The Pontchartrain estuary is making a turn to be a fall and winter big trout hot spot now the MRGO is closed. It used to be known as the place to be to catch wall hangers all through the spring and summer but the last few years have shown differently. It now seems the biggest of trout are now caught in the fall and winter around the Pontchartrain basin but the spring fishing is still very good. April is prime time and still a lot of three and four pound trout are caught in April. If you want your best odds for catching a spring time beauty focus on the weeks of the full and new moon or as some may call it the bright and dark moon. During the full and new moon of April the trout begin their spawning ritual. The strong tides provided by the lunar gravity helps the eggs hatch and the trout know this. In order for trout to spawn correctly they have to gourge themselves with food making it easier for us anglers to fool one to bite the end of our lines. There are many places to catch big fish in the lake during April we just have to wait and see where they want to stage this year as every year can be different. Of course all the bridges crossing the estuary have the potential of being the place for the big girls. Typically we fish the bridge structures with 3/8 and 1/2 oz Golden Eye heads with a Matrix or Vortex Shad, but don’t be surprised if it is a shoreline in the Lake that is holding the biggest of fish. When we find the big females lurking shorelines we switch it over to the Matrix Mullet and Matrix Minnow hard baits and work the flats over.
The fishing this springs so far has followed this prediction. We have been catching a fair amount of trout and March looked pretty good but the size of the trout was nothing special and finding areas with the potential for wall hangers looked bleak. Hopefully some trophies move in soon or it may be another year of catching 12-20″ trout without any real wall hangers but those are the ones that taste great anyway. To watch videos on this time of year make sure to check out all our DockSide TV episodes aired in the spring months.