The wind certainly has not been a problem this week, but I have struggled to put together any kind of a solid program until today. There has been a very good outgoing tide in the late evening, but I am already home trying to cool off by the time that takes place.
Today, however, was a good one. We had a light north wind and a big outgoing tide had sucked lots of water out of the bayous and the lake over night. As we idled out of Adam's Bayou, I gave Harry Galewsky three luke warm choices as to what we could do and he said, "I like redfish, but I would rather take a shot at catching trout if we can!" That's pretty much cutting to the chase and when his partners, Carl and Billy, agreed, we headed straight to the lake.
We passed on netting live bait and we were drifting the flats with soft plastics twenty minutes later. We fished under birds that were working over trout and lady fish in the middle of the day, but we caught most of a pretty good box of trout up to four pounds by staying on the trolling motor and covering a lot of water.
We missed several fish early, but it took us a while to figure out what was going on. The trout were hitting very light, even a 3-pound flounder that we caught hit light, and you had to give them a second shot at times to get them to take it. The other key was switching back and forth between a 5-inch Assassin and the shorter Sea Shad when we would quit getting strikes. I caught two very nice trout early on a Spoiler Shad right out of the box, but tails were the hotter item.
Carl actually got us going by missing a lot of strikes when no one else was getting bit. I put on a smaller Sea Shad, fished it a little slower, and we all did well until the fish decided that we needed to throw longer baits. I was pleased with the final results, but we really worked our tails off. The lake was dead calm and I thought we may have to hit the bilge pump to get rid of all of the sweat in the bottom of the boat!
Just as I suspected, we found a lot of bait on the surface in the mid-lake area, but there were more terns and gulls working them than fish. We didn't stay with them too long as we were hunting shade by that time.
For the guy fishing the islands and not doing too well!!! I've been fishing pretty hard in the lake and around the islands, and catching some decent fish, not alot of numbers, but solid fish. You may be fishing too close to the islands. I've been starting at Stutes and drifting and trolling all the way to the ICW islands about 200 to 300 yards off the land. Make several passes and turn around if you need too, but fish the Barrel channel hard!!!!!
Posted by: Trout Fisher | June 28, 2009 at 10:26 PM
man ive been fishin hard the north end of the lake with little success..... i fish catch 2000 and plastics all around the islands and all i seem to catch is small reds and specks with very few keepers... what am i doin wrong? i know the fish are there!!!
Posted by: russell | June 28, 2009 at 12:03 PM
Dickie what's a spoiler shad? Can't say I've ever heard of it.
Posted by: Robert Burkett | June 27, 2009 at 10:20 PM
How did ya'll do on the 24th. I was out there drifting behind Stutes island, and the ICW islands, and as you had said, we also did pretty good. We were drifting slow using the trolling motor for direction, and the bite was few and far between, but we managed to carry home a pretty good box of fish by eleven o'clock.
Posted by: Trout Fisher | June 26, 2009 at 08:04 AM