Hot Complications

In one satisfying and important way, searing summer heat simplifies things for anglers committed to using lures in the saltwater bays and coastal waterways of Texas. High water temperatures speed up the fishes' metabolism rates, making them regularly hungry and fairly easy to catch, on average. Trout and redfish feed more frequently in summer than in winter, elevating the potential for earning a strike on each cast and retrieve.

In cold water, the metabolism rates of fish slow down, making them more likely to sit inactive on the bottom without seeking food. In extreme circumstances, this can temporarily make them almost impossible to catch. In such a case, the fish often emerge from the sluggish state with ravenous appetites and become easy to entice into striking lures for a while. Savvy, experienced anglers who understand when these flurries of activity will likely occur often make impressive catches while the fish behave like gluttons.

While trout actively prowl the shallows during the coldest season, the efficacy rates of lures like slow-sinking twitchbaits and even topwaters rise for a while. But on average, for most of the time on the days between about Thanksgiving and Spring Break, soft plastics produce more bites than the other families of lures. Anglers who accept this fact throw these lures a high percentage of the time during winter, mostly working them slow and low in the water column.

This simple fact can create comfort in the minds of folks who want to feel confident in their choices when they go fishing. Conditions which simplify choices make catching fish on lures easier. Conversely, conditions which complicate choices make catching fish on lures more difficult. In some ways, the high water temperatures associated with the summer heat wave do complicate the efforts of lure chunkers targeting trout in Texas, despite the basic way hot water accentuates the fishes' appetites.

For most experienced anglers using lures to target trout in the Lone Star State, a day of summer fishing starts with the deployment of floating plugs like She Dogs, One Knockers and Skitter Walks, incorporating standard, dog walking retrieves. Given the calm conditions which generally prevail on most summer mornings, this strategy often proves quite successful, at least for a while. But on most days, once the sun ascends high enough into the sky to penetrate well into the water column, the fish become more difficult to urge to rise all the way to the surface to take these lures.

When this happens, many anglers, including some with well-known names who make a living running charters, immediately switch to soft plastics in an effort to keep the bite rate as high as possible. And such a plan often produces the desired result. The mantra of using topwaters early in the summer, then switching to the worm as a backup plan, exists for a reason. People have witnessed its utility many times.

But, I contend other strategies can and will produce even more satisfying results for folks who simply want to catch their fish on something other than a soft plastic impaled on a jighead. I recall many hot days on which I used different strategies to catch fish on a variety of lures, sometimes with supremely satisfying results. On an ideal summer outing, I wind up catching fish on medium-sized topwaters, small topwaters, slow-sinking twitchbaits and soft plastics, sometimes adding topwaters bearing propellers into the mix.

In many instances, some customers choose to continue walking the dog after about nine or ten o'clock in the morning, after we've caught lots of trout on topwaters early. I, and in some cases others in the group, often change to other lures and/or begin to fish other ways, and continue catching at a lower rate than the early one, but still with some degree of consistency, while the angler walking his dog catches nothing for a significant span of time.

On some of these days, after a lull of two or three hours or so, the committed (aka stubborn) one in the group begins earning blow ups again, and all of us in the group switch back to floating plugs to finish the day. On other days, the person or people who stick with One Knockers and Super Spooks never start catching again. In most of those scenarios, I and the others in the group continue catching at some kind of a reduced rate for the remainder of the day. Both types of days reveal truths about the ways in which hot water temperatures complicate the choices we make.

When hot weather prevails, trout become somewhat predictable in their daily habits, especially in certain kinds of places. On spoil banks lying adjacent to a ship channel or the Intracoastal Waterway, for instance, the daily regimen of the trout reveals itself readily to experienced eyes. Late at night and early in the morning, when water temperatures cool to their lowest values, the fish often prowl actively on the shallowest parts of the crowns and spines of the spoils, causing baitfish to crowd together in visible packs. When the trout feed most actively, the frantic movement patterns of the targeted members of these herds often reveal the precise locations of their hunters.

In this case, topwaters often work well to attract the attention of trout around dawn and for some time after the sun begins to rise in the sky. Eventually, the evidence of fish feeding in the shallows wanes, and the blow ups become less frequent in those areas. Once the bait moves off the top of the spoil entirely, and catching fish in the shallows on topwaters becomes difficult or impossible, earning bites around the edges of the spoil, in slightly deeper water, on sinking twitchbaits or soft plastics, usually becomes easier. This same basic scenario surely plays out in places with less well-defined contour lines separating water of different depths, though in a less obvious way.

Take bodies of water like Sabine Lake and Trinity Bay, for instance. In the mid-summer heat, many of the trout often move away from the shorelines and into their deep, middle portions.  Early in the morning, anglers can key on visible signs of feeding activity at the surface, like hovering gulls, diving terns and rafts of obviously nervous mullet, and catch fish on top in water too deep for wading. Later on, slicks popping in the same area, usually without visible signs of feeding activity at the surface, elevate the potential for catching on soft plastics rigged on relatively heavy heads, close to the bottom.

Excessive heat tends to drive the fish into deeper water, or at least farther down in the water column, for extended periods of time. When this happens, lures presented closer to the bottom stand a better chance of provoking attacks. If the trout move off the top of the spoil or away from the surface in deeper water, soft plastics presented near the bottom will work better for a while, because they pass closer to the fishes' eyes and mouths.

I believe this is why some people believe hot water makes the fish “sluggish” and elevates the effectiveness of slow presentations. I hear this all the time from accomplished anglers, who say things like, “Hot water makes the fish lazy. You got to work it low and slow to catch fish when it's really hot.” If the fish have stopped actively prowling the shallows and moved toward or onto the bottom in deeper water, this might appear to be so. I believe people catch fish by presenting soft plastics low and slow during these times because they've found the proper depth of presentation, not because the fish feel sluggish in the heat. 

Regardless of the explanation, soft plastics worked near the bottom often work best to catch relatively inactive fish during the bright parts of summer days. But, on some occasions, switching down to soft plastics as soon as the strike rate on conventional topwaters wanes is certainly not necessary. I've experienced many days on which I first caught plenty of trout walking the dog with a medium-sized, cigar-shaped plug like a One Knocker, then kept catching after the original bite waned by altering my presentation to include more pauses and speed bursts. Switching to a small topwater like a Spook Junior usually enhances the efficacy of this endeavor.

Cold-blooded creatures can and do move around faster in hot water than in cold water. In many cases, predators will attack a steadily moving lure on the surface of the water when actively feeding, but once they become less active, they'll attack a more erratically moving lure better, as an impulse, or reaction. In hot water, presentations incorporating speed urge more reaction strikes than presentations which use only slow, steady movements.

Ironically, things can also come full circle, during the middle of a hot summer day. Anglers committed to fishing topwaters through the period of time when other lures work better often reveal this truth. Around the middle of some days which started with a hot bite on full-sized floating plugs, small topwaters worked erratically or even topwaters with propellers on their ends often begin to earn plenty of strikes again, likely from fish which have become hungrier after sitting relatively idle for a while. The action usually happens in water of greater depths than where the best bite occurred at daybreak.

On some summer days, the best catching happens early in shallow water on medium-sized topwaters worked in the most conventional way, then for a while on smaller floating plugs, zipping around quickly before bobbing for a moment on the waves, later on slow-sinking twitchbaits worked through middle portions of slightly deeper water and last on soft plastics worked slow and low, in water almost too deep for wading. This proves quite satisfying to lure-chunkers who enjoy catching fish in multiple kinds of ways.