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I need help. I am basically new to fishing a deep river. It has slow current. I catch a few but nothing over 10in. This is my third year to fish the Calcasieu River. I always fished Laccassine Bayou. It was easy all you needed there was shade and structure. There was only cypress and tupelo. The Calcasieu has many different types of timber and styles of bank plus a current. My question is how to pattern them.
I can't be of much help but I'm definately gona watch along with you. There are some guys on here who fish those rivers and do it well.
Last summer fema did some removal of my best laydowns that took me 2 years to find. I am hoping the fish will be concentrated this year. Before that I would catch a few in 20 fow at 2ft right in the middle of the river. I know there are more to be caught. I have been going the past 2 weekends and only caught one at 9ft down in 17 fow in a laydown. I just put an elite 4x dsi on the front. The river looks to have to much structure if that is possible. The trick will be which areas to fish. Is it the inside bank just after a bend. At times during the day we have tidal movement.
What about those bays? I used to load up in those places years ago for catfish. Seems like the crappie would want to move into the bays and get out of the current a lot of times.
The Calcasieu looks like it would be great crappie fishing, however I have seldom done well. That being said, I am mainly a spring time crappie fisherman. I catch them shallow in other area bayous and try the Calcasieu about once a year. I have never found them shallow. Lots of small bass, but very few white perch. Like I said, I only few it maybe once a spring, so I am certainly not a Calcasieu expert. The only time I have caught them in the river is in the fall in tree tops. Looks like next week things are going to start getting right.!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I fish the Houston more than the Calcasieu do to water clarity and boat traffic. I have fished the bays but never do as well on the Calcasieu.
What is the predominate crappie in the river, whites or blacks. They seek different habitats and maybe you're targeting the wrong ones. Blacks seem to like slow water and structure and whites like more open water from what I've read as I don't have much experience with catching whites except one time in Henderson and those were caught in open water with some current. We also caught some blacks on that trip but caught them along shoreline structure.
"gene"