Striped bass converge at Seabrook in Lake Pontchartrain

Many anglers already know that the areas on the southern side of Lake Pontchartrain held some monster trout, but the lake seems to have more secrets than it lets on. Around the Seabrook bridge, Josh Hall has been taking the opportunity to catch what almost seems like an intruder, this far south.

Striped bass are a common saltwater fish on the east coast and many anglers fish them in the surf. But, while the fish swim in Louisiana's coastal waters, not many anglers specifically target stripers. But Hall said there's no special tactics required to catch them. According to Hall, stripers are ambush predators and attack bait fish similarly to speckled trout. They also stick to current lines to gobble up any bait helplessly caught in the moving water, just like trout.

“This is the first time we’ve caught pure striped bass,” Hall said. “I’m not sure why they’re here but they are; we used to catch specks, white trout and reds around Seabrook, but now all we catch is specks, hybrid stripers and pure-bred striped bass.”

Hall said that right when the tide begins to rise is the best time to catch stripers. Hall will usually average around three stripers a night — his biggest so far being 12 ½ pounds.

“Any structure around Seabrook that breaks up that moving current seems to be good," Hall said. "We catch them along the shoreline around those bumpers in front of Seabrook, the new rocks and all along that shoreline. Just cast past the structure that you are fishing into the eddie that forms from the broken current; those fish are usually waiting.”

Hall believes stripers and trout are gathering around Seabrook because of the water temperature. It is not to cold because of the frequent warm spells between cold fronts, leading to average water temperatures of about 60 degrees. Consequentially, the fish aren’t moving around a whole lot but aren’t stuck on the bottom conserving energy, either, and are using structure around Seabrook as ambush points for easy meals.

“The stripers are pretty consistent at night,” Hall said, “We’ve been fishing them just like you would fish for a speckled trout — using a Matrix Shad or live shrimp, casting into that current line.”

 Anthony Taylor

December 18, 2012 at 11:45 am
Click here to source

Sea monsters (aka stripers) roam the Florida Parishes rivers

Stripers migrate up the river from Lake Pontchartrain, and can make any hookset quite interesting.

Anadromous, sea-run stripers migrate up all the Florida Parish rivers, and can give you a sleigh ride — at least for a little while.
On my trip with Joe Lavigne, he saw something causing a ruckus on the surface, and paddled forward to investigate.
When we got there, we saw a massive strike on a 6-inch shad that was minding its own business on the surface.
“Stripers!” Lavigne said.
We made a cast or two across the area, but nothing struck. I turned my attention back to the river bank, made a cast and immediately hooked up with a 2 ½-pound Kentucky bass. I cranked hard on the fish to get it away from the cover, and it graciously agreed to resume the fight in the deeper part of the river.
The fish was powerful, but I soon had it under the boat, where I could see it near the bottom in the 5-foot depths.
The fish all of a sudden found a fresh burst of life, and in a split second, I could see why — a 30-pound striped bass was trying to turn my lunch into his lunch.
I thumbed my drag, and quickly hoisted the fish over the gunwale, much to the dismay of the giant striper.
“I’ve hooked a bunch of stripers in here,” Lavigne said. “You never land the big ones, but I’ve gotten some 4- and 5-pounders in the boat.”

