LARGER TROUT AND LESS WATER

For The Record -For The Record- By Capt Dickie Colburn

How can you be absolutely sure it’s the first day of the High School baseball season?You climb out of your truck wearing shorts and a wind breaker only to notice that every other parent or grandparent huddled behind the backstop is wearing an insulated jacket or wrapped in a blanket.Only the women were practical enough to bundle up in sleeping bags!

I mention this only because I, too, initially had on shorts Saturday morning, but fortunately also had warmer clothes in the truck.There is seldom a day between now and the end of March that a client arrives dressed warmly enough, thus the reason for carrying the extra hoodies and jackets.

It seems that I am forever lauding the merits of a Frogg Togg rain suit when fishing, but it can also be your best friend at a cold windy ball park.They are light and easily stowed away when no longer needed and, best of all, eliminate the biting chill factor of that northeast wind that inevitably kicks up immediately following the Star Spangled Banner.

That same cold wind that pumped across the area most of the week, virtually dried up area marshes.If you have been waiting on that annual phenomena to start fishing again then you should be more than happy.There was more mud than water to wade through Sunday afternoon.

The good news for folks that were able to get their boats off the trailer or throw their kayak in the direction of the water, did well in spite of the wind and dirtier water.Both rivers and the bayous were even dirtier than expected as the loose silt was sucked out along with the water, but there was still six to ten inches of water clarity on the northeast side of the lake.

Most rewarding for anglers willing to contend with the wind and low water was the average size of the trout they caught.Yet another eight pound fish was caught and released and at least a third of the trout caught were three to five pound fish. Without a doubt the drift fishermen scored better than the waders, but that is not surprising when the water is that low.

The only bad news, aside from having to wrestle your boat back on the trailer, was that the bite in the bayous and river slowed to a crawl.It had been exceptionally good for both bass and redfish over the past several weeks, but those anglers that chose to avoid fighting the wind said that was not the case this weekend.Most of them felt it was simply due to poor water clarity.

After two weeks of consistently catching trout in the five pound class wading the north end of the lake, Lady Luck extracted a little revenge on Jimmy Hector and Alton Lejeune Monday morning.“The first trout I caught jumped in my face when I reached for her and buried the front treble hook on my Super Spook in my chest on the way down,” said Lejeune.

“It hurt, but the biggest problem was that it went through my waders and shirt,” added Lejeune. After we finally got everything cut away around the hook, Al was too afraid to jerk on the monofilament to pull out the hook.Those little half ass tugs only hurt worse!”

For those of you that have been fortunate enough to avoid having to use a loop of monofilament line and a sharp jerk to remove a hook from a body part, it is a relatively painless procedure when done correctly.In this case, however, Alton apparently never manned up and Jimmy fished the remainder of the morning with a hook in his chest.The fact that they never caught another fish only added to the pain.

I would never leave the house without a box full of soft plastic mullet imitations like the Fat Boy, Softdine and Maniac Mullet this time of the year, but we have done better recently with the hard plastic versions like the Catch V and Catch 2000.Confidence is more important than any other factor and I would feel comfortable virtually every day with only two colors……pink or dayglow.

While those extra clothes in the backseat or trunk are handy at the ball park, do not leave the dock this time of the year without a change of clothes packed away in a dry plastic bag.They can prevent a cold minor mishap from becoming a tragic event!