Last week was the glass-calm holiday weekend and the tournament firing on schedule. This week is the mirror image. A hard east wind built in behind the front, twenty to thirty knots and seas to eleven feet offshore, and it has the tuna fleet tied to the dock through Friday. The Cajun Canyons wrapped over the weekend, and nobody weighed a blue marlin. Those three menhaden bills sitting on Landry's desk last Thursday? He signed them, and let the one that would've actually helped the fish die on the House floor. Saturday is when it all calms down, and it happens to be free.

Redfish. Capt. Herman Demoll Jr. at Cajun Culture has carried the inshore feed three straight weeks, the "Venice Tri-Fecta" of reds, specks, and a load of sheepshead, the delta "absolutely alive." That was before the front. This week the conditions turned against the sight-fisherman. The river jumped back to 2.48 feet and is climbing hard, and the east wind is shoving chop and dirty water into the marsh, closing the clean falling-water pockets that opened up last week. The fish are still there, the pattern just moves. Get off the open shorelines and into the protected ponds, dead-end canals, and the lee side, and fish bait under a cork instead of hunting tails. Slot 18 to 27, four per person, bulls catch-and-release.

Speckled trout. No fresh named-captain trout report this week, which tracks with a blown-out week. The moon is sliding toward Last Quarter Monday, so this is a neap, weak-current weekend, the opposite of last week's Full Moon spring tides. Weaker current and a dirty river push the better trout out of the marsh ponds and onto the cleaner-water rigs and the deeper passes. Tight-line the structure, or work a popping cork with live shrimp where you can find clean water. One angler put up a Memorial Day wade-fishing box on a Marsh Demon soft plastic in the GLOW color, his words, "the big girls to bite in some tough weather." Limit 15, slot 13 to 20, max 2 over 20.

Mangrove snapper. With the water onto its summer plateau in the mid-80s, the nearshore mangrove bite at the rocks and the rigs is a known June producer, even if nobody filed a report in a week this rough. Year-round, 5 per day, 12-inch minimum.

Red snapper. This is the headline, the only thing genuinely producing right now. Two independent Venice charters posted snapper limits this stretch. Capt. Scott Pelas at Louisiana Lagniappe put up the freshest report, May 29, "snapper season is in full effect, four per person." Demoll at Cajun Culture boxed limits the week before, "Venice is delivering exactly what it's famous for, world-class reef fishing." The season is open across the board: state and private at four fish and a 16-inch minimum, and the federal for-hire season opened June 1 and runs to October 26, nineteen days longer than last year. State landings hit 11 percent of the allocation through May 17 and the pace keeps climbing. The only catch is the weather. Snapper still means a run to the reefs, and that run doesn't happen until Saturday. Carry a descending device into the rigs. It's required, and the more fish coming over the rail, the more you'll use it.

Yellowfin. Nothing fresh, and the weather is the whole reason. The east-wind blow keeps the run to the deepwater rigs and the shelf edge off the table through Friday. The bite itself was on right before the front, Mexican Gulf Fishing Company ran yellowfin, swordfish, and blackfin hard through the back half of May. The fish didn't leave, the access did. Saturday is the first window, decent if not flat, and Sunday lays down cleaner still. Three per person, 27-inch fork length minimum.

Swordfish. Same lockout as the tuna. The daytime sword drift is a deep-water game off the shelf edge, not happening in this blow. Saturday at the earliest.

Billfish. The Cajun Canyons Billfish Classic wrapped its three fishing days, May 28 through 30 out of Cypress Cove, 22 boats and a purse over half a million dollars. It was a release year, no blue marlin to the scales. Metal Masher swept the release side, top release team, top billfish boat, and top overall crew at 2,700 points. Relentless Pursuit took the top tuna at 96.5 pounds, Lady D the top wahoo. One housekeeping note, because the clip is making the rounds again: the Crawgator 505-pound blue marlin video going around Facebook is not from this year, it's an old tournament.

Amberjack. Still closed in federal waters through August 31. Reopens September 1.

The menhaden package is settled, and the honest version is mixed.

Landry signed three bills. HB 757 became law May 22, escalating the fines for netting inside the buffer zone. HB 872 and HB 886 he signed May 29, one putting vessel-tracking transponders on the pogie boats and the other opening up their harvest and bycatch data. Tracking, transparency, and stiffer fines, all on the books now. That's real, more oversight than this fishery has ever had in Louisiana.

But the bill that would have actually moved the boats off the fish died. HB 855, the Orgeron bill, would have pushed the purse seines out to a 22-foot depth contour, the change that actually cuts the redfish and trout killed as bycatch. It failed in the House, 46 to 49. And the half-mile buffer that's already on the books is under its own pressure: a proposal to shrink it to a quarter mile drew something like 1,700 public comments, fewer than fifty of them in favor. The public showed up. The vote didn't follow.

