Doc on March Fishing

The arrival of March clearly heralds the start of the annual fishing season along the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Freshwater fishermen will find bass and bluegill dressed up in their finest spawning colors, eager to smack anything that gets near their beds. Saltwater fishermen will find some of the best speckled trout fishing of the year this month too.

As the fish begin moving out of their overwintering grounds and into the nearshore shallows to feed, the fishing will show steady improvement. Along the front beaches, early season trout will tend to average considerably larger than the schoolies that become predominant by late spring and into the early summer months. Though you won't be unable to locate live shrimp for many weeks to come, you should have little difficulty in hooking up with an early season trout on the 52-M-19 Mirrolure, an early season favorite of mine.

Fishing the nearby Louisiana marshes around Isle aux Pitre, Grand Pass and Flatboat Key always a good tactic for early season trout. Many of my most memorable catches have taken place in the marshes exactly this time of year. I can still vividly remember seeing a shamefully full stringer of trout that took three people to lift into the boat. It would have been impossible to squeeze another fish onto it, and none of the fish were smaller than four pounds. I had a five-fish stringer weighing a whopping thirty-two pounds myself that morning, and I released at least three times as many fish, all of them hawgs. Of course, I have not had many such trips; but that one March outing was memorable enough to etch itself forever in my brain.

Of course, the fact that the single largest trout I have ever caught - a nine pound 2 ounce fish - was taken in March also makes this month a popular one for me. Don't get me wrong. March trout fishing is not for everyone. The water temperature is still uncomfortably low. The high tides occur mostly during the wee, wee hours of the morning, long before the sun has showed its face on the horizon. And then there's the gnats. Let me tell you about the gnats. In recent weeks I have heard scores of neighbors complaining about the gnats in their gardens. If you think that gnats are bad in your lawn or garden, it is only because you have not visited a front beach jetty. The worst gnat infested garden pales in comparison.

The gnat pestilence is something that any early spring fisherman has learned to cope with. Slathered up with Avon Skin-So-Soft, and decked out with a wide-brimmed hat and a neckerchief made of Cling-Free sheets, a fisherman can actually enjoy a morning of fishing in a swarm of gnats - well, almost...

Though speckled trout is the species that gets me most excited about springtime fishing, there are plenty of other options for the fisherman this month. Red drum will move right on into the nearshore shallows along with their other spotted relatives. The same 52-M-19 Mirrolure that catches the attention of a cruising trout will also score well with reds. Better yet though, try fishing with a gold Johnson Sprite. The gold Sprite is, by far, the best lure for catching red drum that I have ever used. I take the new ones and scuff them up a bit with some steel wool to dull the finish a bit. It is a trick taught to me by Tom Moore, the dean of red drum fishing in Texas; and I doubt if anyone alive has cast at or caught more reds than Tom.

Huge holdover black drum too will continue to prowl the nearshore zone, particularly in areas where there are concentrations of oysters. Unlike their other family members - reds and trout - these guys do not have a penchant for plugs and spoons, preferring instead the real thing fished right on the bottom. Try fishing squid, dead shrimp, cut-bait or other natural bait for one of these bruisers. As an added bonus, the natural bait will also appeal to flounder and other bottom feeders, all of which will begin to move into nearshore waters in the coming weeks.

By the end of the month, the first cobia of the year will likely have been snatched out of offshore waters. The early season cobes typically make their initial appearance at offshore structures before finally showing up along the Horn Island bar. From here, once water temperatures begin to sure enough rise, the fish will begin moving into the Sound to take their stations at the numerous navigational markers, cans and buoys that dot the area.