Higher Tides Slow Down Catching

It seems like every time I have convinced myself that we have turned the

corner on Covid-19, another individual I know tests positive and it

becomes a little more real.If you can safely make it to the water, there

is probably no safer place to be than fishing in the middle of the lake!

Sooo…….the most viable preventative options until a vaccine is developed

is to wear a mask and go fishing.I’ll bet that is not a reason you ever

thought you would use to escape to your favorite fishing hole every day.

Over the past couple of weeks, the middle of the lake has, however, been

a foot or two deeper due to a run of higher than usual incoming tides

and a stiff south wind that aids in stacking up the water.No place is

this more evident than the local marshes and several recent incidents

confirm this phenomenon.

“I knew the open marsh ponds had been grassing up too bad to fish,” said

Doyle Leger, “but the higher water kind of extended a really good bite

on bass and redfish.”Leger and his brother bogged down in the thick

grass a foot or so beneath the surface and overheated their engine last

Thursday.

“The problem was that we couldn’t find the open trail again.My brother

got out and pulled the boat while I push poled and by the time he walked

off into deeper water our motor had cooled down, added Leger.“We idled

along and felt our way out with the push pole.”

It took the worn out brothers the better part of five hours to wind

their way into Johnson Bayou.Fortunately they were fishing in a 16 foot

aluminum boat and not a performance bass boat.

Several years back, I received a call from a tuckered out Brian Sandow

saying they were stuck in a marsh pond and there was no way they were

going to free his 23 foot Bay Boat.They had missed a trail as well at a

high rate of speed and had lodged their boat so deeply in the soft mud

that they couldn’t even turn the boat around.

“We are not real sure where we are,” said Bryan, “but we fished this

area with you in the past.”After eliminating several spots, Gene Locke,

Bob Crew and I found them indeed buried in the muck in the back of a

shallow pond.

They were buried so deeply that all I could do was wallow through the

chest deep mud and tie our bow rope to a cleat on their boat.They exited

the boat and we used the rope to pull ourselves back to Gene’s boat.The

following day we returned to the spot of the crime and managed to free

their boat on a higher tide.

The bottom line is that while the bite in the marshes has been very good

lately, don’t be fooled by the higher than usual tides.The thick

vegetation is lurking just beneath the surface and it isn’t overly

forgiving!

Over the years, July has not been a very fisherman-friendly month, but

don’t try to sell that to the bass fishermen that gather up at the

public launch every Tuesday afternoon.The field of local competitors has

slimmed down a little of late, but that could be due to heat as much as

anything else.

What hasn’t fallen off is the catching.If you don’t return to the

weigh-in with nine to ten pounds you are probably not going to win.And,

while they are not fooling many bass in the five pound class right now,

three and four pound fish are not that uncommon.

Bobby Flynn of Houston and his wife, Peggy, intended to fish Sabine lake

Wednesday, but the wind pinned them down in Cow bayou. “I never knew Cow

bayou had so many crooks and turns,” said Flynn, “but it also has a lot

of fish!”

“We weren’t prepared to bass fish and I only had a couple of

chatterbaits and two shallow running crankbaits in my box,” added

Flynn.“Peggy quickly broke off the crankbaits on her lighter spinning

gear so we were stuck with the Chatterbaits.

By the time they put their boat back on the trailer that afternoon due

to a thunderstorm they had caught and released several undersized

redfish and in Flynn’s words, a pile of bass.“I only bass fish at the

golf course at home so I am not a great judge as to how big the bass we

caught were, but I know we released at least four or five fish over

three pounds.”