Capt. Devin at LAFishingBlog has been making a sharper version of this case in two recent videos worth your time. His reframe: the miles of dead bull reds floating behind the pogie boats are the part you can see, and they're bad on their own, those are the breeders we're banking on to rebuild a population that already got the limit cut. But the bycatch isn't the worst of it. Menhaden are the forage base. Specks and reds can't eat algae; menhaden can, and the sportfish eat the menhaden, so strip out that biomass and everything left gets thinner. They're also the coast's filter, a school in the millions clearing the water enough for the grass and oysters that shrimp and crab grow up in. Pull that filter and you get algae blooms, dead zones, a cascade that takes the commercial fishery down with the recreational one. That's the argument for the depth limit that died, and it's why the boats creeping closer to shore as the stock thins is the part that should worry you, not just the redfish on the surface.

We got the tools to watch the fleet and fine it. We didn't get the depth limit that reduces the kill. If you've followed this fight for years, that's the read, not a victory lap. The thing to watch from here is whether the new tracking and harvest data get used, and how the fines get enforced. That's a next-twelve-months story, and we'll stay on it.

Louisiana Lagniappe Charters, Capt. Scott Pelas. With the offshore fleet weathered out, the pick this week is the man putting fresh fish in the box. Pelas filed the only genuinely in-the-window report, the May 29 snapper trip, and he carries a 5.0 rating across 126 reviews, the most of any Venice charter I track. He runs the Mississippi River Delta shallows and the reef fishing both. With federal for-hire snapper open and Saturday the first clean day, he's the one to call if you want to box reef fish this weekend. Find him at fishingbooker.com. If the tuna itch is what brought you, Mexican Gulf Fishing Company is still the cleanest offshore name in town, just know the window is Saturday-only this weekend.

A drift sock, for a week exactly like this one. When the wind is up and you're trying to hold a drift over a reef or down a shoreline, a drift sock turns a sideways skate into a slow, fishable crawl. It's the cheapest boat-control upgrade there is, thirty to fifty dollars, and worth keeping aboard for the windiest weeks of the year. This is one of them.

Match the sock to your boat length: a 36-inch handles most bay boats, 48-inch for a 24-footer and up. Tie it off the bow cleat with a tripping line so you can collapse and haul it without a fight. Bass Pro, West Marine, and Academy all stock them. On a twenty-five-knot day, it's the difference between fishing and just hanging on.

The front flipped the script. East twenty to twenty-five knots gusting thirty Thursday, seas five to seven feet inside and six to nine occasionally eleven offshore, with thunderstorms in the mix Thursday and Friday. Friday holds southeast fifteen to twenty, building toward twenty-five in the afternoon, with offshore seas easing to six to seven. Saturday drops to south ten to fifteen and three to four feet, and Sunday is the cleanest day of the window, southeast around ten with seas of three feet or less. Offshore is realistically closed Thursday and Friday. Saturday opens the door and Sunday is the better bet for a long run.

The moon is a waning gibbous heading to Last Quarter Monday June 8, New Moon June 14. That's neap tides all weekend, weakest current around the Last Quarter. Tidal range at Pilottown narrows from about a foot Thursday toward a third of a foot by Monday. Weak current means slow marsh drainage, so fish the longer of the daily moves and lean on the harder-current passes and rigs.

Mississippi at Venice read 2.48 feet Wednesday afternoon and was rising at plus 0.82 over 24 hours. Three Wednesdays in a row with a different river story, 1.96 and rising two weeks back, a full foot and falling last week, now 2.48 and climbing hard. Freshening, dirtier water pushing into the delta, which is what's closing the clean-water sight-fishing.

Southwest Pass buoy ran 84.2 degrees Wednesday evening, up from 82.6 last week. Summer plateau. Hurricane season opened June 1 and the Gulf and Caribbean are quiet, no named systems. This blow is just weather, nothing tropical.

Free Fishing Weekend is June 6 and 7. No fishing license required for anybody, resident or visitor, fresh or salt, statewide. Every size limit, season, and gear rule still applies, and the free Recreational Offshore Landing Permit is still required if you're after tuna, snapper, grouper, or billfish, you just select "Free Fishing Weekend" as the license type. It lands on Saturday, the first day the weather lays down. Good weekend to bring somebody who doesn't fish enough to keep a license. Source: LDWF via Louisiana Sportsman.

Should you leave the motor running offshore? A question went around the Venice Marina group this week from a guy told twice you should never shut your outboard off when you're stopped on a spot. The real answer is it depends. You leave it running on a drift, in a sea, or sitting on a fish you may need to chase, so you can reposition fast. You shut it down to save fuel and quiet the boat when you're anchored or drifting a calm day with room to spare. Either way, your engine cutoff lanyard or wireless kill switch stays on you regardless, federal law on boats under 26 feet since 2021.

Ramp etiquette, a public service announcement. The Venice launch ran a pointed reminder this week after somebody prepped a boat on the ramp on a weekend morning while five rigs stacked up behind him. There is, as one member put it, "a large gravel rectangle called a parking lot" for exactly that. Load your gear, run your checklist, and drop your plug before you back down. Everybody behind you says thanks.

Next week, the first real catch reports once Saturday's window opens and the weekend fleet gets back out, an updated read on the river, and the early signs of how the new menhaden tracking actually gets used. If you fished the calm Saturday, hit reply with intel from the water, attribution on request or off the record. If you know somebody planning a Venice trip this summer, and judging by the Facebook groups there are plenty of them, forward this along.

Until next Thursday.

Joey