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Buggin’ bluegill

May 1, 2012 David A. Brown

The sounds are unmistakable. SSSLURP! POP! SMACK!

When bluegill rise to grab surface meals, they know they’re vulnerable to bass, ospreys, herons and other predators. Therefore, they have to be sure of a worthwhile payoff, and nature provides plenty in the way of aquatic insects and other bugs that fall to the water’s surface.[…]

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Bear Bayou Bream Basics

May 1, 2012 John Flores

The anchor hadn’t settled on the bottom good before my wife made her first cast toward the trees along a stretch of Bear Bayou we regularly fish. As normal, she wasn’t playing around.[…]

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Pocket Perch

May 1, 2012 Jerald Horst

When I first moved to New Orleans as a (very) young man in the mid-1960s, I just knew that I was a fishing hot dog. I thought I knew all there was to know about catching bass, bream, white perch and catfish — and that’s where the fishing world ended.[…]

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Double dipping

May 1, 2012 Jerald Horst

The craggy man at the bow controls of the boat turned off the boat’s engine. He lit a cigarette and scanned the points formed by the intersection of the Texaco Canal and Grand Bayou.[…]

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Stump field slabs

May 1, 2012 Terry L. Jones

Every year during March and April, fishermen hammer Lake D’Arbonne’s shallow cypress trees and banks for spawning white perch (aka crappie or sac-a-lait). It’s a mad rush because you only have a few weeks to take advantage of the relatively easy bite.[…]

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A Man and a Fish

May 1, 2012 Jerald Horst

Following my GPS, I tentatively nosed my truck through the fortress-like gates of Mariners Cove in Slidell. When the man invited me to hunt alligator gar in the canal behind his house, I had just kind of assumed that the trail would lead me to a rural backwater retreat in the salt marshes between Slidell and Lake Pontchartrain.[…]

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Outer limits

May 1, 2012 Rusty Tardo

This is it: You don’t have to wait any longer.

The month we long for with impatient anticipation throughout the entire year has finally arrived in all its spring glory.[…]

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Back to basics

May 1, 2012 John Flores

Whether it’s blue catfish or channel catfish, Central Louisiana’s coastal bays in the springtime are teeming with both. Toss in the occasional flathead, and what you have is the skinning pliers Ictalurus Trifecta of North America.[…]

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Croaker Soaker

May 1, 2012 Jerald Horst

“I fish live bait — live croakers,” the 68-year-old says with conviction, as if looking for a challenge. “Using plastic can be a good way to find the fish,” he adds, seeming for a moment to soften a bit, “but when I find them, I throw croakers to catch more.[…]