Well if it wasn’t for the windy days we been having, I would have a lot more fishing stories to tell you. However the wind has been horrible this week. I did have two days that the wind laid down in the early morning and I took advantage of those days to go out with my shrimp boat and catch some live shrimp. The speckled trout are showing up on the oyster reefs on the south side of Barataria Bay near the barrier islands by the hundreds. When I can get out because of the wind the fishing has been great. We are using live shrimp three feet under a popping cork and boxing up one hundred trout limits before nine o’clock in the morning. Typically the month of March is windy and seems like every year we have to struggle with the adverse conditions on the water, however April is right around the corner and mother nature should be calming down a little bit. From what I have seen so for it looks like this is going to be another fantastic year for speckled trout and red fish charters. We have plenty of live shrimp in on us right and as you well know the food chain is following the live shrimp in to our waters. Having live shrimp here at the cabins for not only my fishing charters but for my clients as well has made things very easy for my boat launches as well as folks simply staying in the log cabins that has there own boat to get the live shrimp in the morning for there trip. We now have with the log cabin rentals, a boat launch, fuel, ice, dead shrimp, live shrimp, small boat rentals as well as many different types of fishing charters you can book if you do not have your own boat. Our day time speckled trout and red fish fishing charters start at safe light and normally run for five hours. However most of the fish are caught in the first three hours of the trip. I always tell people on my boat after nine o’clock in the morning you are riding around getting a sun tan because the trout have been feeding for the first three hours of daylight. Remember always hit your best fishing spot first thing in the morning because it is for the most part the best time of the trip. If you have a tide change sometime in the middle of the day, that can also trigger a good bite with the trout. You will find that the first three hours the fish will feed good and then the bite will slow down for a few hours and if you have a tide change at lets say twelve o’clock noon, then as soon as the tide picks up a little momentum around one o’clock they will feed again for about two hours with the new tide. For some reason they like the change in the tide direction and it doesn’t matter what time of the day it occurs. Another tip you might want to keep under your hat is that you always want to position your boat on the up stream side of the island you are fishing relative to the tide direction. You never want to park your boat on the back side of an island when the tide is bumping the other side of the island. All the bait is hitting the front side of the island and that is where you will find the speckled trout and red fish feeding. There is no action on the back side of an island where there is no tide. The speckled trout will school up and ambush the feed as it comes around the point of a island, where as the red fish will prowl the shoreline looking for a meal. Both are predator fish they just have two different ways of obtaining there food. When I am ready to anchor down on a spot I always slow down about a half of a foot ball field away from where I think the trot might be. I shut the big motor down and put the trolling motor over and ease up to the spot where they might be. Some people might say that is being a little too much, but I say there is a lot of folks that approach a fishing spot that they might be five thousand trout on that oyster reef but they destroy the area because they come in too fast as well as do not put the boat in the right spot to fish that reef. You see you never want to put your boat up stream of where you think the fish are relative to the tide. If you park your boat in front of a oyster reef and the tide is bring the nature flow of live shrimp and other bait feed under our boat and then to the reef, your boat is disturbing the nature flow of feed to that reef. The fish will respond to the split in the flow of feed and will not school up right behind your boat and will congregate maybe twenty to thirty yards of to one side or the other. You might be fishing twenty yards off of a school of five thousand trout and not get a bite and think to yourself there was no fish at that spot on that day. Remember you never want to be looking into the sun while trying to see your cork, never position your boat up stream of your fishing spot relative to the tide direction, never park in such a way that you have to throw into the wind and never park too close to where you think the fish are feeding. You have to stay away a little bit and when you throw you line you have to put a little bit of elbow grease into your throw. Believe me the speckled trout will not even know you are there.

Bayou Electric had a great day on the water with Capt. Clay