But high water in the river overwhelms the weir, backing river water into the lake. A weir at the northeastern end of Old River maintains minimum water levels in the oxbow, no matter how low water in the Mississippi proper falls. Pizzolato watches river gages, specifically the Mississippi River station at Baton Rouge. Here, he shares his expertise: When to go Pier pilings are the focus of Pizzolato’s attention for crappie in Old River.ĭetermining when to fish Old River isn’t guesswork. Still, the wiry, silver-haired crappie hound fishes the lake every chance he gets. You can’t place your bait with care, and when you catch a fish, the wind blows your boat yards and yards out of position before you can get your jig back in the water.” If it’s over 10 miles per hour, the lake is difficult to fish. “Besides flood waters, wind is the biggest limiting factor in fishing Old River. ![]() Sometimes the water doesn’t get right until August, and sometimes low water lasts until into January. “That’s when the Mississippi River backs out of the lake. “It’s best from July to December,” he explained. He also calls it one of his two favorite lakes for crappie fishing - and he fishes in a lot of places. Dozens of feet of river water will back into the lake, turning it into a catfish hole.ĭave Pizzolato calls it “seasonal” as a crappie spot. So every year, when the Mississippi experiences its spring floods, so does Old River. Unlike seven of its sister oxbows, it isn’t cut off from the big river by levees. All of them are narrow and arc-shaped, resembling what they are - old rivers.īut Old River is unique. The Mississippi left nine of them scattered in eastern Louisiana. (Oxbow lakes are abandoned channels of rivers.) Properly called “Raccourci Old River,” the 4,900-acre lake, once referred to as the “Big Bonanza” by the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, is an oxbow of the Mississippi River. ![]() ![]() That’s a pretty good description of Old River.
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