Fishing forecast for Shreveport, LA

Shreveport's own lake is Cross Lake, the city-owned drinking-water reservoir in the northern part of town and one of the waters the Department of Wildlife and Fisheries seeded with Florida bass fingerlings in spring 2025. Downtown sits on the Red River, held in navigation pools by Corps of Engineers locks and dams. On the Texas line, cypress-studded Caddo Lake spills over a Corps dam whose outlet channel stays open to anglers all year, and Lake Bistineau and the Corps' Wallace Lake lie east and southeast of the city.

Best fishing times in Shreveport this week

Majors run an hour either side of the moon crossing the meridian over Shreveport, LA; minors, half an hour either side of moonrise and moonset. Where those widths come from: best fishing times and how we compute these times.

When these windows are not the right tool

Solunar theory is John Alden Knight's 1926 prediction; the ±60 and ±30 minute widths are convention, not calculation. The times are computed astronomy, the claim that fish feed inside them is not. The day rating follows moon phase — identical nationwide, so every city shows it the same. A moving front beats the moon: apps that read pressure.

Where to fish in Shreveport

This page is built around Cross Lake, with Red River, Caddo Lake and Lake Bistineau in reach — fresh water, about 12 minutes from the middle of Shreveport.

Cross Lake dates from 1926, when Cross Bayou was impounded, and the City of Shreveport owns and runs it as the main source of the city's drinking water. USGS describes a shallow lake about nine miles long from east to west, 13.4 square miles in area and 7.7 feet deep on average, taking most of its inflow at the western end and spilling out at the eastern end.

The Red River at Shreveport is part of the J. Bennett Johnston Waterway, five locks and dams that the Corps of Engineers operates with the Red River Waterway Commission. The Commission's launches include Stoner Avenue, with two two-lane ramps, and Teague Parkway across the river, and it funds a continuing yearly plan to stock Florida-strain and tiger bass fingerlings into all five pools, with LDWF biologists checking and releasing the fish.

Louisiana State Parks traces the present Lake Bistineau to a 1935 dam across Loggy Bayou, since enlarged to hold 26.9 square miles of water averaging seven feet deep and reaching 25, with the state park and its two boat launches on the western shore. LDWF and Bossier Parish's parks department sank 14 brush-top fish attractors in the lake in 2019 and published GPS coordinates for every one.

The nearest grids we publish are New Orleans, LA (452 km, Lake Pontchartrain) and Little Rock, AR (281 km, Arkansas River). Different water, and different minutes.

What you can catch in Shreveport

State listings put these 4 fish in the water around Shreveport. Plan around the peak, not the open season.

In its spring 2025 stockings the Department of Wildlife and Fisheries put Florida bass fingerlings into Cross Lake (114,100), Caddo Lake and James Bayou (176,900) and Lake Bistineau (229,900), with help from the City of Shreveport's Cross Lake Fish Hatchery. LDWF stocks Florida bass to lift the size its bass can reach rather than their numbers, and says Louisiana bass of 10 pounds or more usually carry some Florida genes.

Texas Parks and Wildlife introduced Florida largemouth bass to Caddo Lake in 1981 and 1982 and has stocked them consistently since 2006; it calls spring the season for a trophy bass there, March above all. In TPWD's June 2021 to May 2022 creel on the Texas side, black bass drew 61.5 percent of directed effort and crappie 28.2 percent, and anglers kept more than five times as many black crappie as white.

The Corps of Engineers counts bowfin among the non-game fish at Wallace Lake Dam, on Cypress Bayou fourteen miles southeast of Shreveport, where the outlet channel below the dam is open to anglers year-round. Texas Parks and Wildlife's rod-and-reel bowfin record for Caddo Lake is a 12.09-pound, 33-inch fish from September 1997, and LDWF says bowfin spawn in late spring in shallow, weedy water, with males guarding eggs and fry.

Tackle sits outside a forecast page: start with how to catch trout.

Water temperature and season in Shreveport

Air here swings 36.1 °F across the year, from 47.9 °F in January to 84.0 °F in August. No gauge measures water temperature here, so the chart below is air only.

Monthly climate for Shreveport, LA. The air line is the NOAA NCEI climate normal for 1991–2020 — the thirty-year average of a calendar month, not the weather of any one year — measured at SHREVEPORT, LA US (USW00013957), 12.3 km from the middle of town, with 28–29 of the thirty years behind each month. No gauge measures water temperature here, so this chart is air only. Water lags air by weeks and the lag grows with depth — a deep reservoir turns later than a shallow bay — so air is never a stand-in for a thermometer in the water. Read into this site on 2026-10-26.

Shreveport Regional's normals put the hottest afternoons in August, 94.9, just above July's 94.3, and the coldest nights in January at 37.3. Of 51.4 inches of rain in a normal year April brings the most, 5.19, and August the least, 2.91, so the month with the hottest afternoons is also the driest. Snow averages under an inch.

Sunrise, sunset and daylight in Shreveport

The moon window moves daily; the sun does not. Plan a season against this block.

The longest day of 2026 is June 21, 14h 17m; the shortest, December 21, 10h 01m. The meridian passing drifts about 50 minutes later daily: a dawn window this week is an afternoon window in a fortnight.

Texas Parks and Wildlife names winter and early spring as the most productive crappie season on Caddo Lake, and puts the white bass peak in that same part of the year wherever the water carries current. TPWD adds that chain pickerel are good then as well, fished around submerged plants, while sunfish and catfish come on strongest from late spring into early summer.

Louisiana State Parks says Lake Bistineau is drawn down from August through November every year to fight giant salvinia. In the 2025 cycle the Department of Wildlife and Fisheries had the gates opened in late July and closed in mid-November, letting the lake fall four to six inches a day toward eight feet below pool, while about 10,000 acres and four public launches stayed in use.

The Department of Wildlife and Fisheries places the largemouth bass spawn in February in south Louisiana but April in the north, once water holds at 65 degrees, and has black crappie starting in April here at 60 to 65 degrees. January is the one time of year LDWF stocks adult rainbow trout in community ponds, Turner's Pond in Minden among them in 2026, asking anglers to keep them before the water warms.

License and seasons in Louisiana

Rules for Louisiana come from the Louisiana agency, and the calculation behind the table is set out in how we compute these times.