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Double dipping
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
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
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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Ostrica is the New Venice
May loomed, and Eddie assumed our traditional summer fishing schedule also loomed.[…]
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Outer limits
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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Cover: May 2012
Speckled trout fishing is heating up across the coast, but there’s no shortage of freshwater action.[…]
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Dog Days of Summer
Let’s see: You are a charter guide and your clients just cancelled at the last minute because of an emergency.[…]
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Buggin’ bluegill
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
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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Back to basics
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
“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.[…]
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D’Arbonne’s Daffy Divers
It was late evening in the early summer. The five men assembled on the back deck of the Petrus family camp, set on a hill slope overlooking Lake D’Arbonne, were engaged in a masculine redneck ritual. Bobby Petrus, a.k.a. “The Claw,” was grilling meat, and all of them were exchanging humorous insults.
The rough-and-tumble humor, mixed with an equal blend of braggadocio and self-deprecation, was delivered with powerful North Louisiana twangs in what a Cajun or a New Orleanian would consider a foreign language.[…]
Bass Fishing
Teche Talk
Bayou Teche starts in Port Barre and runs 125 miles to the Atchafalaya River in Berwick Bay. But it’s the 8- to 9-mile stretch of bayou between the East Calumet Spillway locks and the Berwick Bay Locks at the Atchafalaya River that competitive anglers know is the place where they can always find five good fish to put on the scale.[…]
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Offshore Inbox
My transformation to a recreational angler is complete.[…]
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Turkey Tornado
If Alaska had a huntable population of turkeys, Franklinton’s Randy Stafford wouldn’t be stuck on having killed a turkey in 49 out of 50 states.[…]
Bass Fishing
In Plain View
I walked down to the dock and saw Craig “Bubba” Graham shielding his eyes from the glare of the sun, just staring into the water. Something had his attention.[…]