Todd Masson

October 15, 2013 at 7:00 am Click to source

A large segment of Louisiana’s freshwater fishing community has become obsessed with black bass, almost to the exclusion of interest in other fish. Two species of black bass live in Louisiana waters, the largemouth and the spotted. Both of them, as well as the cooler-water smallmouth black bass, which is not found in the state, are eligible for entry in Bass Angler Sportsman Society tournaments.
Lost in the furor over competitive black bass fishing are three other species of bass native to the state: yellow bass, white bass and striped bass. The three species, along with their Atlantic Coast cousin, the white perch (not what we call white perch in Louisiana), make up the family Moronidae, commonly called temperate basses.
The closest relatives to the temperate basses are the temperate perches, a 22-species family centered in Australia. Their next-closest kin are the saltwater groupers rather than freshwater black basses, as one might expect.
All three species are marked by bold black stripes that run the length of their bodies. All three will voraciously attack both artificial lures and live baits, especially in the cooler months of the year. All three are extremely hard fighters. Most anglers not carrying a wagonload of bias will admit that a 2-pound white bass will outfight a 2-pound largemouth any day. They just don’t jump as much.
All three also have the reputation as substandard table fare. While they can’t measure up to crappie (what fish can?), the rap is unfair, especially in the case of the largest of the clan, the striped bass.
Yellow and white bass are more common in Louisiana than striped bass. When fishermen aren’t busy lumping them all indiscriminately under the name “striper,” these two species are commonly called “barfish.” Beyond the fact that both have needle-like fin spines as well as razor-sharp gill covers that can gash a careless fisherman’s hand, they are distinctly different.
The yellow bass is the smallest in the clan. Although the world record is 2 pounds, 9 ounces, anything approaching ¾-pound is a good fish in Louisiana. The species is best identified by its yellow body color, which becomes especially pronounced during its February-March spawning season.
Another distinguishing characteristic that it shares with no other member of the family is that the black bars on the lower half of the fish, near the anal fin, are broken and offset, like an earthquake hit them and created a fault line.
Yellow bass seems to tolerate low-oxygen conditions better than its two cousins. It can be found in back-swamp lakes as well as rivers and reservoirs. It is the only one of the three that can reproduce with no access to flowing water.
White bass in Louisiana are perhaps most common in large rivers and reservoirs, although in the late winter and early spring when waters are cool and hold a lot of oxygen, they will invade almost any overflow habitat to gorge before spawning.
Ocasionally, like the yellow bass, the black bars above its anal fin may be slightly broken and offset, but the base color between the black bars is white or silver, hence the name. The body color and the lack of a dependable break in the bars makes the fish similar to striped bass and the hybrid striped bass, creating endless confusion among anglers.
An external distinguishing feature that separates the white bass from its cousins is that typically only one black bar will extend all the way to the base of the tail. Hybrid stripers and stripers will have more than one such bar. A fail-safe way of separating the species is to feel for the teeth on the back of the tongue near its center. A white bass has only one such patch. The other two species have two patches.
White bass grow larger than yellow bass, but not nearly as large as stripers and hybrids. The Louisiana record fish, a 6.81-pounder caught by Corey Crochet in the Amite River in August 2010, tied the previous world-record fish caught in Lake Orange, Va.
Called “sand bass” or “sandies,” along with several other names, white bass have developed a big following among anglers. In Midwestern reservoirs, schools of white bass force shoals bait minnows to the surface. In these “jumps,” they will take any bait presented to them.
In many places in the eastern United States, anglers look forward to the spring, when the fish mass to make their annual spawning run up rivers. During these runs, fishermen can catch white bass until their arm muscles burn with fatigue.
Here in Louisiana, we by and large ignore them.
White bass prey heavily on smaller fish, but a live river shrimp impaled on a hook will bring every white bass in the vicinity on the run.
The heavyweight slugger of the family is the striped bass. The IGFA world record is 78 pounds, 8 ounces, although believable reports have been made of stripers of over 100 pounds occurring in old-time commercial fishing catches. The Louisiana record of 47.50 pounds was made in 1991. Every striper in the top 10 except one, the No. 9 fish, was taken before 1992.
Striped bass found in the Gulf States were once a separate race from Atlantic Coast striped bass and occurred only from the Florida Panhandle through the small rivers that drained into Lake Pontchartrain. Since 1965, the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries has been releasing hatchery-produced stripers (from Atlantic Coast races) and, sporadically, hybrid striped bass in Louisiana waters. Other state agencies have done so as well, and if any fish were left from the original populations, they have likely been bred out of existence.
Presently, striped bass can be found throughout the fresh waters of the state, and spawning populations appear to exist in the Atchafalaya and Mississippi rivers. Striped bass must have flowing waters to spawn. Unlike white and yellow bass, whose eggs sink to the bottom and stick to hard surfaces, striper eggs balloon with water and float, so current is necessary to suspend them while they develop.
While at first glance they seem to resemble white bass, stripers are distinctly different. Their black stripes are knock-your-eyes-out-bold, and run the length of the fish unbroken. The fish is also shaped differently than the flat-sided white, yellow and hybrid striped bass. It is round in cross section and the entire fish is distinctly torpedo-shaped.
Adult stripers specialize on feeding on fish and seem to focus on bright silvery fish such as gizzard shad, threadfin shad and skipjack herring (slickers). Like their prey, they live in open water and have absolutely no inclination to use cover to ambush their supper like largemouth bass do. At all times of the year, striped bass seem to be attracted to points of water current or current breaks.
The fly in the ointment in temperate bass identification are the striped bass/white bass hybrids. Created by humans, the creatures carry the names “wiper,” “sunshine bass,” “whiterock bass” or “palmetto bass,” and are intermediate in appearance between white and striped bass.
Their body is flattened from side-to-side like a white bass, but not as much. Their stripes are unbroken like in the striped bass, but they are less bold, more favoring those in the white bass. Their maximum size is intermediate as well, with a 16.25-pound fish holding the state record and 27-pound 5-ounce world record.
Like white and striped bass, hybrid stripers are sensitive to low oxygen levels, and in periods of hot weather will move to deeper waters and almost cease feeding and
moving. Jerald Horst is author of six books on fish and seafood, including the acclaimed Trout Masters: How Louisiana’s Best Anglers Catch the Lunkers. His latest book is Game Warden: On Patrol in Louisiana. Both are available at www.LouisianaSportsman.com or by calling (800) 538-4355.
Click to Source 

