I hadn't even gotten my boat in the water this morning when Kevin issued the following warning, "You may be fishing in the perfect storm by noon. Its coming up from the south and down from Huntsville and they are going to collide on Sabine Lake" He missed it by thirty minutes!
We were almost back when it really got bad!
It was dark and getting darker when we shut down under the first flock of gulls and a howling east wind wasn't helping matters. That said, our first three casts produced two solid trout and a slot red. Before I could put them on ice my phone was ringing and I figured someone at home had been watching the weather.
"I don't know where you are right now, but it can't be as good as where we are," said Rusty Frederick. "We are on the south end and the birds are everywhere." Now, it makes no sense running even further from home in 3 foot seas with a killer front headed your way...especially when you are already catching fish. That said, we left after boxing a few more trout as I had to see what could be better than what we had going on.
I never saw Rusty, but he was right...it was even better. As a matter of fact, I don't know that I have ever seen it any better than it was for the next four hours. You can't do any better than a strike on darn near every cast, but the average trout was much larger. Color didn't matter and they didn't care how fast you retrieved your lure. If your lure ever made it to the bottom more often than not you were going to have to deal with a slot red.
It was worth getting a little wet.
We released far better fish than we kept earlier, but no one was complaining. Johnny fished a group with me Friday following Thursday's downpour and we were really concerned when a north wind was doing its thing at daylight. Once again, he ran further south and called to tell me they had found some redfish between the whitecaps. Johnny can find birds on East Bay when he is fishing Sabine!
We caught and released redfish all day long and finished with 5 limits of reds and 29 trout. Unlike today, we had to measure many of our keeper trout and at least a jillion that we did not keep. We have been catching lots of small trout and I was getting a little concerned that there may be a scarcity of solid fish this fall. After this morning, I do not think that is a problem.
My only concern now is that all of the rain up the country will eventually run down hill and we are downhill. The water clarity has already suffered a little and the surface temperature was back below 70 at noon. As good as it is, I still hate fishing the birds, but it may be the only game in town until the weather lines out!
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