[McLovin]

I have a 24 hour tuna trip Oct 9-10, I also saw that wind forecast and almost ruined a pair of pants lol. The good thing is that almost all 10 day forecasts are wrong due to the butterfly effect. I think you have a solid plan, the forecast looks better today (probably still wrong), let’s hope it keeps improving!

[McLovin]

I’ll give you my opinion, it may not be the same as everyone’s.

When I am fishing, I will try to stay out of duck ponds until 10:00 or so. Most duck hunters will be out of the ponds at that point. If I do go in a pond earlier than that, I’m looking for decoys in the water and will immediately turn around. I will typically avoid high conflict areas like Lafitte and stay in public water/WMAs where I won’t have the headache of an argument.

When I am duck hunting, I like hearing boats run around because it keeps the birds moving.

[McLovin]

I’m heading down there in the morning as well, my plan is to head down to fish the rocks at southwest pass and then work my way north to Joseph bayou with a possibility of running to south pass and fishing the beaches.

I like your idea of fishing the gulf end of pass a loutre, that was something I was considering. I think you will find less traffic through that area and hopefully less pressure. The big question will be what the water looks like tomorrow. The wind is blowing from the west today before shifting to the north/northeast wind we’ll see tomorrow. Latest sat imagery shows the west side of southwest pass looking sexy, but I’m assuming that’s going to be a different story tomorrow.

[McLovin]

I’m fully in camp big bait for big trout. Look at what the bass guys are doing with giant glide baits. The problem is that it takes serious mental fortitude to throw a big lure all day, mental fortitude that I don’t have lol. Big trout are eating big pogies and mullet. Big topwaters and glides are what I have been messing around with this summer when targeting the big gals. I’ve had some success as well but it can also be boring as hell. I agree with @cliffhall that at times it can be more productive for smaller lures and profiles, but they are about to try to pack on weight after a summer of spawning and big meals are hard for them to pass up right now.

[McLovin]

I went down this rabbit hole earlier this summer haha. There aren’t a lot of manufacturers that I could find that I thought would be quality. I bought some 1 ounce jig heads on Amazon from Garett Outdoors. They are good quality. He sells 1 and 3/4 ounce. American made but be warned he takes a while to ship (2 weeks) and I didn’t think I would get them lol. I think he pours as he gets orders.

https://a.co/d/jcy9EUo

[McLovin]

Spaghetti models are thinking she will turn north, sandwiched between two high pressure systems. I’ll be happy for her to stay well outside the Mississippi River watershed!

[McLovin]

I usually bleed redfish, but haven’t done trout. I was just listening to Hank Shaw talk about this yesterday. He said are three things that decrease the benefit of bleeding a fish: fish living in cold water, lazier fish (his examples were walleye and yellow perch), and fish being fried.

His explanation was that when you fry fish, the breading and oil flavors will completely cover any off taste from the fish anyway. It’s amazing what the color difference alone looks like for a redfish that has been bled vs one that has not. I have never done a taste comparison though.

[McLovin]

Adding in some information that will help out here (this is my commute to work).

1. There is a speed trap that is sometimes set up on De Gaulle, usually right past the entrance to Lakewood. I’ve only seen in set up once in the last year (two weeks ago or so) but it’s a 35 mph zone and it’s easy to get caught speeding there.

2. When coming back during the school year, they usually put a sheriff to direct traffic on Woodland Highway at the intersection with F Edward Hebert Blvd. They don’t actually know how to direct traffic and it will be miserable between 3 and 330.

Tolls are enforced both directions, they aren’t as expensive as the Grand Isle toll though. I think they charged me 8 bucks or something when I was towing my boat. I usually take the toll bridge on the way home just because traffic gets rough on the CCC.

[McLovin]

Like Boyce said, be careful in stump lagoon. I’ve always stuck to the south shoreline and then cut straight across and never ran into an issue. The east end has a lot of stumps over there.

Coming out of stump lagoon, don’t stick too close to the shore, I have hit bottom there. October 2012 imagery on GED shows the shallow area pretty good, it’s 30-40 yards out.

[McLovin]

[McLovin]

[McLovin]

I was more talking just ducks in general. The teal season was shorter because usfws reported a teal population lower than 4.7 million birds (likely from drought conditions) You would think that the local breeding population of blue wings would have had decent nest success just because we had a pretty wet spring but I’m sure our predator population is probably higher than the Midwest.

[McLovin]

Yeah I did, I tried checking out the beaches so I went out Joseph bayou through east bay and came in south pass from the mouth. I only tried fishing the rocks over there and just caught a couple of ladyfish.

[McLovin]

I actually had some rigged up! I probably should have used them. I had one on for almost three minutes using a 13 fishing mullet on a 10/0 Owner flashy swimmer.

• This reply was modified 8 months, 1 week ago by  McLovin.

[McLovin]

I think similar to how there is no single cause for our fishery, it’s death by a thousand cuts. I think a large part of it is warming temperatures. I saw a video of thousands of mallards still in Canada in January last year, they aren’t supposed to be there because everything should be frozen over. Ducks are going to migrate to where they are comfortable and no farther. In my opinion if they have food (changes in agriculture), water (liquid form, warmer temps), and shelter (large refuge areas with no hunting pressure – also this is not a bad thing but they are amazing adaptive to hunting) then they have no reason to come down here.