Mississippi Sound & the Pascagoula River Marsh

Capt. Barry Brown
April 28, 2005
Pascagoula River - Saltwater Fishing Report

With the water temperature approaching 70 degrees, the schools of 16" to 18" trout are making their spring arrival on the shallow oyster reefs in the Mississippi Sound. The baitfish and shrimp are everywhere.

We arrived at the reef at daybreak and started out with topwater Producer Ghost lures. We hooked and landed the first few trout that struck on top, but after a few blowups that missed the hooks we took off the topwater lures and tied on Catch Jr. plugs. That did the trick. The Catch Jr. is the perfect lure for fishing over oysters in very shallow water because it works just a few inches below the surface in the strike zone, but does not sink to the bottom unless you stop retrieving it. We used white with black back and white with a green back with equal success.

Within the next three hours we landed 38 beautiful speckled trout averaging 17 inches. The largest one was 20 inches.

During this trip we witnessed several instances of schools of trout feeding on schools of baitfish. We could see the trout jumping completely out of the water as they struck into the baitfish.

The flounder are also beginning their spring return. We are catching good numbers of 15" average flounder using live cocahoes on points with running current. The larger females will be here within a few weeks.

We are catching redfish along the marsh grass in the bayous and lakes. We use artificial cocahoes, casting to the water line and retrieving with a little bounce. This is the best way to cover a lot of ground with a trolling motor.

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