The Record Newspapers - Hometown News For Orange County, Texas

Another S.A.L.T Club Memorial Day Tournament is in the books and it will rank as one of the best in years.By the time the 215 entries had weighed in their final fish, the club membership had all but doubled in size.

Steve Simmons said, “We have had some great tournaments from a fish catching perspective, but it has been a long time since we have signed up this many new members at a single event.”

When you start planning next year’s event while still cleaning up from this year’s tournament, there are a world of things that can go wrong in that length of time and not the least of them is the weather.Mother Nature, however, was very much on board this year as aside from having to dodge a little rain, the conditions were fishermen friendly.

“We weighed in very few big fish, but we weighed in great numbers as most everyone caught fish,” reported Simmons. Redfish were the exception as they weighed in a number of eight to nine pound fish.Much of the lake cleared up virtually overnight, but most of the winning fish were still caught in the ship channel south of the Causeway and Keith Lake.

The biggest winners in the event were the folks that took time to join the club as they now have a new invaluable resource for learning to fish this area. The club hosts everything from guest speakers to club tournaments each month and caters to the entire family in the process.There is a wealth of fish catching knowledge in their membership as many of the members were born and raised in this area and have fished the lake all of their lives

The membership fee is ridiculously reasonable, the huge air conditioned club house is located a short cast off the lake and I have never attended one of their monthly meetings that didn’t include something good to eat.Great way to spend a Tuesday evening!

I recently received an email from James Sparrow announcing that area saltwater fishermen will once again have an afternoon tournament series to fish starting June 7^th .They will fish two tournaments a month in June, July and August out of Ancelet’s Marina.

This will be a two fish per stringer (one trout-one redfish) tournament.Teams will pay a $200 entry fee for the two tournaments each month in advance. Side pot entries will be paid in cash at the tournament.You can pay your entry fee at Outcast Tackle or PayPal [email protected][email protected]>.

After suffering through months of water clarity more akin to wet dirt than water on Sabine Lake, it seemingly cleared up overnight.The difference between last Thursday and .

After suffering through months of water clarity more akin to wet dirt than water on Sabine Lake, it seemingly cleared up overnight.The difference between last Thursday and Monday morning was nothing short of amazing!

Equally amazing were the huge rafts of mullet cruising the surface in the open lake.I fished a light north wind and outgoing tide until the heat drove me off around two o’clock and ran through mullet from East Pass to Blue Buck.I fished very little in the process, but did catch some small trout and two nice flounder south of Green’s.

Aside from the joy of discovering a much clearer lake, the highlight of the morning was having a huge fish just crush my jerk bait before it could return to the surface.After setting the hook, actually the fish took care of that, I spent the next fifteen to twenty minutes following the fish around.

I stopped twice during the extended tug of war and let him have his way while resting my arm.Not surprisingly, the first time the beast broke the surface it was apparent that a huge drum had mistakenly inhaled my lure, but he wasn’t too worried about his error.At that point, all I wanted was to get my lure back.

That proved to be a labor intensive process.He was much too large to fit in the net so it was a matter of holding him close to the surface with one hand, opening his mouth with the other hand, and prying my lure loose with the other hand.The problem was that I only have two hands.He eventually slipped out of my grasp, broke the line and slowly departed with my lure.

If we can avoid any more flooding we may have finally turned the corner on the summer fishing.I know the visiting Bassmaster Elite pros are also hoping that is the case as well as they prepare for their upcoming tournament on the Sabine River.