The Record Newspapers - Hometown News For Orange County, Texas

It wasn’t the first time that I had made the same mistake, but in this case I wasn’t disappointed at all.The mistake was running all the way to the south end of the lake first thing out of the box hoping to take advantage of a tip shared with me the day before.

A youngster in Home Depot helping me locate the best drill bit for the job asked why I wasn’t fishing and my answer obviously had something to do with the “honey-do” at hand.“My Dad and I just killed the fish twice last week and we hadn’t been catching anything” he proudly shared.

By the time the conversation ended I was ready to go home and hook up the boat.“Killing them” was a little over the top, but they had at least found a bite in the same general area two days a week that yielded a dozen or so keepers each outing.

“We were fishing with shrimp under a cork,” he said, “but there were a lot of terns around and I bet we could have caught them on anything.My Dad just prefers live bait!”

When he added the fact that they easily caught twice that many undersized trout he really tweaked my interest.The following morning I was headed to the south revetment wall at daylight and just as he said, the terns were already starting to work.We managed to fool only a couple of slot reds with four inch Assassins, but virtually every cast fooled either a small trout or a lady fish and we were not complaining.

Our mistake as we later discovered was that we had run much further than needed to catch better fish.When the initial bite slowed we ran to the Louisiana side of the lake hoping to avoid an approaching thunderstorm, but we made our exit a little too late…..we got wet!

While huddled up against the Roseau cane we noticed small groups of finger mullet parading down the shoreline.One cast with the castnet was all it took to fill up the livewell.Unfortunately, the fish didn’t like them as much as we did and we started slowly cruising homeward when Carl spotted more lady fish on the surface.

A bite is a bite so we switched back to plastics and caught and released small fish until Carl broke off a very nice red on a Skitterwalk.When we couldn’t draw another strike we went “old school” and drifted with the wind bouncing our live mullet off the bottom.

We buried the Talon twice when reds came up within casting distance, but long story-short, the live mullet produced two limits of reds and fourteen trout.Carl drifted his mullet under a cork and probably caught a few more trout than I did sticking with the Carolina rig.

Aside from the fact that we were finally catching fish again, the best thing about the trip was that we found fish in more than one place. That has not been the case of late.Any time we found even a few fish they were holding in a very tight area and the bite was short lived.

The daily monsoons have continued to have a negative effect on the water clarity, but the bite hasn’t slowed thus far.The biggest problem has been leaving a bite to run from the fast moving cells of rain.It actually feels good due to the heat, but I don’t do lightning.

I don’t know that the bite is sure enough getting better, but it has definitely improved.Only time will tell.

First call for tickets to the upcoming Orange County CCA Chapter Banquet.It may strike you as a little early to announce an event that doesn’t take place until Aug. 9^th , but tickets go quickly for the much anticipated annual event, especially the corporate tables.

The job the CCA does is reason enough to attend, but this is a truly fun evening.Great food, great auction items and a super bunch of fishing folks make for a great time.The event kicks off at 6:00 p.m. at the Orange County Convention and Expo Center on Hwy. 1442.

For more information or tickets contact Louis Moore at 409-988-4845, Scott Bandy at 409-988-3667 or Brian Weaver at 713-626-4222.See ya there!