Louisiana calls itself the Sportsman's Paradise and fishes like it: Caddo's cypress cathedral in the north, Toledo Bend shared with Texas, oxbow bass everywhere, and the most productive inshore marsh on the continent along its coast.
Reports current for Friday, September 4
Live verdicts from this morning's reports.
The cypress cathedral: Spanish moss, ancient trees and bass fishing inside a painting.
New Orleans' inland sea: a 630-square-mile brackish estuary where the Trestles' speckled trout and bridge-light culture define the city's fishing.
Louisiana's only inhabited barrier island: speckled trout by the box, bull reds in the passes and the state's whole coastal soul on one sand spit.
Louisiana's trophy vault: the little lake that rewrote the state record book, where grass beds still grow double-digit legends.
Louisiana’s cypress classic: Black Lake’s stump fields grow the crappie that fill corks and the bass that break them off.
North Louisiana’s cypress lake: D’Arbonne stacks crappie and bass among the trees near Farmerville.
Big Lake: Louisiana’s trophy speckled trout estuary, where oyster reefs and tides grow gator specks.
Louisiana’s redfish factory: Barataria’s marsh maze grows bull reds and speckled trout south of New Orleans.
America’s largest swamp: the Atchafalaya spreads a million acres of cypress, bayou and bass across south Louisiana.
Shreveport’s river: the Red runs bass, catfish and stripers through Louisiana’s navigation pools.
North Louisiana’s big river: the Ouachita runs catfish, crappie and bass past Monroe toward the Black.
Species activity across the state's covered waters. Peak of the year: March.
1 = slow, 5 = peak. Current month highlighted.
Seasonal surface curve for this state's dominant water type (estimated).
| Water | Type | County | Live gauge | Peak month |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Caddo Lake | Reservoir | Caddo | USGS | Mar |
| Lake Pontchartrain | Coastal | Orleans | modeled | Sep |
| Grand Isle | Coastal | Jefferson | modeled | Sep |
| Caney Lake | Reservoir | Jackson | modeled | Mar |
| Black Lake | Lake | Natchitoches | modeled | Mar |
| Lake D Arbonne | Reservoir | Union | USGS | Mar |
| Calcasieu Lake | Coastal | Cameron | modeled | Sep |
| Barataria Bay | Coastal | Jefferson | modeled | Sep |
| Atchafalaya Basin | River | St. Martin | USGS | Mar |
| Red River | River | Bossier | USGS | Mar |
| Ouachita River | River | Ouachita | modeled | Mar |
North Louisiana runs on cypress and stained water: Caddo's ancient forest, D'Arbonne and Claiborne's timbered arms, and oxbows of the Red and Mississippi that fish like private ponds after floods reset them. Crappie (sac-a-lait here) is a cultural institution: jigs under moss-draped trees: and the bass fishing stays honest year-round in the mild winters.
Louisiana French for crappie ('sack of milk'): the state fish and a point of culinary pride. Cypress-lake jigging for them is as Louisianan as roux.