Trout in decline?
 

I've fished Calcasieu Lake for most of my adult life. I sort of took a break in 2013 up until last year. It seems to me that the numbers have declined as well as the size. what gives? it seems the days of drifting a reef until you find a school are over. One or two schoolies seems to be the reward. Very concerned, comments please.

I have not fished much this year but have been hearing similar reports esp the size of trout being caught major decline.

i agree, and i fish a lot. This is the worst year i have ever seen

I don't live there anymore. But head down to fish as much as i can. Usually 10-15 days a year.

I have noticed the same. Used to could pick any oysters pads or reefs, drift across jigging with some cocahoe sometimes tip with shrimp, and catch easy limits.

Hit any cut or point for reds. Last two years i feel the fishing has gotten tougher every trip. Beat the marsh to death this weekend with every bait in the book for two reds and 3 flounder.

Haven't caught a speck since november on big lake.

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Fished BL for over 30 years. There is NO comparison from then to now. Not even close. Heck 10 years ago anyone could go out on a good weather day to Commissary or Long Point and come back with a nice mess of fish.


IMO, destruction of oyster reefs and the washing out of the ship channel are the main causes for trout decline.

Reefman, I agree with you but I also feel that there is so much more fishing pressure on these fish!!

Here?s my input on BL. Me and the wife have been fishing BL for 25 years. We use to catch 3 to 4 pound trout under birds but that was only in the fall. You just didn?t see birds in the summer. Now, you see birds all year long but only little dinks are under them. Question is what has changed? More weirs? More fisherman? A change in limit from 25 to 15? That certainly would lead to more smaller fish I would think. IDK?


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too many guides

As long as people are willing to pay, there will be guides. With the downturn in oil, I know a few people who went back to work.

well, we were able to get sportsman status on trout and redfish, so the nettters are gone. The limits have been cut back and the slot is in force. So there should be plenty of fish. How many guides are on the lake on a given day? Do we have any assessment numbers to go by? Is CCA monitoring the trout stock? How many fish is just one guide boat taking per week while most of us are at work? I think there's something amiss. I don't even hear the quote "You should have been here yesterday" any more! I believe our Trout are in trouble and no one seems to care.

I know there were not obvious signs of a fish kill this winter during hard freeze but maybe a lot of trout did die and sank to bottom. The fishing this year has dramatically declined.

Agree too many guides with cell phones take the rod out of the guides hands license guides and limit the # of days they can fish

I hardly even trout fish anymore. Used to go at least 3-4 times per month. In the last 10 years, I've mainly only targeted big fish when I go. I would say from 2005/2006 to 2013/2014, I either saw someone else catch or caught myself say 75-100 fish over 5 pounds. Lot's of 7+ as well. And we would release them all. In the last 3-4 years, I've probably only seen less than 5-6. Now that's drastic. Granted, I hardly fish as much as I used to but it's mainly due to the drastic decrease is fish size. Dinks just don't do it for me, so if the big girls aren't biting, I am staying at the house.

November to May used to be awesome. Now I just do more duck, deer, and turkey hunting.

In my opinion, I don't really think guides are making a huge difference. Heck I see they struggle nowadays just to hit a 5 pounder. I would say silt on reefs along the channel, oyster dredging, the weirs are all major factors.

Prolly all getting chopped up from all the props runnin all over the lake.

Specktator is right! It wasn?t nothing to go out on BL and smash good solid trout during the week! The lake has been on a constant decline for a few years now! I Went from fishing BL 3 to 5 times a month to maybe 2 to 3 times a year now.

I quit all together but more because of all the retards on the lake than the fishing.

Similar story for Sabine. Very few trout to be found. Fishing pressure certainly has an impact, but for both lakes to have same problem I tend to think Harvey or the freeze had something to do with it. I've been on Sabine a few times with perfect conditions with bait everywhere and couldn't buy a trout. Very tough year thus far.

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I agree the trout population is in decline and I think it is probably due to all of the reasons that were listed.

I think oyster dredging played a big part. Tonging and dredging are two different animals. The dredging not only removes the oysters, it silts over the reefs. Thank god that has been stopped. But now my understanding is the high salinity from the ship channel is going to make it tough for oyster reefs to recover.

Excessive fishing pressure from trophy fisherman played a part in removing the bigger sow trout. The 2 fish over 25" rule was too late coming. Guides in particular, because they were more proficient at targeting and staying on big fish, put clients on sow after sow.

The growing numbers of fishermen, armed with GPS coordinates, is another factor.

I'm not too sure about a die off from a freeze theory. Big Lake has never been overly susceptible to freeze kills because the ship channel gives the fish quick access to deep water. But who knows.

I even wonder about the redfish population. There's no shortage of reds for sure. Could they be hurting the trout population? I've found lots of little trout in the stomachs of redfish.

Bottom line, once the population is in decline, it isn't easy to get it to come back without some serious intervention. Either by man or by nature.

Rock off wash out, leave a few 20-30 yards cuts and the old river, get rid of weirs and levee letting the marsh do it's thing, and continue ban on oyster dredging and lake will get better in a few years regardless of pressure. To much politics though. That marsh being cut off is IMO very detrimental, as is the influx of silt and salt water through washout. Regardless of the weirs and levee, when a storm puts 8 ft of salt on that marsh it's all going to die and erode anyway just like it has been for thousands of years. But guess what, just like it has been for thousands of years, it will cycle, we'll have long periods without a storm, and the marsh will come back. Can't mess with mother nature and expect no consequences.

While I agree with most that the declining geologic and hydrologic health of the Calcasieu estuary (due to several notable factors, some of which Noodle mentioned) is directly affecting its biologic health, I thought I’d shed some positivity on this thread.

