As predicted, the fishing just keeps get better as we get closer to the winter months.

While pleasure boat traffic is down to an occasional pontoon boat here and there, fishing boats are everywhere.

Good reports on the sac-a-lait, largemouth bass and hybrid striped bass are coming from several local lakes.

The big hybrid stripers go on a feeding frenzy this time of year. These fish are hybrids, meaning they don’t reproduce. Lakes Concordia and St. John have a fair population of these hard striking, hard fighting fish in the 5- to 10-pound range, and they are very easy to catch.

Unlike largemouth bass, the stripers tend to roam around a lot chasing schools of shad, so locating the fish is harder than catching them. The best ‘search’ lure (if you’re casting and not trolling) is the Bill Lewis Rat-L-Trap in shad and bream patterns.

On Concordia and St. John just fan-cast the Trap in the open areas between the piers. On St. John you can find the stripers really shallow on both sides of the lake. Lake Concordia’s striped bass will move shallow if the shad are around, but for the most part it is more productive to look deep with your sonar around the big and little blue hole areas.

If your sonar is set up right it’s like playing a real life fishing video game. You can see the baitfish on the screen. You can see your lure if you are fishing vertical beneath the transducer. The neat deal is when you see an arch (which is a fish on your sonar screen) streaking over to your lure, smack it and streak off the screen.

Currently I am using a pair of Humminbird 788c High Definition color sonar/GPS units, and they work great. These units retail for about $700 each. To get the detail I’m talking about along with GPS, that’s about what you will have to spend. You can certainly buy more expensive sonars. Some retail for as much as $2,500.

The 788’s are combo units with GPS. Once you locate the fish on a ledge, off-shore brush pile or whatever you can drop a waypoint on it and return to the area real quick. If $700 is out of your budget, you can purchase a good sonar without the GPS feature in the $300 to $500 range.

Just turn the sensitivity up, turn the fish ID and fish track features off and you can see the fish and your lure on the screen when fishing vertical. The neat deal is most units have an internal power source, meaning you can turn it off, remove the unit from your boat and not lose your settings. Sonars make great gifts for your favorite fisherperson.

Getting back to fishing, the best reports on the white perch and bass are coming from the Saline/Larto Complex. Close to home you can catch some nice perch and bass on Lakes Concordia, St. John and Bruin.

This is my time of year to fish. Many people are beginning to figure out that summer is the worst time to fish and fall and winter are the best times to catch fish from our area waters. The Old Rivers are out of the picture for sure. After a very fast rise The Mississippi River is supposed to crest on December 15 at 42 feet. That’s only 6 feet away from flood stage at Natchez. It will probably be June of next year before the Old Rivers, the live oxbow lakes, will be low enough to fish again.