REDFISH LOVING THE COLD WEATHER

“I don’t know what will happen once they are actually on the water, but they both cast well and will fish from can-to-can’t,” said Gerald Johnson after giving his twin grandsons a trip for Christmas.“We are dedicated duck hunters so don’t worry about canceling due to the weather.” It turned out that Kane and Karlin were seven year old twins that had been hunting on the family rice fields with Geepaw virtually every day of the season since they were five years old.Kane agreed that his brother was a better shot, but quickly added that Geepaw said he was the better caller.

They had also mutually agreed that the one that caught the most fish would get the east end of the blind the following morning.

Karlin sent me an email that night saying that Kane got the prime seat and messed up the only three mallards that came close enough to shoot all morning.

I can assure you, however, that neither of them missed many strikes the day before.As a matter of fact, I quit fishing after catching only one redfish.It was immediately apparent that they were going to have no problem filling their own limits.They figured out the program very quickly and Gerald and I drank coffee and netted their fish.

Much to my surprise, both youngsters fished with Garcia 5500 bait casters because that was what Geepaw passed along to them to bass fish in one of the Country Club ponds.While redfish after redfish can eventually wear most of us out, they never cried “Uncle”.

I was also surprised while cleaning fish at the end of the day when they said they still liked bass fishing the best.“They are harder to catch”, said Kane and “you get to use all kinds of baits to catch them.” Karlin quickly added that bass don’t bite or stick you every time you pick them up either!” I considered the fact that we didn’t have to try multiple lures in multiple color combinations a bonus.Both boys fished their way through two packs of morning glory Bass Assassins without ever having to experiment.In hind sight, I guess they would have preferred experimenting at some point.

While the bite was ridiculously easy, the fact that they spend most of their time crawling a plastic worm across the bottom made it even easier.These redfish were deep and the boys not only kept their Assassins in contact with the bottom, but kept their rod tips in a good position to not only detect a strike, but set the hook as well.

While neither of them would concede that redfish pull harder than a bass, they did give them the nod for pulling longer.

The fact that they were catching them in a strong outgoing tide had a little to do with the extended battles as well.

The best news of late has been the improved trout bite.There was more than a little concern that the recent bone chilling weather would shut down what had been a better than average bite for trout up to seven pounds.We have not seen trout that size most of the year and were excited to have them once again doing their thing.

The pool for gathering information this time of the year is not very large, but the majority of those I have talked with lately are catching their larger trout in 3 to 5 feet of water on Corkies and suspending mullet imitations like the Catch V and smaller Catch 2000.Prior to the surface temperature dipping to the 43 degree mark, we were also catching them on topwaters.

Aside from the cold, easily the biggest problem was dealing with the extremely low water.The same areas we had waded the week before were reduced to visible mud flats.I would be willing to bet that we set a record in 2017 for the total difference in water levels in the Sabine ecosystem.The difference between the low water Wednesday and the high water mark in Harvey had to be significant! If you aren’t mad enough at the fish to deal with the cold and wind, there are still three days remaining to make the Houston Boat Show.There is a lot of new stuff to check out for both fresh and saltwater fishermen this year.