Well I guess if you have read down this far, you want to hear the rest of the story on how these guys are catching such huge strings of trout, in the middle of the hot summer, Live Bait folks, live bait. I asked Danny, what'ja catch'em on, yep I'm from the deep south folks, we've kind'a modified the English language somewhat as some you can tell, hey some of you folks talk a little funny too, well off of that, let's get back to the trout fishing and this live bait thing. Danny replies back to me, Hey man, we caught'em all on live shrimp. Well I'll be, that would have been about my first guess at this time of year. The shrimp season would have opened about the middle of May, so there's going to be a lot of "Brown Shrimp" around. Later in the year, "August", the "White Shrimp" season is going to open up so there's still a lot of feed around for the trout, and that's not to mention the live bait fish, and I'll tell you this you just can't beat live baby croakers for really ,"BIG TROUT", if you can find'em that is.

Now that we have this bait thing settled, you may want to know what kind of fishing rig these guy's are using. In my opinion the best trout rig is a medium open face reel with a rod capable of handling a line strength in the 10 to 15 pound range, big trout can be a bit finicky, so using a smaller line size will catch you more fish. Some times it's a really hard choice when it comes to which rods and reels are going on the fishing trip, especially when  you  you know there's those huge Red Fish hanging out around those rock piles also, and they love live shrimp, did I mention that every year there are Red Fish caught in the 40 to 50 pound range in the passes around Grand Isle where there are these same jetties and rock piles. The first time I was in Grand Isle a lot of years ago a friend of mine and I ask the lady at the bait store how's the Red Fish biting, she says well they're catching a lot of them, but they're running a little small, the ones I've been seeing have only been running around 34 pounds. Well we kind of stood around with our mouth's agape, and says, you call that small, you see at that time I was living in central Florida, "live in Louisiana now", and the Red Fish in our area were having a bad time of it, they had been over fished and you were lucky to catch a small "Rat Red" as we would call'em. Louisiana has done a wonderful job of preserving the Red Fish fishery. Well I keep drifting off, don't I, well lets get back to the fishing rigs.

Well by now I've talked you into taking every rod and reel you own, Hey folks, I'm telling you the truth, I've been in Ricky's Tackle Shop and saw fisherman come in with their mangle rods and reels and almost crying tears. They usually didn't know what they had hooked but they wanted to hook'em again. They would be so excited they wanted the biggest rod and reel Ricky had, and it didn't matter a bit what the cost was, they wanted a bigger rod and reel because they were going back out there, and catch that big old fish again, because they were sure he was still out there, well, if the same fish wasn't, then there was another one, isn't it great to have an experience like that, you know what I'm talking about.

Now you've got the boat, the rods and reels and the shrimp, now for the terminal end of your line rig. I usually like a circle hook in the 2/0 range, a 1/4 ounce egg sinker and a bite on split shot, and that takes care of what we're going to tie on to the end of our line. First you run the line through the egg sinker and then tie on your hook, then you put the split shot sinker about 12 inches above your hook, that way your egg singer can lay on the bottom and when the fish bites he want feel as much of the sinker weight, because the line will just slide through the egg sinker, and the split shot will keep the egg sinker up off your hook, with this rig you have enough weight to get a good long cast, this is my favorite rig for trout when I'm not fishing with a popping cork. Popping Cork you say, you haven't mentioned that, well we'll get to that below. By the way, lets talk about how you put the shrimp on your hook. There's going to be several ways about every fishermen is going to tell you is the best way to put a shrimp on your hook, here' a few I've heard.

1.) I hook mine by running the hook through his head, I try to miss the dark spot that every shrimp has in his head, some say that's his brain, I don't know, some say it makes the shrimp live longer, I don't know about that either, but  if the fish are really biting, he ain't a going to live long anyway, I'll tell you this, if the shrimp is good and lively, this way of hooking him will leave his tail loose to swim better, and I have seen them jump back out of the water when a fish gets after him if you're in shallow water or when you're using a Popping Cork Rig, Yeah, I know we'll talk about that next..

2.) I just run the hook starting from his tail on the belly side then back towards his head, leaves him hanging head down and in somewhat of a curl.

3.) I start by sticking the hook in his belly and run it back towards his tail, he's kind of curled up this way, and the argument is, that if a fish bites, he has to get the hook in his mouth, this is probably the best way using dead shrimp, especially for Red Fish.

4.) I just run the hook through the side of the shrimp, about midway, so he's hanging head and tail down, you probably loose more shrimp this way, somebody else will tell me I'm wrong, but that's ok, were all friends and fishermen here.

5.) If you don't have it figured out yet, then ask a kid on the pier, he'll tell you how to do it.

Now about that Popping Cork.

If you go into a tackle shop and start looking for Popping Corks of Floats, you're going to find shelves just filled with them, some work better than others, the good thing is that most of them are cheap, so just buy up a bag  full and try them out until you find the one's that you like the best. There are the one that rattle, some made out of plastic and then there's the foam popper's, some of the foam popper's have a weight so you can throw it futher. The main thing is that when you throw it out and let it set for a moment or so then you give it a sharp jerk and it will make a popping, gurgling sound that will attract fish, yep, they really do work.

The way you want to rig the popper's up is to first adjust the float on your line. Adjust it  until it's at a depth you think might work, depending on the water depth, then tie your hook. The next thing is to add the shrimp using the same methods as we mentioned above. Sometimes it helps to add a small split shot sinker if you find the fish as hanging down a little deeper, you'll just have to try different methods until you get it to where the fish like it, and when you get what they're looking for they'll tear it up.

Hope to see you in Grand Isle soon and we when we do see you we hope it's with a big old string of fish and a big happy smile on your face, something like this smile Danny has in the picture to the left. Click Here or on the picture to the left to see a larger view of Danny with a trout that had his turned on day, now he goes in the frying pan, pore old trout.