66 Louisiana Sportsman^ | April 2015
Until the big trout start showing up in Lake Pon-
tchartrain, just about all Ty Hibbs — who will fish
for anything that is biting — fishes for is sac-a-lait.
Rather than wait until Pontchartrain turns on to
start throwing his favorite Matrix Shad soft plastic,
he and Chas
Champagne
started kick-
ing around
the idea or
introducing a
smaller Matrix
for sac-a-lait
and perch.
“The trout and redfish kind of stay messed up in
Louisiana during the spring because it’s 30 degrees
one day and 70 the next,” Hibbs said. “We try to find
something to occupy our time, and what I like to
do is crawfishing and sac-a-lait fishing.”
Hibbs said the design of the Matrix Shad is so
perfect he just knew it would be just as productive
a piece of plastic in a smaller size.
“There are a whole bunch of sac-a-lait baits,” Hibbs
said. “You got your straight-tail baits. You got your
curly tail baits. And you’ve got some baits that have
sort of a paddle tail, even through all they really do
is kind of spin; they aren’t true paddle tails.
“The Matrix Mini is one of the first true paddle tails.”
Although Hibbs doesn’t dismiss straight-tail baits
that excel at darting and diving — he equated it to
bass fishing with a Zoom Fluke — he doesn’t see
the need for a straight tail as much because paddle
tails look just like a little shiner.
“You can maybe make a strait-tail bait dart and
dive like a grass shrimp or a river shrimp,” Hibbs said,
“but that’s mainly South Louisiana waters.”
But with the darker-colored water of South Louisi-
ana and the muddy water that can inundate larger
lakes like Toledo Bend and Lake D’Arbonne, paddle
tails might just give that extra little bit of vibration
that let crappie find your bait.
“Sac-a-lait are mainly sight feeders,” Hibbs said.
“Just look at how big their eyes are. And everything
they see they just about eat.
“This new Matrix Mini is going to let them know a
bait is getting close; then they’ll fall for the natural
look of a swimming paddle-tail bait.”
Hibbs and I caught all our sac-a-lait during this trip
on a prototype Matrix Mini.
The public release of the Matrix Mini is expected
this spring. Log onto http://www.matrixshad.com to
check availability.Scaled-down Matrix Shad
a super sac-a-lait bait
A
lthough finding the fuzz and deep-jigging sac-a-lait sounds
like it would apply more to big lakes like Toledo Bend and
Lake D’Arbonne than it would the backwater bayous of
South Louisiana, Hibbs said he uses this same method to
catch fish at Des Allemands and Lake Cataouatche.
“Des Allemands is good for all this stuff because it’s more of a deepwa-
ter thing,” Hibbs said. “But you can do it at Cataouatche, too. Places like
the Gulf Canals and in Segnette there are 10- to 15-foot(-deep) canals. I
don’t fish them as much because Des Allemands is so good, but you can
catch them over there.
“All you’ve got to do is find 15 feet of water — doesn’t matter where it is.”
Regardless of where he fishes, Hibbs approaches his find-the-fuzz phi-
losophy exactly the same way.
After launching off any of the rivers and bigger canals where the water
is dirty, he starts looking for root beer-colored, blacker water.
“Obviously, the first thing I do is look for dead-end canals,” Hibbs said.
“Even in April, anything that goes to a dead end can be good — not so
much the through canals.”
Once he finds clear water, Hibbs turns on his electronics and starts
looking for fuzz.Finding the fuzzAbove: The Matrix Mini has proven to be
just as effective on sac-a-lait as its larger
sibling has on speckled trout.Getting off the bank and fishing sac-a-lait
stacked up in deep water is a good way to
combat heavy springtime fishing pressure.“In Des Allemands, a lot of canals where I find fish are anywhere from
10 to 12 feet deep — some maybe even 15 feet,” Hibbs said. “And if you
can find 20 feet in the back end of a canal, that’s a great place to target.”
At the marshy side of Cataouatche, Hibbs looks for shallower canals in
the 8-foot-deep range.
As we moved on in search of another school of sac-a-lait, Hibbs told
me one of the main reasons he likes to fish deep schools is that he feels
he’s fishing a virtually untapped resource.
“A lot of Louisiana sac-a-lait anglers just put a minnow about a foot
under a cork and go fishing,” he said. “You can’t do that in January,
February, March or even the cold days in April.
“When it’s cold, they want a bait on bottom, and my best approach is
to fish from the bottom up rather than the top down.”
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