Louisiana Sportsman

Jigging up Old River slabs

August 1, 2018 Jerald Horst

Determining when to fish Old River isn’t guesswork. Dave Pizzolato watches river gages, specifically the Mississippi River station at Baton Rouge.[…]

Huge goggle-eye are thick in the lower Atchafalaya Basin right now — and there seems to be no pressure on them.

Hit the Basin now for beastly goggle-eye, bluegill

July 16, 2018 Andy Crawford

Darren Cooper and I sat in Doiron’s Store at 6:30 a.m., waiting for an early morning thunderstorm to pass over the lower Atchafalaya Basin. It had been several years since we had gotten together to catch bream in the huge swamp — and a slowly falling Atchafalaya River gave great promise to our day.[…]

Bobby Phillips cruises the river system, searching for tops that might hold crappie.

The Ouachita’s long and winding path

July 15, 2018 Kinny Haddox

There are more than 90 miles of Ouachita River between the Arkansas line and the Columbia Lock and Dam in Northeast Louisiana. The river lakes, bayous and cuts off the river are too numerous to mention. But the nice thing is that good access is available up and down the river, and prime fishing isn’t far away. […]

Keeping your distance from a top and fishing it from the outside in helps you catch more crappie.

What’s a “top”?

July 15, 2018 Kinny Haddox

A top is simply a submerged brush top, the top of a bush or tree or a fallen tree with lots of submerged limbs. Tops sometimes lay where they fall, and other times current washes them onto sandbars or into river lakes.[…]

Grass shrimp are tiny but lethal baits. Virtually every fish species eats them. The larger shrimp is a female bearing eggs on the swimmerets beneath her tail.

How to catch your own grass shrimp

July 15, 2018 Jerald Horst

Leonard Kleinpeter stresses that a proper dip net is needed to effectively catch grass shrimp from their preferred habitat, dense beds of coontail and other aquatic plants. […]

Leonard Kleinpeter keeps one hand on the trolling motor to position his boat carefully to avoid spooking the fish, while fishing with the other hand. Note the homemade pedestal seat mount.

The man and his boat

July 15, 2018 Jerald Horst

In spite of having lived a high-powered life, Leonard Kleinpeter is living proof that effective fishing doesn’t demand investment in an expensive fiberglass bass boat.[…]

Leonard Kleinpeter mounted this brass plaque in Crackerhead to commemorate a long bream fishing friendship.

The plaque in the swamp

July 15, 2018 Jerald Horst

Bass, crappie and bream fishermen who frequent the canals of Crackerhead can’t help but to have seen a solid brass plaque mounted on one of a pair of modest-sized cypress trees standing in the water off a canal bank.[…]

Leonard Kleinpeter applies vanilla extract from a pump spray bottle to keep gnats at bay.

Tip of the day

July 15, 2018 Jerald Horst

He smelled so good I wanted to lick him.

Leonard Kleinpeter has just sprayed himself with bug repellant, but not the stinky stuff in a can.[…]

When Bobby Phillips gears up for Ouachita River crappie, you can bet these lures will be on deck.

Geared up and ready to go

July 15, 2018 Kinny Haddox

With tackle stores full of a thousand sizes, shapes, styles and colors of crappie jigs and fishing equipment, you could spend days or weeks just trying to figure out what to fish with. Or you could just let Bobby Phillips tell you his favorite go-to gear, and copy this veteran guide’s success.[…]

Julie McCarty of Morgan City holds a fat bream caught while fishing with her husband, Bill.

Perfect time for panfish

July 5, 2018 Don Shoopman

Bill McCarty cleans a lot of panfish for frying this time every year as he taps the bream, chinquapin and sac-a-lait population in the lower Spillway, better known as the Atchafalaya Basin.[…]

Big bluegills like this one are why Finch Lake is a hit with summertime bream anglers.

Catch big bream on little Finch Lake

July 4, 2018 Kinny Haddox

It was a bad year for flooding on Finch Lake and the Ouachita River near the small community of Haile — so that means it’s a good year for big bream.[…]

After over a half-century of fishing for them, Leonard Kleinpeter still gets excited over bream.

High noon at Crackerhead

July 1, 2018 Jerald Horst

“There’s a good one,” he said, glancing over his right shoulder. “And there’s a good one,” he said, throwing an eye over his left shoulder. “That’s a good one, too,” he nodded at another one.[…]

Pop a ‘top’

July 1, 2018 Kinny Haddox

It’s prime time to target Ouachita River crappie in the tops. Here’s how one noted angler catches his share of summertime slabs hunkered down in the brush.[…]

Marsh Man Masson vid: Where, how to catch summertime crappie — and bass

June 25, 2018 Todd Masson

My son, Joel, and I set out on a recent fishing trip to compare and contrast the bass-catching capabilities of Zoom Flukes and floating worms. With the test well underway, however, we became distracted by a smoking-hot crappie bite we just couldn’t ignore.[…]

Be a fish listener

June 15, 2018 Kinny Haddox

Forget being a fish whisperer — when it comes to catching crappie, Nick Young is a fish listener.[…]

Adjusting on the fly is key

June 15, 2018 Kinny Haddox

Earlier this year, Nick Young and father Jock beat 100 of the best crappie fishing teams in the South to claim the Crappie Masters Louisiana State Championship on Lake D’Arbonne with two seven-fish limits weighing 24.4 pounds.[…]