Ponchartrain’s Blues & Reds
(Continued from page 6.)
“Catfish act just like redfish,”
Kreeger suggested. “Catfish like muddy
water. When I’m targeting catfish, I look
for dirty water. For catfish, I also like a
slack tide. There’s not much bait in the
lake during the winter so catfish will hit
about anything we put in front of them.
Shrimp heads or fish pieces make good
chum. I’ll throw out a couple handfuls of
chum and put out four rods baited with
shrimp. We won’t load the boat with fish
in the winter, but we’ll catch some pretty
good sized ones.”
Kreeger uses a Carolina rig with an
18-inch leader for fishing bait on the
bottom. He usually anchors the rig with a
3/4-ounce lead slip sinker, but may use a
1-ounce chunk when fishing a strong tide.
On the terminal end, he threads a shrimp
on a long-shanked J hook, but many
anglers prefer to fish bait with a circle
hook.
Not everyone uses bait to tempt cats.
Anglers frequently catch blues on softplastic grubs, shrimp or minnow
imitations while targeting speckled trout
or redfish. Sometimes, anglers tip lures
with shrimp pieces for extra flavor, but
cats may bite plastics without bait.
“Catfish are very aggressive
predators,” stated Dudley Vandenborre,
who guides out of Slidell. “I never go out
looking for catfish, but we catch a lot of
them while fishing plastics for speckled
trout and redfish. On one cast, we might
catch a 15-pound catfish. On the next cast,
we’ll catch a 5-pound trout and then a 10pound redfish, all on the same lure. The
biggest catfish we’ve ever put on my boat
weighed 32 pounds and hit an avocado
Deadly Dudley soft plastic bait.”
Like fishing for redfish, look for
catfish around any hard structure. Several
bridges crossing the lake create excellent
places to hold reds and cats. The longest
bridge continuously over water in the
world, the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway,
spans the massive estuary at its widest point
from north to south. Running 24 miles with
two spans, it provides nearly 10,000 large,
round barnacle-encrusted concrete pilings
where fish can hide and feed.
“We never know what we’ll catch
around the Causeway,” Schlumbrecht
said. “Sometimes, we catch several
different species in the same areas. We
don’t target catfish, but it’s a fairly
frequent bycatch at times. Some days, we
might catch 10 cats while fishing for trout
or redfish.”
Also called the Twin Spans, Interstate
10 crosses Lake Pontchartrain near
Slidell. Hurricane Katrina severely
32
GULF COAST FISHERMAN
damaged it in 2005, but a new span
opened in 2009 followed by a second one
in 2010. Generally parallel to I-10, the
U.S. Highway 11 bridge dates to 1928. A
nearby railroad trestle dates to 1884. In
addition, U.S. Highway 90 and an old
railroad bridge both cross Chef Pass and
the Rigolets.
“All the bridges can hold catfish,”
Vandenborre recommended. “I’ve
probably caught more cats by the trestle,
but that’s because I fish there more than
the other bridges. The Twin Spans
probably have a lot more cats than the
other bridges. A friend of mine fishes by
the U.S. 90 Bridge over Chef Pass. He’s
caught some cats topping 70 pounds.
Mostly, he uses a big chunk of pogie or a
crab. Several times, I’ve seen him with
some 50 to 60-pounders on the boat in
the winter.”
Big blues also move out of the
catfish-rich Pearl River system into
eastern Lake Pontchartrain. In September
1992, Christie Carpenter pulled a 72.50
pound blue catfish from West Pearl. West
Pearl River splits into two mouths. One
flows into the Rigolets and the other into
Little Lake, an estuary close to Lake
Borgne. In this fertile marshy delta,
anglers frequently catch redfish and
catfish in the same spots.
“The two mouths of Pearl River are
good places to fish for cats,” Kreeger
advised. “A lot of big freshwater shiners
come out of the rivers at that time of year
also. Catfish probably follow the shiners
and feed upon them. We anchor in the
mouth of the river, drop some baits into
the water and sit there waiting for catfish.
I’ve hooked some that broke my line. I
never saw them so I don’t know how big
they were.”
Not far from Pearl River, the Hospital
Wall creates an excellent feeding ground
for catfish and redfish. Built in the 19th
century near where the Rigolets enters
Lake Pontchartrain, a hospital once served
soldiers assigned to Fort Pike. After nearly
two centuries of storms and erosion, little
remains of this old facility except
scattered rocks and other debris now
under several feet of water. These rocks
provide excellent structure for various
predators.
Many anglers awaiting the return of
warmer weather mis