Hybrid stripers

The fish causing all the excitement are really not striped bass; they’re hybrid stripers, incapable of reproduction save for the intervention of man.

"Hybrid stripers are a cross between female striped bass and male white bass," said Mike Wood. "In the past, we artificially spawned them in our Toledo Bend hatchery.

"We’ve been stocking them in several lakes, including Lake Claiborne, since 1993. Most years, we have been able to stock some 70,000 fingerlings each in Claiborne, Lake Bruin and False River. We no longer operate the Toledo Bend facility because of excessive time and expense involved. However, we are committed to continue stocking these lakes, and we are able to do it by contracting with other hatcheries that raise hybrids.

"We are able to get hybrid fry from other states at a very low cost. We place the fry in our rearing ponds at hatcheries we operate around Woodworth, the Booker Fowler and Beechwood hatcheries, and rear them to fingerling size before putting them in the lakes. I’m not ruling out the outright purchase of hybrid-striper fingerlings because they’re not that expensive and provide a fun fishery for those folks who pay the way with their hunting and fishing licenses."

Incidentally, the state-record hybrid striper was caught by William Hungerford in February 2000 weighing 16.25 pounds. The record for pure striped bass, the "mother" of the hybrid striper fishery, is a 47.5-pound behemoth caught on Toledo Bend by James Taylor in August 1991, while the state record white bass was caught more recently. Corey Crochet landed a 6.81-pound white in the Amite River in August 2010, a fish that won Crochet "Fish of the Year" honors, bestowed by the Louisiana Outdoor Writers Association, keepers of state fish records.

