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Yeah, they’re back to the way they were.
Forgive me if I sound like a broken record: The proliferation of bass we had before Hurricane Ida was made possible with the additional viable habitat for them made available by the record amount of river water we had from 2011 to 2020 (which I wrote about extensively here).
I doubt Hurricane Ida had much to do with their decline, no more than previous hurricanes. But that storm does coincide with the same time we stopped having record river water, which I wrote about extensively here.
This is a shining example of Captain Ty Hibb’s Shifting Baseline Theory: a “new normal” arises when people forget how things used to be. All those bass you were catching were never supposed to be there. They were a response to an ecological fluke, and that fluke has been over for a few years now. In their stead, we are catching more croaker, flounder, speckled trout, spanish macks, pompano, channel mullet, etc.
And I’d rather have those fish over bass. I don’t think the bass fishing during the Freshening was that great. Sure, there were 20lb bags caught, but those guys are grinding all day for five fish. We were mostly just catching ditch pickles anyway. To each their own, but if that’s your flavor, then spare yourself the aggravation of salt and just go to the Tennessee River. Catch consistent 3-5lb+ bass deep cranking ledges or skipping docks and you’ll say “f&#k Louisiana!” Or don’t go even that far and head to Lake Okhissa or Percy Quinn in MS and catch three pounders on a multitude of different techniques. Or maybe just the nearest golf course pond.
Now, this is specifically aimed at a general audience reading this because if people don’t know what happened to the bass then they probably don’t know this: I understand that most people catching bass during the Freshening were doing so with a popping cork.
Look back at the Classics during 1999, 2001, 2003 and 2011 (all of which were held in Louisiana). Watch them and you will not see a single one of the field throwing a dumbass popping cork. I know people were catching a lot of smaller bass on them during the Freshening, but that was only because there were literally that many of them.
But if you can flip a Texas Rig, which is the most staple way to catch bass anywhere they swim, then you will catch more quality and quantity. Not cast a Texas Rig. Not tie it on spinning tackle. Flipping with casting tackle.
If you got back into some reeds in Venice with a Texas Rig you stand to demolish the bass. But if you cast a cork at that same spot you’d wonder if they even exist. We smashed them last year. It was easy, but we also know how to work a foot pedal and flip.
Going back to those Classics: they were held at the height of our last Saltening and the year that the Freshening began AKA years we didn’t see bass everywhere in the marsh. But yet those guys were somehow still finding and catching them in places like Venice, Delacroix and Lafitte. I’m not counting Cataouatche because it’s too far inside.
