John Flores: Murky water makes May a tough month for fishing

This past weekend, I made a call to a friend, Gerald Foulcard, who happened to be on the water fishing a local bass tournament with his wife.
“Hey Gerald, whatcha up to my friend,” I said when he answered.
I could hear from the wind in the background he was on the water somewhere.
“Me and Angie are fishing a tournament Bruh,” he replied. “We got 15 or 16 pounds in the boat.”
“Really,” I said. “Where you at?”
“Down in Bayou Sale,” he says to me.
“But the water is all nasty and dirty down there,” I say to him as if I’m telling him something he doesn’t already know.
He tells me it is dirty, but they’ve caught over 30 fish. The conclusion I came to was simply there are just some people who can catch fish in a dirty bathtub of water. I’ve got to admit, I’ve never been one of those guys.
Number one for me is fish have to be biting. And, number two, the conditions have to be right. If they’re not, I might as well just stay home. Unlike Gerald, I guess I’m responsible for leaving a lot of fish in the water to be caught another day.
The point of all this is May has never been my — and I’ll include my spouse Christine — best month to fish St. Mary Parish.
I tend to get jealous of the folks who live east of the river. They seem to always catch fish, whether fresh or saltwater.
The fact is spring is high water time for these parts. Although the Atchafalaya River’s flood stage is currently at 5 feet, it’s still a full foot above what’s known as the action level. In short, there is a whole lot of water flowing out the river that travels westerly and does two things in the bays down below.
One, it dirties up the water and two, it makes them fresher. The fresher the water the less saltwater fish like “redfish” are caught in places like Atchafalaya, East Cote Blanche, West Cote Blanche, Weeks and Vermilion bays.
By contrast, east of the river from Four League Bay all the way to Point Aux Chene there tends to be great catches of both red fish and speckled trout in May. I get a lot of daily reports from guide services in those areas. Sometimes it makes me want to sell my bay boat and just use the money to charter a boat and guide service until the money runs out. For one, I think I’m likely to catch a lot more fish that way and two, I’ll definitely have more space under my carport.
The only reasons I don’t is because I can be stubborn and hardheaded. Moreover, I still have a sense of adventure. And honestly, when I do have a good trip, I always feel better about myself, where a little bragging goes a long way to keep me going when I don’t catch.
My wife has a saying, “You can always count on a catfish.” That saying really applies when you’re talking about the month of May. When the water down below receives large amounts of freshwater, usually you stand a better than average chance of filling up an ice chest with pretty blue catfish.
Blue catfish are usually bigger water fish versus channel catfish that prefer narrow or skinny water. Blue catfish also can tolerate slightly higher salinity than channel catfish. Therefore, in the dirty water bays west of the river at this time of year, the salinity may not be conducive to great catches of redfish, but it is for catfish — particularly blue catfish.
There is also some decent bass and bream fishing if you can find some stained or clearer water in canals and other places that might slow the water down for the dirt to fall out.
Bass anglers like my friend Gerald fish “all” year, rain or shine. They are tacticians that approach bass fishing almost like a science. They’re almost religious about it in that they have their own liturgy. On cloudy days they’ll use black and purple-colored lures in clear water and in dirty water use bright white or chartreuse lures.
In dirty water they’ll also use spinner baits in the aforementioned white and chartreuse colors with Colorado blades to obtain a reaction bite from the vibration.
We’ve had a lot of cloudy, rainy days the past several weeks, where the water draining from the marshes has muddied things up pretty bad. With heavy rain this week, it’ll be much the same in the marshes below the Intracoastal. But don’t let that stop you from getting on the water.
Remember, “You can always count on a catfish!”