The white perch are spawning on the area lakes. Good reports are coming from all directions.

On Lake St. John, try fishing live minnows and small tube jigs along the inside cypress trees — the shallow trees in 2 to 4 feet of water.

I heard good reports on limits of perch coming from Black River Lake, Wallace Lake, Means Lake and just about every lake within 100 miles of here.

The perch spawn usually last through late April and into May so we’ll have plenty of time to load the freezer with tasty perch filets. The guys and ladies running yo-yos are catching some nice catfish as well.

The catfish spawn kicks off when water temperatures rise to and exceed 70 degrees. That equates to better numbers of catfish as water temps continue to rise.

The bass spawn has been very strange this year to say the least. During a normal winter the bass move up in mid-February and we catch a lot of big fish.

The cold winter did not allow the first wave of bass to move shallow. Once the surface water temp hit 60 degrees, the bass did move up, but so far the bass spawn in this area has been a bit of a disappointment.

I still believe better days are in the near future for the bass fishermen. Right now, the very best reports about numbers of bass are coming from Lake Bruin. Just fish jigs and soft plastics around the shallow cypress trees and you’ll find the Lake Bruin bass.

Lake Concordia’s bass continue to be a bit picky. I think it has a lot to do with pressure from so many fishermen and ladies and the lack of reasonable regulations on bass. The law right now in Louisiana is ten bass per person with twenty in possession of any size.

In Louisiana a one inch bass is legal and that’s so wrong. Back in the 1990’s when Lake Concordia had the slot limit of 15 to 19 inches we saw the lake record 13.05 caught as well as numerous 8 to 12 pound fish. Now we struggle just to catch a skinny five bass limit.

As long as the regulations are so lenient, the bass fishing on this highly pressured lake will continue to go downhill. A good example is the big bass tournament held on Lake Concordia this past weekend.

Most tournament winners are determined by the contestant with the five largest bass. A big bass format awards the angler with the single largest bass. This past weekend only two fish in the four pound range were weighed in.

In my 35 years of fishing Lake Concordia, that is the lowest winning weights I have ever seen in a tournament. Hopefully the LDWF will take note of the declining bass population and maybe we will see more reasonable limits and length requirements on the lake.

If so, the visiting anglers of the 1990s will return to Concordia and spend their money here catching trophy bass instead of traveling to states with better regulations like Texas.

Louisiana laws concerning largemouth bass are a good 10 to 20 years behind Texas and it just should not be that way. We have the water to grow trophy bass and draw people to this area. We just need better regulations.