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Unfinished Business
 Keith Lusher
As a husband and father of two boys with a full-time job it’s not often that Leo Moore of Covington has free time on his hands. Moore admittedly fishes less than he used to because of his busy schedule, but recently had the opportunity to make a quick afternoon trip to a pond near Dogpound Rd. “I got off of work a little early and when I got home there was nobody there, so I decided to throw the Bass Buggy in the truck and head down to the pond,” he said. Moore loaded the 10-foot Pelican Bass Raider into his truck and after a quick 5-minute drive backed up to the pond, slid the boat in, and was casting to the shoreline in search of bass in the shallows. His solitude didn’t last long as his phone rang, “My son Gabe, must have spotted me on 360 (GPS app) and called me to ask if I was fishing,” Moore said. “I told him to come down to the pond and I circled back and picked him up.” The two fished the shoreline when they came upon a wharf. They were both using a Texas-rigged Zoom Watermelon Craw with a 1/4 oz. bullet weight. Leo casted in between a piling and the shoreline, then slowly bumped his crawfish on the bottom when his line stopped. “I thought I was hung up so I yanked to try and get it unhooked,” Moore said. That’s when his line shot across the water along the shoreline. The fish came close to popping the line but luckily Leo was able to lighten the drag and the fight was on. The fish took quite a bit line out because of the over-adjustment but after a few minutes Leo was able to get the fish to the boat. As he pulled the fish up against the side of the boat, Gabe reached down, lipped the fish and was able to get it into the boat. Moore didn’t have a scale but said it looked to be close to 6 pounds. After a few celebratory high-fives and pictures, Leo released the fish back into he water and the father-son team continued to fish.
 Moore caught this bass on a Zoom Craw
They circled the pond and caught a few small bass but as they came back around to the wharf Moore casted into the same spot and once again his line stopped while he was bumping the crawfish on the bottom. This time Moore didn’t hesitate. “I set the hook right away and sure enough it was another one,” he said. As he set the hook however, his drag was still loose from the adjustment he made while fighting the 5-pounder. His line once again shot across the water but then pulled loose and came flying through the air back at Leo. All that was left was a hook and weight. “I don’t know if that was the same fish or another one but I’ll be back soon to settle the score,” he said.
Two Personal Bests Jimmy Dorris and his father, Bill, have over 90 years of combined bass fishing experience between the two of them. The Slidell anglers have fished all over the Northshore from Manchac to the Pearl River and have caught some really big bass throughout the years. But none top the fish that they caught in Bayou Lacombe last week. The father and son team were fishing the latest Bass Assassins event, one in which Jimmy admits wasn’t turning out as planned. “I picked up a small one here and there but never got on anything really good,” Dorris said. That all changed around 11:00 a.m. when Jimmy entered into a canal just off of the main bayou and started flipping along the shoreline. 
Jimmy flipped his lure into an area of water about 2 feet deep and said. “I stuck her and I thought I had a choupique on my line judging by how hard she ran,” Dorris said. Jimmy was fishing along side fellow tournament angler, Gauge Wagner. After seeing that the fish was a bass, he yelled over to Wagner that he was going to need some help. Wagner dropped to his hands and knees along the side of the boat and grabbed the fish with one hand and then with the other before lifting the fish out of the water. Gauge started yelling “you got a ten, you got a ten” and Jimmy said “He’s not going to miss it by much!” Dorris put the beast of a fish into his live well and got back to fishing.
Jimmy Dorris and Bill Dorris with their personal best bass caught on the same day
Five minutes later his father, Bill, was exiting the canal and slowly passed Jimmy. Bill called out to Jimmy “Guess what I got?” and Jimmy responded with “Guess what I got?” As it turned out Bill caught an 8 lb. 10 oz. in the same canal a few minutes before Jimmy caught his 9 lb. 1 oz. fish. Both fish turned out to be personal bests for the lifelong bass anglers. “It was wild!” he said. “For both of us to catch our personal bests on the same day - within 30 minutes of each other - out of different boats is wild!”
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 Keith Lusher
I created NFR.com in the spring of 2012. Since then it has helped link Northshore fishermen to valuable information and has filled the void of absent information on the web about fishing on the North Shore of Lake Pontchartrain. Northshore Fishing Report has morphed into a brand name and can be found not only on the web, but on radio and newspaper. As NFR grows I will continue to work hard at keeping NFR local focusing on local anglers, reports, seminars, and fishing tournaments in St. Tammany and Tangipahoa Parish. I hope you enjoy the website and If you have any questions please email me at: Keith@NorthshoreFishingReport.com
Look for the Northshore Fishing Report publication every Thursday in The Slidell Independent Weekly Newspaper!
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Carl Schmidt of Abita Springs joins the NFR Studio by phone to talk about his numerous trips to Bayou Lacombe where he ran catfish lines and caught trout and bass near the mouth of the bayou.
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