“The blues will usually run straight out, but the flatheads nearly always head for rocks and cover,” he said. Bourg’s recommendation for gear is a stout rod and reel with minimum line size of 30 pounds for blues, or at least 40 pounds if you’re looking for flatheads.

You definitely don’t want to be tangling with them on your trout rod. Make no mistake that these fish can be heavy and are tough fighters. Different cut baits were tried as well as live minnows, but the fresh cut mullet proved to be what they wanted. Several more were caught, including a big flathead. Casting right up to the bow, Bourg set the hook on a giant blue that put up a great fight before being wrestled into the ‘yak. We then moved down current about a half-mile and posted up out of the wind near some large vessels that appear to have been anchored for quite a while. The first stop was a little slow with only a couple of missed fish. On this day, the wind and current were moving pretty hard so Bourg suggested tucking into the bank and fishing near rock piles, a bridge and anchored vessels. “We use various techniques like trolling, sliding corks and straight bottom rigs depending on the conditions and what the fish want on a particular day,” Bourg said.

After throwing a cast net to get some fresh mullet for bait, we launched at a private launch and headed into the Intracoastal Canal.

I recently took a trip with Bourg down the bayou to get a glimpse into his catfishing routine. On the water every chance he gets, it’s not uncommon to see weekly social media posts of the fish he catches while on his lunch break: big reds, big drum and big catfish. Joshua Bourg lives in Larose, and is an avid kayak fisherman. While many of these catches are coming accidentally while fishing for speckled trout and redfish, some kayak anglers are catching on to the opportunity and honing their skills to specifically target these delicious brutes. While officially classified as freshwater fish, changes in hydrology across coastal Louisiana have many areas much more brackish - and these big cats are regularly being caught in areas that now support a mixed variety of species.

Fishing planet blue catfish louisiana