Glynn Harris

November 01, 2011 at 10:03 am
Click here for original source

Night Stripes — Fishing tips for Lake St. John hybrid stripers

It was over in a second.
A clatter, a clunk, a splash and a horrified gasp, followed by a wail of anguish and disbelief.
The glow from fishing partner Chuck Thornton’s small headlight revealed Josh Andrews standing on the boat’s bow deck, staring at his two empty hands, palms upturned.
“It took my pole,” he fairly shouted. “It took my pole!”
He kept looking from his hands into the inky, black water, mouth gaping.
“It’s gone man; it’s on the bottom,” said Thornton, as if breaking bad news to him.
The 42-year-old Thornton was trying to stifle a laugh, but not doing a very good job of it. His wife Kelli had to turn her face away from Andrews to keep him from seeing her suppress her own grin.
Where moments before, a cocky, almost brash 30-year-old stood, now slumped an incredulous young man temporarily stripped of his confidence. His last words before the fishy larceny were, “You can do this all night — just wear them out, go from light to light.”
Now all he could say was, “That was a couple hundred dollars. I’m glad it wasn’t that $500 reel I got.”
Chuck offered Andrews another rod and reel from the boat’s rod locker as he shuffled toward the back of the boat to sit down.
“Nah,” Andrews declined.
After a few minutes, he turned to me.
“Don’t put what happened in the article. No one will believe it,” he said.
I can’t say that I hadn’t been warned about the fish’s ferocity. Back at the camp, before it was dark enough to fish, the fishermen beefed up their lures by replacing the factory hooks with saltwater-series models.
“They will tear stock hooks apart,” explained Thornton, while jamming a hook on a split ring.
“They are powerful fish,” Andrews agreed.
“Like freshwater redfish,” Thornton said like he was finishing his friend’s sentence. “We will catch some largemouth bass doing this. After catching some of these (hybrid) stripers, it’s like pulling in a dishrag.”
Andrews added that the silver-and-black-striped fish are so powerful they will tow an 18-foot boat around.
When chasing thee powerful hybrids, Andrews is more particular in his lure choices than is Thornton.
“I only use a Bandit 100 or 200 series crankbait,” Andres said. “Color is important: Only use pearl white with a red eye.
“You’re wasting your time with a blue or black-backed lure.”
Later, however, he did admit to occasionally using silver Rat-L-Traps with blue or black backs.
Thornton uses Bandits and Rat-L-Traps, as well as Bomber crankbaits.
Both men use casting reels, although they admitted that spinning tackle will work. The Thorntons spool their reels with 12-pound-test line, while Andrews uses lines of 10- to 15-pound breaking strength.
With groceries and clothes stowed in the camp and rods, reels and lures checked out, Andrews — obviously not the type to sit on his hands — was impatient and ready to go. He paced the back deck of his parent’s camp overlooking Lake St. John.
Ray and Cathy Andrews bought the camp eight or 10 years ago, by son Josh’s reckoning. The Andrews family, as well as the Thorntons, hails from Smithdale, Miss.
“Even though I’m from Mississippi,” Andrews said, “95 percent of my fishing is here: Black River, Lake Concordia, Lake St. John and Lake Bruin.
“People from McComb (Miss.) come to this Vidalia/Ferriday area at lot, especially when the river is up.”
The river he was referring to is the Mississippi River, the same river that pushed the Andrews family from their camp on Lake Mary in Mississippi to Lake St. John.
“The Lake Mary camp flooded every year, and we had to take everything out — and the roads were bad,” Andres explained. “My dad’s parents, Tommy and Nellie Andrews, and her brothers Mannie and Alfred Cothern started me fishing here years ago. I grew up fishing this lake — bass, white perch, bream, catfish, striped bass.”
Night fishing for hybrid striped bass started almost by accident. In 2006 or 2007, Andrews and his cousin Derrick Cothern were staying at the Lake St. John camp on a catfishing expedition. They decided to take “a fling” on the family pontoon boat after dark and saw about 10 underwater fishing lights at camp piers.
They saw fish at the lights — big ones and lots of them — so they returned to the camp and got their rods. That night they caught 22 of hybrid stripers.
Thornton entered the picture as a friend of Cothern’s.
“Derrick asked me if I wanted to try night fishing. I had always rod and reel fished so I said, ‘Yeah,’” Thornton said. “We really caught them. It was really cold because it was winter … but I was hooked right then.
“I got to know Josh at the camp, and now we fish a lot together. I love it and try to do it 10 or 15 times a year. I like them on the grill, like redfish. I love redfish, and they are as good as redfish.”
“I like to catch them too,” wife Kelli chimed in.
