Shore Thing Fishing Report, 10/18/2023

October 18, 2023

There are changes in the works as the weather patterns shift, water temperatures drop, and drought conditions cause changes to river salinity. Smart fishermen are ready for anything Mother Nature throws at them.

- by Sonny Schindler, Shore Thing Fishing Charters

Myles Matos, Lukas Martin, and Capt. Sonny Schindler with a nice puppy drum caught and released at the “Fishing with Buddies” event held out of Shaggy's Charter Dock in Pass Christian.

 
The cold fronts seem to be steadily coming down. We are doing everything we can to fish before the passage of the front and as soon as they get out of here.
 
We are seeing great fishing nearshore and down in the Louisiana marsh. Due to the winds this past week, most of our trips were from Lake Borgne to Bay St. Louis.

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Luckily, fishing seems to be steady and consistent just about everywhere. This is partly due to the very salty water we have right now and the unbelievable amount of shrimp that moved in over the past few weeks. The salty water is way up the Jordan and Wolf Rivers. That should make for some unbelievably good fishing here in the coming weeks. Another good thing about salty water in the river is that if the wind blows, you can usually find some good areas to fish in protected waters.
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A jolly group of anglers with trout, reds and flounder, fishing in the Louisiana Marsh with Capt. Paul Leoni.

 
The speckled trout seem to be getting into their fall pattern. The specks get better with the cooler days. There are gobs of undersized fish everywhere right now, but many of these fish are just a half- to a quarter-inch undersized. There should be a big feed for the rest of this month before the water temperatures get colder.
 

Lukas Martin with another puppy drum caught and released at the “Fishing with Buddies” event held out of Shaggys Charter Dock in Pass Christian.

 
We saw a few days with some very nice flounder, which is a very welcome sight. In the past several years, we did not have much going on in the flounder fishing department. We are already seeing a good many sheepshead along the bridges and reefs. It’s a little early for big numbers on them, so that has been a very welcome treat.
 

Huge bull red for a lucky angler fishing south of Bay St. Louis.

 
We saw an unbelievable number of undersized redfish this past week. I get very excited when these little red fish are grouped up. Yes, keeper-size redfish are mixed in with them, but wherever these little redfish are grouped up in the coming months, they will usually be in the same general area when they become legal-sized. We tag and release hundreds of the small reds, and almost all of them, when they are re-captured, are caught within sight of where they were initially tagged. These little fish are getting bigger every day.
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