LAFB Elite | Inshore Fishing Courses Designed For Louisiana › Forums › General Inshore Fishing Discussion › 80% of all trout over 18 inches DEAD › Reply To: 80% of all trout over 18 inches DEAD
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The atom bomb analogy is an accurate one. Redfish take 5 years to reach maturity. They grow way slower than speckled trout and I feel there’s been more pressure on them in the last 10 years.
It’s really hard for me to say if this one is “the worst” because I don’t have numbers to go off of from previous years. I’d definitely say it’s the worst based off the information I do have, and that we really won’t know for another few months or so. If the fishing sucks in May, then we know something is up, for sure. Otherwise my boat trailer is in the shop and I haven’t had the opportunity to take a tour. I am confident in my angler’s network and what they are reporting.
I definitely don’t feel good about it. Those fish over 20″ became a semi-protected class from the meat haulers, and now it seems they’re mostly wiped out. That’s tough.
The silver bullet we have is laying off the trout. They are incredibly fecund. Anytime we laid off them they bounced back big. For example, Katrina pretty much took out the #1 trout predator: us. She literally took people out (pour out some bubbly for our fellow inshore angler), displaced survivors to other stats, annihilated boats, boat ramps, roads to get there, etc. I remember the road to Breton Sound Marina was literally ripped away. It was gone. Like a giant ripped it up and threw it somewhere.
So, the fishing pressure on trout was pretty much gone after Katrina, especially in the Greater NOLA area. And the trout fishing after that was amazing. Same thing after the BP Oil Spill.
If the trout bounce back then people will lay off the redfish. That’s why so many people went to redfish (guides included) during the Freshening, because the trout became relatively scarce, but redfish were available.
You, me and anyone else reading this knows that there is not a single person in Louisiana who will starve to death if they can’t eat a f*cking trout between now and when their spawn is over. If we can lay off the trout during that time we would have done ourselves an incredible service. But enough Louisiana folk are stunted enough to throw a fit, bitch, moan and howl if they can’t keep a speckled trout. These same folk drive right past crappie, bass, sheepshead, blue cats and umpteen other species that are good (or even better) to eat just to struggle to fill the box with trout.
Ultimately, it is what it is and time will tell. People will make their bed and they will lay in it.
In the meantime, I am struggling to not make a bunch of content that will amount to rage bait (like for YouTube). lol