“That’s one thing we try to do: hunt and fish together,” Chuck said.
“Is it fun?” Andrews asked before answering his own question. “Haw! If you take someone that has never been fishing, they will catch fish.
“This ain’t fishing; it’s catching fish!”
Lake St. John, an abandoned loop of the Mississippi River, is almost completely ringed with camps. Almost all of the camps have docks, and a large percentage of them have underwater fishing lights. Made by several manufacturers, with the most popular being the Green Monster, the lights are powered by shore power and controlled by automatic switches with light sensors.
Thirty to 40 lights were within striking range of the trio. Some would be holding fish and some wouldn’t. The plan on this night was to bounce from light to light by boat, picking up fish where they could.
“People really don’t mind others fishing at their lights,” Andrews said. “Just don’t break them or get up on their docks to fish a light.
“And don’t fish at lights if the people who are paying the bill for the light are fishing.”
As the trees’ shadows slowly became longer, Andrews’ pacing became relentless. The underwater fishing light at a neighbor’s camp dock became visible in the decreasing light, and he kept looking at it as if it were a fishing barometer.
“They’re there!” he finally exclaimed. “C’mon.”
Andrews escorted me to the pier. Sure enough two big shadows were alternately hovering and gliding around the neon-green umbra of light.
And then it began raining, to Andrew’s chagrin. Not until the rain quit and it was absolutely dark did they leave. Breathing the black air was like inhaling through a smotheringly wet blanket. Not a star was visible.
The first fishing light they hit was their neighbor’s, so they simply used their trolling motor to maneuver to it. As the boat neared the light, the two men on the bow began chattering.
“Oh, look at those big fish,” Andrews hissed.
“Oh, big fish are just laying there,” Thornton whispered.
Kelli had discretely decided to man (or is it woman) the stern, well out of range of the two excited men’s treble hooks.
“Chaos” is a good one-word description of what happened when the boat got into casting range. The powerful fish hit the crankbaits with such force that it was if they attacked them wide-open, head-on, going in the opposite direction of the lure’s movement.
Chuck used the trolling motor to keep the boat just outside of the light’s influence. Treble hooks whistled through the air, lines crossed, men grunted and fussed.
Kelli, I learned, becomes quite verbal while she fishes. When the two men on the bow hooked up first, she mockingly complained.
“Put in the story about the greedy boys putting me in the back of the boat,” she said.
But it didn’t take long for her to hook up. She kept talking, this time to the fish.
“That’s what I’m talking about. Come home to Momma,” Kelli said.
It was over in minutes. The final score was eight hookups, one lure with destroyed hooks, one broken line and three big bruisers in the boat.
“That’s the routine,” Chuck explained. “Two, three, four fish, and then all the commotion and they stop biting.”
There is not a lot of finesse to working the lures in this fishery — just cast, crank and hang on.
The next light they sneaked up on produced not a fish. Not a bite. Not even a shadow in the light’s green glow.
The third light was a good one, producing three hybrid stripers and a yellow bass, a runty little cousin of the big hybrids.
They decided to cross the lake, which is really shaped more like a river than a lake. From the middle, both shores of the oxbow sparkled cheerily with camp lights in the dark night.
Light No. 4 produced five hard hits, three hookups, a smashed lure, another broken line and one landed hybrid.
Andrews reaffirmed Chuck’s observation.
“One fish, two fish, maybe three,” Andrews said. “They get used to (the boat’s presence). They know.”
Big shadows were easy to see lurking at the edge of the fifth light long before the slowly moving boat closed to casting range.
“There are some big fish here,” Andrews said, “Some big fish.”
Much to Andrews’ disgust, his cast got away from him and the crankbait ended up hung in the overhanging limbs of a cypress tree. Kelli and Chuck hooked fish, though.
Kelli’s tore off, but Andrews waited until Chuck boated his fish before trying to dislodge the lure.
Unfortunately, the commotion disturbed the fish at the light, so the trio took the boat back across the lake to the side they started on. Andrews immediately hooked and landed a husky fish.
On his very next cast, the striped bandit stole his rod.
The disconsolate young man sitting in the boat’s stern put a damper on fishing. Then it began sprinkling again, putting a lid on the affair.
Besides, they had enough fish: The floor of the boat was littered with them.
Back at the camp, Andrews’ irrepressible grin returned when he struggled to hold up his end of the heavy stringer. He’d be ready again tomorrow night.

