dealing with high pressure Fronts — October 28, 2008
Well they have started! Clear high pressure northers! We started out Friday morning with water temperatures falling from 82 down to 67 degrees; yes the fish were some what sluggish with the combined temperature drop and the clear skied high pressure front. But after a little poking around and lure presentation changes we got them to eat. As our pattern for the last two weeks had been sand pot holes in 1 to 3 feet we began our day with the same lure presentation and structure. I started out with a small super spook red head with white body, my guests threw chartreuse silver sided spook jrs and a yum money minnow under a rattling cork with a very SHORT leader, less than 12 inches.
With absolutely no wind, the fish were skittish as heck in the shallow water. I immediately noticed we were spooking reds 50 yards ahead of us. As I had FLOATERS not waders, it made for a tuff morning. I had to tell everyone more than once BE QUIET or we will not catch anything! Also we had to slow our presentation down. SLOW!!! A fast retrieve would just scare the fish before they could see the lure. Our top water presentation was a short twitch or two then just let it sit for up to 10 seconds, BAM most of our hits that morning would happen while the bait was dead still. We did manage to catch a number of upper slot reds and good trout before lunch.
Capts. Ted, Pete, Charles, Mitch, Wayne and Ray all managed about the same results. High light of the trip was Capt. Wayne was able to catch and release a nice 28 plus trout. With the water temperature falling LOOK OUT here comes the big mommas. Yea Ha!!!! Yours truly made ROOKIE mistake and tried to horse a BIG red. 30” plus, had her take my spook away. I haven’t had my line broke in two years, Dumb mistake! Sat. was back to the same pattern with a little faster retrieve as the water had warmed a little and we had some over cast skies.
With Poppie, Capt. Ted fishing Aaron and the boys Sat. and Sunday, Mitch and I went on a businessman’s holiday and made a short wade Sunday AM. The fish had returned to prefrontal action and had we been keeping fish we would have had a limit of trout with the average size being 19 to 23 inches all this with in less than 1 hour. All on TOP WATERS!!!!! Same pattern, 2 feet of water fishing sand pots holes in the grass beds. Mitch caught and released a nice 25” plus trout as well as yours truly.
But the real story lays with Poppie, Aaron and the boys, Sunday found them in 18” of water throwing top waters. When they returned to the dock at 1:00 PM I was concerned there might had been a problem but, as they landed Aaron and the boys all gave me the high fives. Seems between the 5 of them they estimated they had caught and released more than 50 reds before noon. Visions of years past! As my previous reports have said, it’s only going to get better. Come on 50 degree water. The big mommas are out there waiting on us.