FISH CATCHING TRAVEL
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It really seems to make a difference in not only where I fish, (Locations and spots.) but more and more how I fish, by just putting down the weather, tides, and solunar times the day before I go. It seems looking at them together allows me to contemplate the fishing day and just how I might approach it. (Never forget though, the best time to fish is when you can!) In this case a light wind will be coming out of the NNE, which is usually good for Kellar Bay. These tides really give you very little clue due to their flat nature, but looking at the Solunar times tomorrow the best time starts later in the tide and runs until it is full up. So here is my guess for tomorrow’s trip – no hurry in the morning to Keller Bay, fish my favorite shoreline which will not have any wind, fish until early afternoon, and I should catch some. So we will see how that projection goes after tomorrow’s fishing.
Weather
84/58 Sunny Skies Wind 5 – 10 NNE 0% chance of rain
Tides
High 6:42 AM 1.1
Low 12:33 PM 0.9 (Talk about a flat 2 tide day, this is it.)
High 7:29 PM 1.1
Low 11:47 PM 1.0
Solunar Times
- Best times 10:38A – 12:38P (Yep.)
- 11:00P – 1:00A
- Good time 4:27A – 6:27A
Keller Bay – Making Chicken Salad out of Chicken Stuff
It was hard to believe that after the last 3 months it took a jacket this morning on the way to the first stop. There were probably 6 trucks at the Keller ramp even though it was barely daylight. The wind was about 10 out of little more north than the forecast NNE. Tide was up and the water had a little more tinge to it than I like, but you take it like you find it.
I hopped in the water in on the pasture shoreline right before the sun peaked out in the east. I should have known better after seeing, and feeling, the water temp. The water temp according to the GPS was 77, 14 degrees cooler than my last trip. In fact you could feel the difference in 1 foot of water compared to 3 foot, it definitely cooled off. But I stuck with it, and what jumped on was a sign of things to come.
The biggest thing I caught this morning.
The thing I like about that long high bank is you have water out to almost 6 foot on the edge and there is quite a bit of grass from shallow out to 4 foot. With the tide up I fished real shallow, then a little deeper with the topwater, and only caught 3, that red and 2 small trout. Today they wanted no part of the Chug Bug and wanted the Knocker B in a walk the dog pattern. So it was time to switch to plastics. I started catching them right away on a plastic I had not used before, and they all looked like this. (In fact all of them did on everything I used today.)
VooDoo fish.
The trout above made the site it for 2 reasons. First, I basically caught trout, lots of trout, and they looked just like this. Second, this was on a plastic that I had not used before. It is made by a company called Big Nasty Baits, and the one I used was the VooDoo shad in pumpkin/chartreuse, and boy did they like it. It is a nice soft bait and does have a slot in it if you want to rig it assassin style, but unlike some plastics there is plenty of plastic to hold the jig head on. I admit I bought them because they were on sale, to bad I didn’t buy a few more bags. They will definitely make the arsenal. Check them out, I did and found I like the looks of their original Big Nasty. It has a small pyramid looking tail which should have a high pitched vibration. A little something different from most baits.
For about an hour I waded a pretty big area (football field) catching small trout right along, and deep or shallow, that was all I could catch. So time for another change. I really am trying to expand my trout horizons. A bait I promised to get good at is the hard twitch baits. Never having all that great a luck on them I thought what a good time to try them. If there is that many here I should be able to keep catching them so a little practice was in order. By now I was waist deep casting back to 1′ or out to 4′ and there was lots of bait.
This one thumped it.
It turned out to be the right decision. The trout never did get bigger, but they sure were willing. First it was a MirrOLure floater that dives just a hair, and next was the slow sinker/suspender. A quick little twitch with a pause seemed best. When throwing it to shallow water, fishing it like a worm to keep it out of the grass worked. Easy lifting and dropping it I could feel some of them peck it. I did learn that if you twitch and it ain’t there, they got it. And basically if you thought you might have felt something it was already to late, so set the hook. There is lots to learn to become proficient, but it is just another technique to add more trout. Even though I never put myself with the better trout, it was nice to catch a dozen+ and get a little feel and confidence in the hard twitch baits.
So today was not a total bust, unless I had planned a fish fry. It seems every once in while you have a day like today, catch the snot out of them, but they don’t amount to nothing. It was an easy 30 this morning, so I got plenty of chance to practice the twitch bait. At least I feel confident enough to throw the twitch baits, and I will do it more this fall.
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I forgot to tell you all something that happened when I was fishing the lake Monday. I saw a big gator try to catch a heron feeding in knee deep water. He just exploded in a huge boil of water and mud, it was that shallow. He missed and the heron flew off squaking his head off. That is the 4th time I have seen them try to hit birds. Just cool when it happens.
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It was nice to take a couple of days off for a little adult fun in one of those gambling dens. Nice to tune out every once in while. But it was also great to be back on the water. Keller is probably not on the list for a while. As I spend more time trying to improve my trout fishing means less spinnerbaiting for reds, the usual motivator when I fish Keller. And reading the Falcon Lake Tackle report on a tournament this weekend makes me want to head that way. They had a first day leader with 21lbs. Now that is a good string anywhere, but in this case it is a 3 fish tournament. I will take a 7lb average all day. Falcon appears to be getting back it’s Mojo. The boss is about to start another long stretch so I will be hitting the bay pretty hard. And I have just about finished a post on a new tackle box from Coastal Fishing Gear and will get it up tomorrow. It is awesome. So keep stopping in and thanks for reading my stuff.
Good Luck and Tight Lines
