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Fishing Bayou St. John

May 13, 2013
Fishing, Fly Fishing, Freshwater, Kayak Fishing, Kayaking, Saltwater, Scouting, Tournaments, Warmwater
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There was no way I was missing a group 30th birthday party for some friends in New Orleans on Friday night. Ended up parlaying that trip into a weekend affair ending with Mother’s Day festivities with Amanda’s family Sunday afternoon.

Got to fish Saturday, heading to Bayou St. John for a small get together dubbed Redfish for Research. The goal was to try and catch redfish in the bayou to be turned into UNO’s Nekton Research Lab for further study. Fishing in the morning concluded with a demo day by Massey’s in the afternoon further up the bayou.

The day started off a little rough with some strong storms moving through the area. It kept folks off the water for about an hour after sunrise, but rains held off the rest of the day. I was mainly targeting bass with hopes of catching a decent one to turn into Massey’s CPR tourney. I did catch a few dinks, but nothing had any size. I didn’t land any redfish either, but neither did anyone else. We know there are redfish in the bayou, just not in great numbers. The flow of water from Lake Pontchartrain is obstructed by a few structures. Hopefully that will improve when a dam on the waterway is removed.

Water clarity in the bayou was excellent and it seemed to me like a healthy fishery. There was lots of bait and I was getting a ton of hits on the popper from bass and bream. I ended up catching a bass to turn in for both the fly and the conventional tackle category. I really enjoyed paddling Bayou St. John. BSJ and the adjacent City Park are quite the urban oases, wish we had something like that in Baton Rouge, though I’ve really enjoyed our neighborhood ponds since living here.

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The demo day by Massey’s was held after, though participation was pretty poor due to the weather that morning. Most of the guys that fished Redfish for Research hung around after and shot the breeze.

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After the demo day I headed out to some drainage canals to scout for carp. Still haven’t found a good place for them in Baton Rouge, but I’ve seen some good reports from some folks in the New Orleans area for them, so I wanted to give it a shot while I was down here. I didn’t end up seeing any until the third canal I tried, and even then I really only had a few legitimate shots. None were caught, I didn’t even get an eat, but from what I understand that’s part of the carp fishing process. Gar were everywhere and I did land one just to feel something on the end of the line.

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A pretty good Mother’s Day weekend despite no one catching redfish in Bayou St. John. If you do catch a redfish in the bayou and wish to turn it in for research the contact info for Patrick Smith is below, he is our contact for the research being done on the bayou:

Patrick Smith
Graduate Student
Nekton Research Lab
Pontchartrain Institute for Environmental Sciences
University of New Orleans
2000 Lakeshore Dr.
New Orleans, LA 70148
patricksmith111@gmail.com

The Black Basses are growing

May 10, 2013
Exploring, Fishing, Freshwater, Warmwater
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These are exciting times for fish nerds like myself. In March it was published in Lake Magazine that four new species of redeye bass have been discovered. I say “discovered”, but it’s more like “recognized”. They’ve always been there, people had always fished for them, but no one really knew they were genetically divergent from the Coosa strain redeye bass.

The same is true for the newly described Choctaw Bass. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) announced on May 7th that the spotted bass that inhabit the streams of the Florida panhandle are actually an entirely different species, though they are almost identical in appearance. They offer the name Choctaw Bass as they shared the same geographic footprint as the Native American Choctaw tribe. Example pic and map below courtesy of FWC:

choctaw bass

What peaks my interest though in the Choctaw Bass (besides the fact that they are an entirely new species – that is fascinating in it’s own right) is their proposed range map:

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FWC seems to suggest that the bass I catch in Florida parish streams that don’t drain into the Mississippi River are possibly Choctaw bass, rather than spotted bass. I’ve long suspected that the spotted bass I catch around here are somehow different than those that lived in the Tennessee River drainages in Northern Alabama, mainly because they look different with their orange eyes and their habitat is completely different, and given the amount of time they’ve been cut off from the Mississippi River, I imagine their genetics have to be somewhat divergent. So I think it IS possible that they are Choctaw bass, but I also think it’s possible they are their own species, and the reason they aren’t already described is because no one has funded the research. The difference would most likely be genetic, just like with the Choctaw bass, and I guess that is important as it would illustrate diversity. But if it looks just like a spotted bass, acts just like a spotted bass, tastes just like a spotted bass, is it not just a spotted bass?