The front blew through and I am cleaning up tackle, changing out hooks and respooling reels as this is the last chance I will have prior to a full week of fishing starting Monday. Keeping your own tackle in order is one thing, but keeping it up for four fishermen can be a little daunting at times. Eight rods, at least four of every hard bait MirrOlure makes in a lot of patterns, Zip Lock bags full of corkies, tupperware containers crammed full of line and leader material and a box full of jig heads that is only marginally lighter than my starting battery.
This morning I hope to dry things out, fill in the gaps on colors of Assassins, and change out rusted treble hooks. An eight-pack of tails doesn't go very far with four fishermen. This entire weekend will be devoted to a two-day reunion with old college team mates that may not even recognize each other after 40 years. That really doesn't matter as 90 percent of the team were full-blooded coonasses and the other 10 percent were "wannabe coonasses" which means we are all at least a cousin or will by the end of the weekend. Les Bon Ton Roulet!
It has been a crazy week of fishing. I started out with an eye toward the weekend praying for a front to roll in and by the time it got here I was more than content with what I had. A south-southeast wind got progressively stronger ahead of the front, but the fish were doing their thing. The water cleared up as fast as it dirtied up last weekend and we just hammered the fish in the lake for three days. The birds were working all over the lake and it was as easy as it gets.
Bill and Brian Bommer cashed in on the unreal redfish bite!
Some days you had to work several flocks to find keeper trout, but every group was working over small trout, sand trout, blue fish, and reds. Brian Bommer and his brother, Bill, fished with me one day and we could not get away from the slot redfish. We would leave birds as soon as we caught and released another red only to find the same thing under the next flock of birds.
The next two trips were spent in the river looking for trout in deeper water after limiting on redfish in the lake. The first day we kept 16 trout up to 4 pounds, but the following day we caught more small trout and kept only 3 flounder, 9 trout and limits of reds. Yesterday I fished the Neches and did not do well at all. The water was a little dirtier than it is in the Sabine (I didn't check the Sabine) and I have just started trying my deep water jigging program on the Neches. I think it will be every bit as good as the Sabine, but I fortunately do not have much time to explore right now.
If this front is strong enough to blow some water out of the marsh and sustain a 5 to 8 degree surface temperature drop, the fall bonanza will be in full swing. The only thing missing right now anyway are the big trout and they will show up very shortly!
How did you do this week with the wind? I fished Monday morning and did good until the wind blew me off the lake. Wasted a weeks vacation watching the wind.
Posted by: Robert Burkett | October 22, 2009 at 01:23 AM
Capt Dickie thanks as always for the report. This weekend after being harrased by crabbers and folks gunning around in bass boats trying to chase down every gull in the county we tried to brave the wind and move down to the south and check it out. Saw Capt Johnny down around Willow's and he was nice to us and told us we probably should be moving back north but we went down around the grass anyway. There was a little action there but we moved back north around the Stewts area and finished out limit of reds with a few trout to 18". Lots of throw backs.
Posted by: Lloyd Criswell | October 19, 2009 at 09:21 AM