As if the shark attacks along the Texas and Florida coasts aren’t enough warning about the danger in surf fishing, state Wildlife and Fisheries folks took time last week to warn fishermen walking the waters at Elmer’s Island of another risk — rip currents.
The advisory also carried the advisory to be aware of “obstructions or debris in the water” along the eastern end of Elmer’s Island, near Caminada Pass.
It’s always been a warning among longtime surf fishermen to avoid areas with channels or deep troughs leading seaward from the beach. These are spots where stronger currents have cut away the sand and increase the flow of water from the beach both at Elmer’s and Grand Isle.
When you add the strong flows from tropical storms and hurricanes — even those from a storm as far away as Hurricane Beryl is this weekend — the danger from rip currents increases dramatically.
The agency’s release identified rip currents as “strong, narrow, seaward flows of water that extend from close to the shoreline to outside of the surf zone.”
Step into a rip current and the pull is so hard most surf-goers cannot stand against it and they are swept away — sometimes very quickly — from the beach.
The water will provide clues to rip currents, things like a change in water color; water movement; a difference in the breaking of waves from one spot to another; choppy conditions as opposed to a smoothly breaking line of waves; and, debris swept from the beach.
If you get caught in a rip current, don’t try to swim against it to try to get back to the beach. Instead, swim parallel to the beach until the current no longer takes you out, then work your way back to shallower water.
For our veterans
Saturday marks the 28th year Joey Stein and the guys in Westside Bassmasters will stage a Veterans Open bass tournament supporting the Louisiana-based Wounded War Heroes.
Veterans pay no entry fee. It’s $100 per angler and they’ll fish from Doiron’s Landing in Stephensville. It's a reat cause and it should be good fishing now that water is falling in both the Atchafalaya and Verret basins. For more information, call Stein at (225) 776-6982 to enter.
The commission
The Fourth of July holiday pushed this month's Wildlife and Fisheries Commission to 9:30 a.m. Tuesday at state Wildlife and Fisheries headquarters on Quail Drive in Baton Rouge.
That's when Jonathan Walker, a local Delta Waterfowl advocate, will be introduced to fill a vacant spot on the seven-member board.
Other agenda items include an update on our state’s wild turkey program along with reports from Ducks Unlimited and Delta Waterfowl on their respective waterfowl breeding grounds projects which received funds from Louisiana waterfowl hunters’ license fees.
The meeting will have a live audio/video coverage via Zoom.
Next up
Mentioning waterfowl breeding grounds projects leads to the next item: Wildlife and Fisheries has set a July 19 deadline to fund the next three years for waterfowl breeding grounds habitat plans.
The commission is authorized by state law to dedicate as much as 50% of waterfowl hunters’ license fees to these projects, which, in past years, has gone to DU and Delta.
Proposals can be submitted to Jason Olszak, Waterfowl Program Manager, Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, 200 Dulles Drive Lafayette, LA, 70506 or by email: jolszak@wlf.la.gov.
For more, call Olszak at (337) 735-8687.
Making the list
After years of making the list among the top bass-catching spots in our country, Toledo Bend failed to make the top 10 spots in U.S. waters. The reservoir was replaced by ninth-placed Bussey Brake Reservoir, a 2,200-acre lake located seven miles northwest of Bastrop, in an annual ranking of Bassmaster Magazine’s 100 Best Bass Lakes.
As astonishing as it might be, a 50-mile stretch of the St. Lawrence River’s Thousand Islands area in New York — it included eastern Lake Ontario — was ranked No. 1 mostly because of it’s top-flight smallmouth bass fishery.
“Our goal with this project has always been to offer a current list of bass fisheries that the weekend angler can visit and have the best chance at being successful,” B.A.S.S. writer James Hall said, adding the staff’s findings identify a ranking to continue “to offer fishermen the ultimate bucket list of lakes and rivers that are hot right now.”
Second is O.H. Ivie Lake in Texas with Florida’s Orange Lake jumping up to third after showing up at No. 8 last year. Next were Lake St. Clair in Michigan and Texas’ Lake Fork.
The B.A.S.S. staff also breaks down the country into a list of the top 25 lakes in the central, western, southeastern and northeastern regions.
Bussey Brake was third in the Central Division after O.H. Ivie and Lake Fork and ahead of Minnesota’s Mille Lacs Lake and our own Caney Creek Reservoir south of Ruston.
Full rankings can be found on the B.A.S.S. website: Bassmaster.com.
More on Bussey
With more attention coming just a few short years after a near full restoration of the area, Wildlife and Fisheries has set bass and sac-a-lait tournament guidelines for the reservoir on the Bussey Brake Wildlife Management Area.
State fishery managers said the move is “to help preserve this unique fishery for as many user-groups as possible and to optimize the potential for the public to catch state-record bass and crappie (sac-a-lait).”
The special-use permit will be required for tournaments under these guidelines:
- Tournament organizers must apply online at least 60 days in advance of requested date;
- The tournament will be limited to 15 boats with an “immediate” live-release format, and provide written live-release tournament rules;
- Limited to two per month with permits issued on first-come, first-served basis.
Applications and rules can be found on the agency’s website: wlf.louisiana.gov/page/bussey-brake.
For more info, call Inland Fisheries biologist manager Ryan Daniel at (318) 343-4044, Ext 3 or email: rdaniel@wlf.la.gov.