Big Lake is heating up!

We called a trip off this morning due to all of the rain, but could not have asked for a more perfect day on Tuesday.  It was a little cooler than expected, but there was no wind and it was overcast all day long.  We fished Big Lake for the first time since Christmas and the fish are definitely doing their thing.

The lake was in fantastic shape.  We stayed in 3-4 feet of water all day long and you could see bottom everywhere we fished.  We caught a lot of quality trout up to four pounds, but never turned over a bragging size trout.  It wasn't because they weren't there, however, as we saw several sure enough big fish hustling mullet during the day.  There had been a good topwater bite of late, but we caught all of our trout on Corkies, Crazy Croakers, and Catch 2000's.

The water was 56 to 58 degrees and the fish were absolutely slamming the bait.  It was a blast as you could see them all most as soon as they turned on your lure.  Our best colors were pumpkin-chartreuse and chartreuse with pearl sides.  We spent most of the day on the north end of the lake, but Chuck fished some stuff west of the ship channel and did just as well with topwaters.

If you missed out last year and are still looking for a shot at a big trout, I wouldn't wait much longer to head this way.  There were a few really big trout caught in December, but it wasn't as solid as it will be over the next couple of months.The biggest difference in Big lake and Sabine for me is that I don't catch the numbers of trout over seven pounds on Sabine that I do on Big lake when it is going strong.  If the conditions are decent, we expect more than one shot at a big fish over the course of a day.

You do what you feel like you gotta do when you get to Big lake, but if you elect to wade, I would not advise anchoring the boat and covering up a quarter mile of shoreline with three or four waders.  The home folks are slowly getting used to seeing Texas anglers climb out of the boat to fish, but they still aren't going to give them too much acreage to get it done!