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.
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