Jerald Horst

November 01, 2013 at 7:00 am
http://www.louisianasportsman.com/details.php?id=5802

Striper Fishing Lakes & Rivers In Louisiana

There are three major lakes for striper fishing in LA. They are Caddo Lake, Lake Claiborne and Toledo Bend. River fishing for stripers include the Pearl, Tangipahoa, Atchafalaya, Sabine and Mississippi Rivers.

 This information came from http://www.aa-fishing.com/la/louisiana-striper-fishing.html

Tips to identify white bass, stripers and hybrid striped bass

Men, it seems — more specifically fishermen — like to mess with Mother Nature. North America is blessed with hundreds of suitable species for fishermen to catch, yet the pursuit of superfish for anglers to chase has led fisheries biologists to cross breed many naturally occurring species.
Brown, brook, lake, rainbow and cutthroat, trout have been crossed to produce tiger trout, splake and cutbows. Muskellunge and northern pike have been hybridized to make tiger muskellunge. Largemouth bass and smallmouth bass have been mated to create the meanmouth bass.
As their name implies, hybrid striped bass are not a naturally occurring species but one of those hybrids between separate species in the temperate bass family, Moronidae. The family is small, consisting of only white perch, yellow bass, white bass and striped bass.
The white perch of which we are speaking are not the crappie that we locally call white perch in Louisiana, but a small (under 1 pound), silvery bass-like fish living in brackish or tidally influenced fresh waters from South Carolina to Canada. They are not found in Louisiana.
But the other three species, all with prominent black stripes are. Smallest and not involved in the hybridization program is the yellow bass. It is easy to separate from its two larger relatives by a strong break in the black stripes on each side of the fish. Like its white bass cousin, the yellow bass is found statewide in fresh waters.
The white bass is a larger fish. The world record for the species, — 6.8 pounds — was caught right here in Louisiana by Corey Crochet in 2000.
The striped bass (world record 81 pounds 14 ounces) has historically had a much more restricted natural range in Louisiana, verified only from the rivers east of the Mississippi River that drain into Lakes Pontchartrain and Borgne.
Hybrid striped bass are a cross of white and striped bass. It was first produced in South Carolina in 1965, using eggs from striped bass and sperm from white bass.
The term “palmetto bass” was hung on these fish.
In the 1970s, hybrids were produced from the eggs of white bass and the sperm of striped bass. These were called “Cherokee bass” when produced in Tennessee and “sunshine bass” when produced in Florida.
Other names used for these hybrids include “whiterock bass” and “wiper,” the latter still a commonly used name in Texas and the Midwest.
In the Southeast, which includes Louisiana, they are usually called “hybrids” or “hybrid striped bass.”
Whatever they are called, hybrid striped bass do have some advantages over their parent species. They grow faster and can tolerate high water temperatures and low oxygen — both common conditions in the Deep South — better than either parent. They grow larger than white bass, reaching weights of over 20 pounds, although the Louisiana record is 16 pounds, 4 ounces. Their life span is 5 to 6 years, similar to that of the white bass, but shorter than the 30 to 40 years of striped bass.
Because of sharply differing bag limits (50 each for white and yellow bass; five fish with no more than two fish over 30 inches for stripers and hybrids), it is important that fishermen be able to identify species.
Striped bass are relatively easy to ID, with strong, unbroken black stripes extending the length of the body. In cross-section their body is distinctly round in shape.
White bass and hybrids look most alike. The stripes on the side of white bass are regular, without any interruptions, but only one stripe — the center one — extends all the way to the base of the tail.
In hybrids, several of the black stripes will extend to the base of the tail and some of the stripes, especially the lower ones, will be interrupted or wavy rather than straight.
White bass bodies in cross-section are distinctly flattened from side-to-side. Hybrid’s bodies are cross-sectionally shaped between white bass and striped bass, although this feature has limited usefulness unless a white bass is present for comparison.
A key feature that can be used to separate hybrid stripers from white bass are the rough tooth patches found on the back of their tongues. In white bass, the teeth are in one patch, while the teeth in hybrid stripers and striped bass, are arranged in two distinct patches.

Written by  Jerald Horst

November 15, 2013

About the Author
Jerald Horst was a professor of fisheries at Louisiana State University for more than thirty years. He is a member of the Louisiana Chapter of the American Fisheries Society.