Coping With March Madness

In one significant aspect, March closely resembles December. Both months dismiss one season and introduce another. Texans generally think of these two months as being part of the season in which they end, more than the one in which they begin. So, the average person places December in winter and March in spring.  

The weather in both these time frames varies wildly from balmy, with highs in the 80s, to downright nippy, with low temperatures dipping down around the freezing point. Anglers trying to cope with the radical changes from warm, windy pre-front conditions to calm, cool post-front ones, face a sometimes daunting challenge. Toward the end of winter, as spring approaches and actually begins, the severity of March weather sometimes creates confusion for anglers heading to the coast of the Lone Star State.  

Over many years of fishing more in the colder part of the year than in the warmer part, I've reached several conclusions about how Texas anglers, specifically those targeting speckled trout, can cope with March weather and improve their chances for productivity. One of these conclusions relates to how trout behave with regard to their reactions to the passage of late-season cold fronts. This is something I've seen many people, including some famous ones, misinterpret.  

Some of the cases where I saw this play out occurred in big tournaments held in the spring-break month, on days after strong (at least for the last part of winter) cold fronts sent air temperatures plummeting into the high-40s and low-50s. In such a situation, water temperatures also decline, sometimes from values well up in the 70s all the way to 60° Fahrenheit or lower. When this happens, people find themselves layering their clothing and bundling up to brace themselves against the unwelcome brisk air.    

Perhaps for this reason, they assume the trout will retreat to relatively deep water, abandoning the shallow areas they inhabit more often this time of year. In my experience, this assumption doesn't comport well with the facts. Anglers who hope to increase their odds for having more productive outings in March should acknowledge how trout, particularly the larger ones, prefer staying in water less than three feet deep, often less than eighteen inches, regardless of the weather and temperatures.  

At the end of the coldest season, the deep water in basins and channels has chilled for a long time. So, a fish leaving the shallows for deeper water in March would usually find itself in colder, not warmer, water. This truth would not apply immediately after a strong front reduces the shallowest water in an area to its lowest point, before it begins to rebound in response to sunny skies and warming weather soon after north winds subside. Nevertheless, trout seem stubbornly committed to remaining tight to the banks, or on the skinny crowns of the flats and humps this month, even when water temperatures reach their lowest point.  

On several occasions, I've managed to make great catches, some in places where I could see other anglers with names known throughout much of the fishing community, in water which didn't reach my knees. In many of those cases, the others fished in water at least up to their waists, sometimes more like chest-deep. And they caught fewer and smaller fish than I and my partners/customers. I've also heard many tales from people I know and admire who won or placed high in tournaments because they chose to stay shallow in post-front March events while others decided the fish had moved deep because of the cold.  

I don't claim to have some perfect, scientifically derived explanation for this truth, but my experiences lead me to believe strongly in its reliability. So, I advise all trout anglers in Texas to stay shallow this month, particularly if they hope to catch some of the biggest fish in the areas where they make their efforts. But this isn't the end of the story of how to improve productivity in this month of madness. Some tactics make much better sense than others for lure fishermen during the change from winter to spring.  

While college students invade the beaches, large topwater lures work amazingly well some of the time. Perhaps the best weather for throwing conventional dog-walking floating plugs like Super Spooks this month occurs when winds first shift from calm or light offshore back to onshore in the lull between passing fronts. On such days, it's often possible to entice big trout into tackling topwaters with deadly intent, sometimes completely leaving the water while they do so. But once onshore winds begin to gain intensity, working a full-sized Spook in rolling waves becomes tedious at best, exhausting in the end.  

So, switching to smaller, more tapered lures which provide less stress on the wrists can make perfect sense, when whistling winds begin to paint whitecaps on the waves. Lures like She Dogs and Spook Juniors often work better for a while after warm, pre-front winds begin cranking in earnest. Eventually, even those lures become difficult to work effectively in the chop generated by the breezes. In such conditions, thoughtful anglers should consider employing what I and others call “slush baits” to improve their odds of earning more blow ups.  

Slush baits float and carry at least one, sometimes two, propellers on their end(s). My favorite lure meeting this description is a MirrOprop. Years ago, I threw Shaggy Dawgs and Tiny Torpedoes too. All these lures require less control on the part of the angler to draw the attention of trout. As long as anglers maintain contact with the head of the lure by eliminating slack in the line, they can be worked with simple, sharp twitches to activate the props, followed by pauses to allow them to bob up and down on the waves, while the blades slowly rotate and twinkle. I think of this drill as “punching” the water with the lure.  

A similar technique works well with an entirely different type of rig, one of the most productive for catching trout in sloppy weather, despite its lack of popularity in the general community of lure chunkers who target big specks. Specifically, I refer here to what I call the “cork and jig,” which includes a soft plastic on a relatively light jighead (either sixteenth or eighth-ounce) dangled below a Styrofoam or plastic cork. I prefer using the slender, light Styrofoam corks made by Comal Tackle Company, not because they have some kind of magical qualities, but because I can carry them in my pocket easily, and they clip onto the line in a matter of seconds.  

So, when I'm fishing soft plastics, as I often do in March or any other month, I can test the productivity of the cork and jig readily, once I decide I'm throwing at fish I can't seem to catch in other ways. In this aspect, the efficacy of the cork and jig isn't specific to this time frame; its use can and does change the game in any month and in many different conditions. Certainly, anglers hoping to cope with the extreme vagaries of the weather and the similar swings in the feeding mood of the trout during March should try throwing the cork and jig some of the time.  

This rings true even for folks like me, who prefer topwaters and slow-sinking twitch baits over soft plastics, and who also prefer fishing by feel, rather than maintaining a vigil on a floating strike indicator. Among the lures requiring adept feel, slow-sinking twitch baits produce epic catches in many types of March weather. I've caught my share of true monster trout during the month of mayhem on sinking Fat Boys and Catch 5s, in particular. The weather most conducive to catching on these lures usually involves wind speeds at or below about fifteen knots.    

Winds of higher magnitude make presenting lures with such slow sink rates difficult at best.  Strong winds and tall waves create drag on the line and pull these lures to the surface, making them essentially the same as topwaters, at least to the trout. One way to cope with this situation effectively, especially when strong winds begin to scream in advance of a late-winter cold front, involves deploying a conventional sinking Paul Brown Lure with the tail bent sharply down. Bending the tail of these finger-mullet shaped lures to almost 90 degrees causes them to dig down into the water, even spin, when the angler twitches the tip of the rod sharply.  

When they spin, the lures circle away from the surface of the water at some point, staying submerged more readily than they do when their tails remain straight. This seems to place them right into the strike-zones of the trout much more effectively than other presentations, particularly when wind speeds reach twenty knots or more, which they often do during March.  I can't take credit for figuring out the satisfying utility of the bent-tail Corky on my own; I learned this trick from other accomplished anglers. I'm not absolutely certain why Paul Brown Lures with bent tails work better than Fat Boys with straight tails when winds threaten to rip the hats off wading anglers, but I've seen enough evidence to say I know they do.