Headed there for our annual Louisiana Oct / Nov trip the first time next week. 8 guys, 4 boats. I am taking my 22 Majek Extreme. We have been to Cocodorie, Venice, Calcasieu, Sabine in past years. First couple of days the weather looks a little sketchy. Staying about a half dozen houses before the end of Delacroix Island. It’s supposed to be solid there Oct and Nov.

Anyone been? General info? Stay close? Travel south a little? We have the Louisiana One Map chip. Plan is to work down some of those tracks looking for signs of fish like birds. It’s supposed to be pretty easy to catch them in the late fall there.

Should be a great trip.

I grew up fishing that area but its been a long time since I've been to Delacroix. I have started going back to Hopedale the last few years. This time of year I would fish the Bayou Batola/Bayou Robin area for reds. Look for points with moving water and throw a live shrimp under a cork. Also, you may want to go visit LA Inshore page on Facebook. They focus on that general area and have pretty good reports.

I have fished there several times with a Guide. Some times we stayed in the marsh , but if the weather co-operated , we would run
several miles out in Black Bay. Some of the best spots were the shell pads where oil and gas equipment had been removed.

In the marsh , we mostly fished where lakes and ponds connected to the canals, and shoreline points in the bigger lakes.

We always looked for the cleanest , moving water we could find.

MO

Here is the report for anyone going this time of year. Maybe it helps someone like our group who had not been there before….

We probably made it much harder than it was. It took several days to figure out what worked for us. It’s a pretty large area. We got there on Tuesday and fished Wed, Thurs, and Friday both in the morning and evening. Saturday we only fished in the morning so we could get ready to leave Sunday at 4am.

We had 3 boats and 7 guys. It took a while for one of us to figure out that the fishing seemed to be much better on east of the Delacroix bayou than it was west. Or at least it was for us. We ran quite a bit of miles and burned some fuel just looking and learning the area. Plenty of boats went west. We just never found a key area that direction.

We made more about the wind than we needed to. It was blowing 20 or so Wednesday and got a little better each day. By Saturday it was nice less than 10 mph. There are places that are protected that you can catch them when it’s windy.

It’s a pretty massive area. Getting around isn’t that difficult. The Standard Mapping Louisiana 1 chip is the one to have. It doesn’t run on Hummingbird so I had the Hummingbird Louisiana aerial overlay which was plenty good. Lots of pretty good sized bayous to run. The route over to Hopedale had a few turns. The LA1 chip was spot on there. It took a little while to develop trust in the chips.

We made too much of the birds. There weren’t that many. We caught fish under them but it was hard to stay on them and the groups we fished had probably 5 throw backs per keeper. They would show consistently in areas.

We ended up catching them pretty decent in a few bayous or points in the lakes with tide moving. Find a drop off or hole on a point or pocket. The last one we caught them off had gulls just sitting where we caught the fish. Tide movement was the key. You needed tide but not too strong. When you found them they were pretty grouped up. Most casts got a bite. You needed enough weight to get it to the bottom but not too fast. Tide increases then add more weight.

We threw mostly shrimp. We figured no sense making it harder on the first time there. We caught more and better trout off the split shot rig than popping cork but both worked. Caught a few on plastics but really didn’t try them much.

We stayed just down from the Serigne Boat launch. Nice ramp to put in. Not too busy. We called there when we arrived about launching and bait hours. Tuesday was windy so they weren’t going to be open in the late afternoon. However, we could just go in the back, count our shrimp and write a ticket for the launch and bait and put the money in the ramp box so we could be ready in the morning. That was refreshing to know there is still some trust in some areas. We made sure if anything we overpaid them.

It’s about 30 minutes back to get anything so take what you need or prepare for 1.5 hour total round trip.

First few days we were a little frustrated knowing they are there to be caught. By Saturday we put it on our list of trip places. We figured we learned a lot that would work in the late fall.

Great info

Been there many times. In the winter lots of trout in the marsh and small lakes, reds are usually pretty easy to catch.
We always go with same guide.

Jaydub, where are you from?

You got my attention with Hopedale. For me it was Chalmette LA.

OP, glad you got the Standard Map chip - https://www.standardmap.com/louisiana-ecards

Another recouse besides LA Inshore facebook page is the RodNReel - https://www.facebook.com/groups/388803001919707/
Also, Todd Masson had a solid YouTube channel and provides you info on what he's doing and where he's doing it as it relates to fishing - https://www.youtube.com/@MarshManMasson


Glad ya'll go on them.

Here is a decent video for those that want to learn more about the e-card - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74pn38KDRko

I grew up in Amite but we had a trailer down in Hopedale back in the 70's and 80's, just before you got to Pip's. We had good friend's that owned one of the oyster houses in Amite and their loading dock and boat house was across the street. I started going back down a few years ago and we have had a blast. We would leave Lucas at 3am on Friday, be at Today's Ketch at 1130 and in Campo's parking lot by 1. A ton of fun, but man Monday was a long day.

BTW, I didn't realize RodnReel had a facebook page. Their old page had little to no traffic.