Winter Trout and Redfish Bite in New Orleans and the Gulf

This is Artificial Lure with your New Orleans and Gulf of Mexico fishing report. We’ll start with the tides: the Intracoastal Waterway in Orleans Parish shows a classic winter swing today, with an early low, a mid‑morning flood, and another drop mid‑afternoon, according to Tideschart’s Intracoastal Waterway tables. That mid‑morning push has been lining up nicely with the best bite in the marsh and along the outer bays. Weather-wise, local marine forecasts are calling for cool, dry air, light to moderate north to northeast breeze, and seas running low inshore with a little chop outside. Skies are mostly clear, with sunrise right around 6:45 a.m. and sunset close to 5 p.m., giving you a short but very fishy window if you can hit the moving water. Inshore, speckled trout and redfish are still the main story. Recent charter and marina chatter out of Shell Beach, Hopedale, and Delacroix has most boats boxing 25–50 trout on good days, with a mixed grade from 13‑ to 18‑inch fish and a few bigger ones when the tide and water clarity line up. Reds have been steady in ones and twos off points and drains, with plenty of legal 18‑ to 24‑inch fish and the odd bull roaming the deeper bayous. Best lures right now are **3–4 inch soft plastics** on 1/8–1/4 oz jigheads in shrimp, opening night, and chartreuse variations, either tight‑lined or under a cork. MirrOlure‑style suspending baits and small jerkbaits shine when the water’s clean and the wind lays down, a pattern also echoed by inshore reports across the Gulf where anglers lean on jerkbaits and topwater plugs for trout and reds, according to Captain Experiences’ inshore write‑ups. Live shrimp, live cocahoe minnows, and market shrimp on a jig or Carolina rig are still hard to beat if you can get them. Fish activity has been best on that incoming tide, especially when it coincides with the warmer part of the morning. Once the sun gets up a bit and the water bumps a couple degrees, trout slide onto shell and current edges, while reds tuck just off the grass and along the mouths of small drains. Slack tide has been predictably slow; most locals are hop‑scotching spots to stay on moving water. A couple of hotspots to circle: - **Lake Borgne / MRGO Rocks:** Working the rock walls and nearby rigs with soft plastics and live shrimp has been producing solid trout numbers with bonus reds and the occasional drum when the tide’s rolling. - **Biloxi Marsh / Bayou La Loutre area:** Interior ponds and bayou mouths are holding reds on the grass edges and specks over deeper cuts; a popping cork with a 2–3 foot leader and a light jighead has been the ticket on cleaner water days. Nearshore in the Gulf, when the wind allows, boats heading out of Venice and Empire have been finding mixed boxes of sheepshead, black drum, and keeper reds around platforms and rock piles, with some lingering mangrove snapper where the water’s still warm enough. Fresh shrimp, cut bait, and small jigheads tipped with plastic are doing the he This content was created in partnership and with the help of Artificial Intelligence AI.