Every year about this time Ponchatoula resident Lawrence Lemoine likes to target speckled trout. Unlike most fishermen, he doesn’t make the trip down to Delacroix or the other popular speckled trout hot-spots that first come to mind when you think of South Louisiana speckled trout fishing. Lawrence heads down Hwy 22 and within a few minutes of leaving the house, he’s in the water and putting fish in the boat. “You can’t beat the Tchefuncte this time of year. I leave the house around 6:20 and I’m backing down the boat within 20 minutes. After a quick 10 minute ride out down river, I’m making my first cast as the sun peeks over the horizon,” Lemoine said. Lawrence has been fishing the Tchefuncte River this month and says that the trout have finally showed up in Madisonville. “With the passing of the last cold front I knew this good hard north wind would get the water pouring out of a few of my favorite cuts. When that wind switches around, it pushes that good clean water out of those duck ponds. That water is loaded with shrimp and minnows and the trout are just waiting at these cuts to feed on them.” Lawrence says to target these cuts during the morning hours but when the sun comes up he likes to fish the middle of the river. He’s says that finding their depth may be tricky. “The fish I’ve been catching have been suspended. They’re not on the bottom like you would think. What you do is throw out and let it get down to the bottom. Once on the bottom, jig it a couple times then slow roll it all the way to the boat. It’s during that retrieve that they are hitting it,” Lemoine said.
Luke O’Neal is a student at Mandeville High School and has been having success in the Tchefuncte also but says the trout are constantly on the move. “We would find them at one spot in the river and pull a few into the boat but it would never last more than a few minutes before we were picking up anchor and moving. Luke says to pay attention to the other boats in the area and that will tell you which direction the trout are moving. “There was about four boats in a line and when one boat would stop catching fish the next one would start so you could definitely tell the which direction the trout were moving just by paying attention to the other boats.” Luke says that they have been catching the trout on Matrix Shad in the Shrimp Creole color on a 3/8 oz. jig head a few feet off of the bottom.
East Pearl
Slidell angler Alan Geunard has been fishing the shoreline around the mouth of the East Pearl River and having success. Alan says he has been catching more white trout then specks and the key to finding them is finding the bait. “We weren’t having much success that day. So we gradually trolled the shoreline and all of a sudden I hear my friend scream, “Whoa! Stop right here!” The sonar lit up with red arcs on the screen. We rigged up with market shrimp and from then on it was steady catching! We must have sat there for 2 hours catching fat little white trout until the dead shrimp was gone.” Alan says they thought their day was over after running out of shrimp, but the white trout continued to feed on plastics. “Those whites were hitting so hard you would swear you had a bigger fish!” They ended the day with 60 white trout, 2 specks, 2 reds, 2 striped bass and 3 bull croakers.
Flounder
Anglers are reporting more and more flounder being caught in Lake Pontchartrain with the recent cooling of the waters. Flounder are starting to show up on the Trestles of the Hwy 11 Bridge in Slidell and all along the interior rivers that feed into Lake Pontchartrain. Jacob Blankenship of Madisonville caught two doormats over 4 lbs. He says he was using Matrix Shad on the bottom in a cut that drains out of a duck pond near Port Louis.
Jacob Blankenship shows off his two doormats he caught near Port Louis
