The three best ways to reduce the brutal toll that Mississippi’s August heat and humidity can put on fishermen — change times, stay on the move, and, most importantly, be successful.
The heat is not so bad when fish are biting.
But, the fishermen are not always in control of that equation. So let’s look at what we can do.
Catfishing with jugs (where legal) is a great way to beat the heat, not only because it works at night, but done right it can be tolerable even in the heat of the afternoon.
“We do it from my pontoon boat, and we can stay in the shade and run a fan off a pigtail connection,” said Ricky Taylor of Brandon, a regular on the upper reaches of Ross Barnett Reservoir. “We usually start late in the afternoon, around 4 or 5, and fish on past midnight. We often have to quit earlier because we run out of room in the fish box.”
Crappie anglers can also make use of the night by fishing under lights, but can also beat the heat by trolling from a boat rigged for shade. Pontoons are often seen pulling lures for crappie at Sardis and Grenada lakes.
In the Gulf, the best way to beat the heat is to start the day on speckled trout and redfish in the morning, when it’s cool, and then switch to chasing tripletails when the heat and humidity get heavy. Captains catch tripletails by running crab pots and other surface cover to spot the dark fish on the surface. They circle back on any fish spotted, and cast it a live shrimp.
Fishing at 30 miles per hour, man, that’s pretty cool.
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