Personally, from late spring of 2017 (after the heavy rains) all the way through early winter of 2018, I experienced more consistent numbers of trout, and larger ones at that, than I?ve experienced in the past decade of fishing Big Lake on a regular basis. Most notably, during the summer of 2017, I boated higher numbers of trout and I also caught much larger trout than I have ever boated during the summer time throughout my lifetime of fishing Big Lake. It was very encouraging for me to see. Winter 2017 was by far the best, and easiest, winter I?ve had to date. I also caught my personal best trout during this timeframe (8+ lbs) while seeing plenty of 5-7 lb fish on a regular basis. That said, I had very high hopes for 2018. Things seemed to shut down after the big spring rains that we had, and really only got right for a couple of weeks in early May. I agree that it has been a noticeably slow year of trout fishing since then.

As I said before, I do agree that there are certain factors at play, mainly the ones being escalated by humans, that are negatively affecting Big Lake, but I also agree that some years are just plain bad fishing years. Big Lake productivity cycles. I can’t offer any scientific explanation as to why, but I‘ve certainly observed it throughout my lifetime of fishing the Calcasieu estuary. I have had this discussion with guides that have been fishing this lake much longer than I, and are much more credible than I, and they have observed the same cyclic periods that I have. Sabine Lake works the same way - some years the fish are jumping in the boat, and other years it?s just plain tough.

Sure, there are plenty of things that can be done to positively influence Big Lake?s physical habitat, thereby promoting the biological prosperity that we knew before boats were constantly running around giving trout haircuts all day long. But don?t forget - sometimes Mother Nature decides to make the fishing suck and we just have to play by her rules until she changes her mind again.

It’s not just Big Lake IMO seems to be a decline everywhere. We aren’t seeing the limits of fish we usually do out of Cocodrie ethier.

Could all the Dolphins be making the trout population go down? I have seen them round up fish around the 9 mile cut?

big lake has such high salinity, do yall think the trout are just moving further north? I know in v. bay, I've caught limit with the salinity being less than 5. I know I've seen big lake salinity near 30 before. Do you think that's too salt for them?

No relation to salinity. You have a population of trout that live in the gulf. Most of those trout seem to migrate east to west. The lake is fed by the gulf, hence, salinity not being a factor. Yes, trout move with salinity, but, it will not chase them off. Pure seawater is 35 parts.

We've had 3 years of serious fresh conditions in the lake.. and just when it was getting decent again we got the spring rains this year and freshed it up again.

The oyster population was hurt more by the 7 year drought BEFORE the flood years than the oystermen. I'm not saying they shouldn't do a better job and maybe build more reefs but as long as they follow regulations and put back cultch AND as long as we have some favorable salinities for oysters to grow and live, they'll be alright.

Both Sabine and Big Lake are 'lakes' that means they have a narrow single inlet compared to 'bays'. That can exacerbate the affects of fresh water run off into the lake and while the Gulf is 32 ppt salinity, having only one inlet does not guarantee that the lake will be saline enough for trout. Trout can survive very low salinity even if it is fresh on top as long as it's 1-5ppt on the bottom and they'll put up with it for a couple weeks.. after that if the lake is totally fresh they'll move around to deeper areas where they can find the salinity they need.

There is also a seasonal shift of trout and reds and if a freshwater event happens during one of these shifts, trout may appear as if they aren't showing up for almost a year.

Dinks is always the story under the birds except in the very late fall.. the last several years the decent fish havn't gotten under the 'birds' until December and January do to the lateness of frontal passages that would be big enough to flush the lake and force the fish to leave the shallows and finally chase the remaining shrimp in the bay for a short period before they leave.

We've had to deal with a lot of changing conditions that are variable and some big fish have still been caught.

I'm not saying that fishing pressure isn't having any affect, I'm just saying there are lots of variables at play as to why both Sabine and Big Lake have been off the last couple of years.

I fish central coast, Cocodrie to be specific and have noticed a sharp decline in trout catches the past two weeks. Season started late, was good for a few weeks and the usual midsummer lull has started earlier than usual. I dont think anybody or anything can be blamed. Trout fishing is cyclical and will get better. Always has and always will according to my 30+ trout fishing years down there. Good luck to everyone

This is defiantly a tough year . One of the toughest I seen in a long time.
When guides are targeting redfish in June and July something is wrong .
Don?t know if it was that we had such a cold winter with temps getting to 17 degrees for two days.
That could of killed off a ton of fish that we don?t know about .
I don?t see a shortage of dink trout because some days you can catch 100 throwbacks under birds
I dont even fish birds at all anymore because they have zero keepers hardly .
Some get lucky and hit a school and have keeper fish but to hit 10 groups to find one good one ain?t worth it .

The whole lake was basically non fished from Feb to Mid April due to weather so we should of had a bumper crop !!

But when guides who have been fishing this lake for 30-40 years and only have like 1-4 limits of trout with customers and it?s almost July .
It sucks ...

Hell I even had to start getting shrimp everyday just to make decent boxes of fish ..
They don?t even eat plastic good anymore


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Most people I have talked to believe the hard freeze killed a significant amount of fish. Someone I know was on the water as crazy as that sounds during the freeze and he could scoop up a limit of fish easily.

Another place that use to hold lots of trout was close in rigs in front of pecan island. I know lots of platforms or gone but there's still some out there and none of them have trout I know we try on the way out for snapper . Limits still 25 on this end . About the same thing with ducks to many guns to many fishing poles.

I think it's just too damn hot.

That?s my thoughts too. I fished hwy 1 in GI during the hard freezes and there was dead fish all over. The pelicans were literally starving due to lack of bait fish.