How many Teche Area fishermen are waiting for the water to go down in the Atchafalaya Basin?

Hundreds, both freshwater fishermen and saltwater fishermen, for sure.

Freshwater fishermen are more than ready to go drop a boat at one of the popular area boat landings along the West Atchafalaya Basin Protection Levee. High water through the late winter and spring months has kept us either at home, Lake Dauterive-Fausse Pointe, marshy areas such as Quintana and Bayou Sale, or even points far away, such as Toledo Bend.

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Why? The Atchafalaya River, for the first time in many years, rose above 19 feet at Butte La Rose, which is the reading area outdoorsmen have used for years to gauge the water level in this region of the nation’s last great overflow swamp.

The river’s been on a s-l-o-w fall from that peak just under 20.0 feet at BLR. It just hasn’t gotten to a fishable level yet as it was at 15.0 feet Saturday at BLR. Even that can be deceiving, as Keith Price at Cajun Guns & Tackle/Blue’s Archery in New Iberia and others pointed out recently because the fall in all probability hasn’t got here yet.

So we’re chomping at the bit, impatiently waiting for the river stage to at least get around 13.0 feet. It’s forecast to be at 14.7 Tuesday.

But that forecast may go out the back door because the Ohio River at Cairo, Ill., is rising fast. The Ohio River, which influences the Atchafalaya River, big time, was at an unseasonably high 36.4 feet Saturday and forecast to rise to 43.0 feet Thursday.

There should be a pretty big bump coming down that eventually affects the Atchafalaya River from Simmesport to Morgan City.

Whenever the overflow swamp gets fishable again, it ought to be great fishing for bass, bream and sac-a-lait. That would be a vast improvement over the last few years, particularly 2005 and 2006.

“This year, with all the water we had, it can only help. Everybody’s expecting a good year, and the early returns we had have been good,” Carroll Delahoussaye of St. Martinville said Saturday on his way to his fishing buddy Danny Bulliard’s camp in the Atchafalaya Basin. “Henderson’s been good and even spots in the Basin have been good at 15 feet. I know for a fact people already have been catching bream and sac-a-lait in the Basin.”

Delahoussaye, a St. Martin Parish Councilman and former head football coach at St. Martinville Senior High, has been fishing in the overflow swamp more than 30 years.

Unlike many others, Delahoussaye said he did well on bass and sac-a-lait last year.

“When my brother-in-law and I fished sac-a-lait, the quality of fish was incredible. I mean, we hardly ever caught more than 40,” he said, “but we’d catch 20 to 25 that were huge. We haven’t caught fish like that in a long time.”

The key to what is shaping up to be a good year of freshwater fishing out there is the slow fall from a high level, he said.

“If it could just get close to what we normally do. You know, it’s good to see the landings full, people out catching bass, bream and sac-0a-lait,” he said.

“I think it’s going to be great. A year like that will flush all the bad water out. It’s going to be something,” said Bulliard, plant manager at Cajun Chef Products in St. Martinville. “Carroll and I went riding in Beau Bayou last Saturday. There was clear water everywhere — some good, some bad.”

Gamefish have been caught recently in Cow Island, Lake Warner and, just this past week, Lost Lake, he said.

Saltwater fishermen are biding their time catching croakers and redfish, mostly at the Trash Pile for the former and at Dry Reef for the latter, waiting for the river to get below 13.0 feet or so at BLR.

Then the river won’t be pumping out fresh, muddy water and the bays (West Cote Blanche, East Cote Blanche and all of Vermilion Bay) will get clearer and saltier. One veteran saltwater fishermen said the speckled trout, some big ones at that, are out at the close-in oil rigs and along the coast just waiting for the right water conditions to move inside.

With luck, after it gets right, the speckled trout fishing will be as good the rest of the year as it was last year.

Hopefully, the inside waters along the coast will be ripe for catching lots of speckled trout, redfish, croaker, drum and flounder by the time the Iberia Rod &Gun Club Saltwater Fishing Rodeo gets under way July 4.

Inside Division competitors would be in heaven on earth if the combined water conditions and weather conditions are favorable for putting fish in the ice chest that could go on the board.

We’ll wait and see what what the Atchafalaya River will do the rest of June. We’ll keep our fingers crossed.

DON SHOOPMAN is outdoors editor of The Daily Iberian.