gave it a shot,” Gauley says. Robert ended the night with 8 frogs, 2 garfish and 1 catfish while running jug lines. But Robert wasn’t done with the Pearl after his less than productive night. “We've wanted to fish sacalait over there so at daylight we had our jig poles in hand,” Gauley says. Robert brought along his nephew and his son on this trip and managed to catch a few sacaliat in the high, muddy water, but says they were small. “For some reason when the water is high and muddy it seems that the small ones are all that we catch,” Roberts says. The team started fishing for bass and says there were plenty, but much like the sacalait, the bass were on the small side also. But by the end of the day Robert’s nephew managed to catch a beautiful 2 lb. 8oz. largemouth along the cypress knees.
