When the water’s right — Bream-fishing tactics for the Atchafalaya Basin

The rising and falling Atchafalaya Basin can be maddening for panfishermen, but the fish stack up when the conditions fall into place. Here’s what to look for.

Hunched over my computer, deep in thought, I was interrupted by one of the young men from the engineering department. Michael Broussard is an avid sac-a-lait fisherman who also chases chinquapins, bluegills and goggle eyes during the summer.

I could tell he was getting antsy for Wednesday evening to roll around.

At 21 years old, Broussard is younger than my youngest of four children. I couldn’t help but give him my fatherly attention. Besides that, he was one of those young boys who didn’t blow smoke: He can flat-out fish, and the old dog always learn new tricks from this young angler.

“Mr. John,” Broussard started in as I swung my chair around to face him, “I’m thinking Wednesday we have a full moon that will be up just about dark, the river will be falling hard until Friday and the water temperature is perfect. The water should be right to catch fish.

“What do you think?”

Pausing a few seconds as if in deep contemplation mulling over what I thought, it occurred to me this kid didn’t need me to tell him. He was going to load an ice chest with fish if the dark of night or an evening thundershower didn’t catch him first.

“Shoot, Mike,” I replied. “I think it sounds like you got them figured out. Wish I could join you, my friend, but they’ll have to wait till Saturday morning before I get a crack at them.

“Give me a fish and game report Thursday morning when you come in.”

“Will do, Mr. John,” Broussard said while he ambled back to his cubicle surrounded by computers he used to draft for our company.

During late spring each year, the lower part of the Atchafalaya Basin is buzzing with anticipation. And from Patterson to Berwick, Morgan City to Pierre Part, everyone around the region seems to use the same phrase: “When the water gets right.”

That’s all fine and dandy, as the idiom, goes if one knows what “when the water gets right” means. The truth is that the better anglers who catch any one of several species of sunfish and crappie know exactly what the water being right means.

If it wasn’t Broussard talking about the water being right, it was another co-worker out in the shop where we worked.

Kenny Rodrigue, a welding supervisor, also pays close attention to the water conditions. Like Broussard, Rodrigue and his father Manual Rodrigue fish the lower Atchafalaya Basin, often out of Adams Landing near Belle River.

It was Rodrigue who stopped me while I was making my rounds.

“Daddy is in the 30 Inch Canal right now,” he said. “He just called me on my cell and said he caught 60 chinquapins, and it ain’t even 8 (a.m.) yet. I’m going to call you, and we’re going to go when the water gets right.”

“There was that ‘water gets right thing again,’” I thought to myself.

What anglers can learn from Broussard and the Rodrigues is that there are several factors to be considered for the water conditions to be right.

Perhaps the biggest part is gaining an understanding of the Atchafalaya River’s annual spring rise and subsequent fall in early summer, and using it to your advantage. Not to mention all of the little bump-rises and falls due to heavy rains, and other weather conditions that occur during the summer months.

Flood stage around Morgan City is 6 feet; that’s typically when the water overtakes the bank in the region and low-lying areas along the coast.

When the river is high and above flood stage, it can be good for game fish but tough on anglers. Panfish will spread out and spawn with less competition and predation.

By late spring or early summer, the Basin waters during normal years begins to fall. Fish are forced to come out of the woods, where anglers can catch them in good numbers.

“When the river is falling hard, you can fish sac-a-lait most of the time at the mouth of any canal along a bayou or the back of that same canal where there are sloughs and the water is moving,” Rodrigue said. “For chinquapins and bluegills you won’t be fishing the current; they’ll be out of the moving water behind cypress trees and other structure and places where there is less flow — like downstream of a point in shallow water.”

Both redear sunfish (aka chinquapins) and bluegills spawn when the water temperature is between 68 and 75 degrees Fahrenheit. The spawn, for all intents and purposes, during normal years happens to coincide with the river’s rise and fall each spring, with the peak spawning months being May, June and July.

Male chinquapins and bluegills will make shallow beds to spawn, often congregating in numbers ranging from 30 to 50 at a time, and attempt to attract females.

“When the water temperature is around 70 degrees is when it’s right,” Rodrigue said. “Bream, goggle eyes and chinquapins all bite good when the water temperature hits 70. But, what I’ve found is on those high 80- and 90-degree days in June those fish that were just off the bank in 1 to 2 feet deep in 70-degree water spawning will move a little farther out into maybe 4 or 5 feet of water where it’s a little cooler, because the water temperature (shallow) got too warm for them.

“You have to pay attention to those little changes for bream. They’re still there, but they just went a little deeper to get comfortable.”

In the southern part of the Basin region, areas including Flat Lake, Grassy Lake and Lake Verret are all good sunfish hotspots. Chinquapins and bluegills are piled up during the spawn.

The third condition behind falling water and water temperature is the color of water, according Rodrigue. With all types of freshwater fishing it seems emphasis is placed on this one condition perhaps more than any other.

Water color in the Basin ranges from milky-chocolate to black-water clear and everything in between, with the influence predominately from the Atchafalaya River. Inside the Basin are bayous, lakes, ponds, and checkerboards of canals that would make a corn maze look simple to navigate.

Water in the inner canals can be clear, the bayous leading to it stained brown and the lake edges near the river milky brown.

“When the water is milky brown, there’s no fishing it,” Manual Rodrigue said. “You’re not going to catch anything. And when the water is black-looking, it’s so clear you’re not going to catch much in it, either.

“What I look for is brownish-colored water, or what they call stained. You can drop your bait in black water and see it 4, 5 and even 6 feet down there. That’s too clear. The water I look for is water where when you drop your bait it disappears after about 12 inches. Now that’s good water; that’s when the water is right.”

On a recent trip with the Rodrigues, we fished the 30 Inch Canal out of Adam’s Landing in the Spillway. Manual Rodrigue demonstrated his water-color testing technique for me, and then proceeded to catch a few sac-a-lait and goggle eye in the stained water in the Shell Field.

“We’ve come into the 30 Inch Canal right off the Intracoastal and racked up on the chinquapins, bull bream and goggle eye in the cypress trees just off the bank from the mouth all the way to the back,” the younger Rodrigue said. “You’re not going to catch fish like that every time you go, and most often you still have to find them. When the water’s right and you fish around cypress trees, stumps, fallen trees and submerged logs you’re going to catch something.

“But, I tell you this: Whatever is biting, that’s the one I’m going to be fishing.”

Like most crappie fishermen, Broussard and both Rodrigues use plastic tube jigs in two primary colors: black-and-chartreuse, and blue-and-white.

And, as an added enticement the Rodrigues use a piece of worm or Berkley Power Bait Crappie Nibbles. The plastics with the added enhancements work not only on crappie but on all species of sunfish.

It doesn’t take long to figure out when fishing the southern half of the Atchafalya Basin for sunfish and crappie is about to turn on.

It’s when the water is right.

About John Flores 153 Articles
John Flores was enticed in 1984 to leave his western digs in New Mexico for the Sportsman’s Paradise by his wife Christine. Never looking back, the author spends much of his free time writing about and photographing the state’s natural resources.