134 Louisiana Sportsman^ | April 2015
Finding healthy numbers of late-spring speckled trout in the
eastern Terrebonne estuary is one thing. Tempting them to bite
is quite another — something that tends to change seemingly
day by day.
Or at least tide by tide, according to guide Olden Rodrigue.
“That time of year there are a lot of shrimp pushing through,
especially in the shallow reefs and islands I like,” Rodrigue said.
“The issue with that is that they mainly run out of the marsh on a
falling tide.
“If you don’t have a falling tide and the birds working and the
shrimp are visible, it can be hard to figure out what to look for.”
That said, it doesn’t in any way mean fish can’t be caught on
days when gulls give away schools of trout from a distance, and
skipping crustaceans and surface strikes pinpoint them down to
the cubic yard, the charter captain said.
“I like using swim baits,” said Rodrigue, adding he means soft-
plastic minnow imitations with paddle tails rather than the com-
monly used one-piece molded baits that go by the same name.
Rodrigue prefers tight-lining those offerings instead of fashion-
ing them under popping corks. For cork fishing, pearl or white
shrimp imitations — Vudu shrimp or Academy’s H2O — work
equally for him.Small-boat CocodrieBest baits
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