176 Louisiana Sportsman^ | April 2015
Stacking up the state fishV
oters had
approved a
state lottery in
1990, and two
years later the
Legislature
authorized riv-
erboat and land-
based casino gambling.
And we all know what happened
years later — but let’s focus on posi-
tive thoughts about fishing the state’s
beloved sac-a-lait.
Therefore, when the “white perch”
became the freshwater State Fish of
Louisiana, many questioned that deal
as a possible lost bet in a smoke-filled,
closed-room game of cards and whiskey
bottle on the table.
What do these facts have anything to do
whatsoever with anything at all?
Let’s just say that many are under the
false notion that all Cajuns call crappie
“sac-a-lait.”
If you venture into Ville Platte to
buy shiners or jigs from Ike Launey of
Industrial Supply and Sports on your wayto Chicot Lake, you’ll hear the State Fish
referred to as “white perch.”
And most of these great, sporting citi-
zens in Ville Platte are, indeed, Cajuns.
So when you arrive at the gates of
Chicot State Park, that’s a white perch on
the entry sign, folks — although many
Louisianans know them to be sac-a-lait,
while nationally they’re called crappi.e”
Whatever you call them, Chicot Lake
has plenty of these fish. But the vast
majority of them are black “white perch,”
so it gets confusing.
So we’ll just refer to them as “sac-a-lait”
from here on out.
And Chicot Lake’s 1,642 acres, a flooded
reservoir of what was once a vast bot-
tomlands hardwoods swamp, are rich
with prime habitat for slabs.
“Annual crappie numbers are cyclic at
Chicot, just as in any other lake or reser-
voir, but there will be fish available every
year to anglers,” said Jody David with the
Louisiana Department of Wildlife and
Fisheries. “These fish are so prolific that
they can begin spawning when they’re
only 5 to 6 inches in length.“And about 90 percent of the crappie in
Chicot Lake are black crappie, although
anglers will catch a few white crappie on
occasion.”
While locals know the lake can be fin-
icky on any given day, Chicot can deliver
grand numbers of crappie and bass.
The key to successful slab encounters,
area sac-a-lait masters have learned, is to
work hard.
One of the locals who has fished this
lake and nearby Miller’s Lake all of his life
is 69-year-old B.J. Fontenot, who will tell
you there are hefty Chicot Lake sac-a-lait
to be placed in the cooler on a good day.
He spends most days during the duck
season in a blind at Miller’s Lake, but the
rest of the year Fontenot keeps his boat
ready to go on white perch trips.
And most of the time he spends fishing
for sac-a-lait will be at Chicot or Miller’s
lakes.
On April 1, my cousin Savoy’s Glynn
Lavergne heard him talking loudly some
yards away. Lavergne and I had about 20
sac-a-lait up to 1 ½ pounds in the cooler.
We had been catching these fish under
alligator grass and hyacinths along the
boat route to the Branch area on the
west side of the lake channel.
“That’s B.J.,” Lavergne said.
So we motored over to visit and get a
fishing update from Fontenot and his
buddy Charles Hazard, also of Ville Platte.Photos by Chris Berzas