East Pointe a la Hache fishing

Ahh, the 80's and the infamous boat hoist. I remember launching at Ellzey's in Venice and waiting on top of the levee for an hour to launch the boat. We loved our Tri-hull Manatee with the 85 Evinrude and the delicious smell of two-stroke motors starting in the morning....

IMO, Beshel's was always too far down the road to attract a huge crowd. It's not much further to fish the area from Delacroix and both Riverside on the MS River in Buras and Delta in Empire both provide similar access. The fishing near Beshel's is probably best in the fall and winter when trout are inside. Plenty Bass and Redfish around if the Trout are all out in Breton Sound but all of this is accessible from Delacroix if you're driving from NOLA. Breton Sound is great from April to probably September but now that you have the Bohemia Spillway, Canaervorn, and all the river water pouring in, the best fishing is much farther out in Breton Sound. The area is in transition and I'm sure opportunities will arise from the change in habitat but there are more convenient jumping off points for now unless you live near there.

funny you mention shrimping in those canals back in the day. My first experiences fishing/ shrimping were all out of my Dad's camp that his Dad built in the old Oyster fishing village of Olga. It was just about directly across the river from Ft Jackson. The village disappeared, the levee started to erode and the canal silted in. It was barely accessible anymore so we didn't know what to really do to keep it going but some wonderful person decided to burn it down for us and made our decision for us.

Anyways, the first time I ever dropped a trawl with my Dad was in a dead end canal right next to it they called Juresich's. We put the net over and pulled for about 5 minutes when the net seemed to hang up and the boat just stopped. We started to pull the net up and found we had hit a school of White Shrimp so large that we had to let probably half the catch out and still filled 6 of those old 48qt ice chests with just shrimp, incredible for a 16' trawl. Hauled arse to the camp, packed up, and made for Ellzey's so we could try and ice it all down. I'll never forget the look on my dad's face when all those shrimp came up at the mouth of the net.

Changed very much indeed. There was a time that every fall we'd fish Taylor's Pass, Bird, Deepwater, Fort, and California Points with shrimp tipped shad rigs slowly along the bottom and catch 50 or 60 Flounder a day with 3 people. I can count on one hand how many times I've caught more than 10 in a trip in the last 15 years...

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The launch at Beshel's is horrible

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Do they still have all the rocks in front of what's left of the bulk head next to the ramp? Last time I was at that ramp someone got lazy and let their boat drift into the rocks and straight lost his mind at the sound of his shiny gelcoat scraping off.

Wasn't there some trespassing drama going on as well? I feel like I remember whoever owned one of the canals falling out with the red arse about something.

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Changed very much indeed. There was a time that every fall we'd fish Taylor's Pass, Bird, Deepwater, Fort, and California Points with shrimp tipped shad rigs slowly along the bottom

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I still love to fish this area in the fall, it can be so good at times, also fishing Stone Island. It's nothing like it used to be but still can be good.

ntgreek while I agree with the river pouring in, I disagree with your trout assesment. We are doing very well on trout when the wind lets us get out even with the river high. You just have to know where the river water will be and won't be.

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I still love to fish this area in the fall, it can be so good at times, also fishing Stone Island. It's nothing like it used to be but still can be good.

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Me too but it's hard for me to get down there anymore. Before the disintegration of the eastern levees, probably 20 years ago, that area was maybe the best secret in all of LA. I only knew the tail end of it. Some of the pictures of trips my Dad had there before me were unimaginable. I can say I wished Grand, Big, and Little Coquille Bays were still a carpet of oysters but I'd be lying because I know now it was unsustainable. That remarkable fishery was created by the ignorance of levee construction and dying faster than we could have imagined back then. It's turning into something different now, still productive, just different...

As for Stone Island, I might be the only person who's ever fished that area heavily and never once caught more than 20 fish there. Often times, we caught maybe 5 fish and others not a bite. I've slayed them near there hundreds of times but that specific island has somehow escaped me every time I've been...

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Maybe I need to make another trip last trip

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While I won't say it's a slam dunk for the last three years I have been listening to people complain about the fish not being in the area and we have been catching them regularly. Even with a high river there is normally clean water to be found and as said above freshwater is on top and you can often find good water underneath.