The Two-faced Month

In Texas, March weather has a notoriously fickle aspect. Most years, conditions change rapidly and repeatedly during the Spring Break month. With the situation regularly mutating, catching fish consistently on lures in the saltwater bays and waterways of the Lone Star State can prove challenging.

For anglers using lures to target speckled trout in Texas, good March weather usually provides a context for fairly easy catching. Those of us who target trophy specks recognize the last month of winter/first month of spring as one of the best. Generally, good catching weather this month includes relatively light southeast winds and moderate air and water temperatures.

When the weather gods behave graciously during the transition from winter to spring, anglers in the know often catch decent numbers of mature trout on twitchbaits like Paul Brown Lures, Soft-Dines, the Barboleta Lele, and others. On the best days, the big trout attack floating plugs with deadly intentions. Because many trophy trout enthusiasts display adept skills with lures like these, this scenario plays right into their wheelhouse.

But ideal weather conditions aren't the norm in this month of change. In most years, cold fronts continue to sweep across the coast well into spring, so anglers heading out to fish the brine this month usually cope with the changes generated by frontal passages. In other years, a persistently strong onshore flow develops during March, confounding the efforts of anglers with its intensity. In either scenario, folks hoping to keep the catch-rates high need to adjust their strategies intelligently, to match the ever-altering circumstances of the moment.

The passing of a cold front generates a familiar weather cycle. As the front approaches the coast, warm, balmy winds blowing from the Gulf onto land normally increase in velocity. In the immediate aftermath of the passage of the frontal boundary, a cold, crisp breeze from the north whistles with velocity. Late in the winter, cold fronts usually lack the severity they possess in January and February, and the north winds often fizzle out fairly quickly, leaving bluebird skies and dead calm conditions in their wake.

Many people relish the idea of heading out onto the bays to fish when winds fall silent, but catching fish on slick waters under bright skies can prove maddeningly difficult. Wise anglers adjust their tactics significantly when fishing in conditions like these. The difficulty of coping with this kind of weather starts with a confounding uncertainty related to which kind of lure likely offers the ripest potential for catching.

If the passage of a cold front interrupts an excellent topwater bite, and water temperatures decline to values down around sixty degrees, floating plugs sometimes work well in the lull after winds die down to nil. Anglers attempting to catch trout on topwaters this month when the surface of the bays looks like glass should consider doing two things to increase their chances for success, one related to the type of lure selected, the other to the type of presentation used to deploy it.

In general, small topwaters like the Spook Jr, Baby Skitter Walks and She Pups work better than larger ones this time of year, probably because they mimic the primary food sources of trout better than larger ones. So, anglers should select small topwaters when trying to urge blow ups in dead calm conditions in March. And, they should work those lures at a snail's pace. In many cases, trout show more willingness to attack a lure on the surface in calm conditions when the lure barely moves at all. Gently nudging the head of a topwater back and forth as slowly as possible for multiple casts requires supreme patience from the person holding the rod and reel, so many anglers benefit from switching to a slow-sinking twitchbait during the lull in the winds.

Paul Brown Lures and similar offerings work well at times during this part of the March weather cycle, when worked at a medium-slow pace, just under the water's surface. In the worst cases, though, trout sit on the bottom with their heads down, refusing to rise and/or cast their eyes upward to where these lures pass over them. In such situations, when bright skies, dead winds and slack tides diminish the appetites of the fish, anglers should throw soft plastics. In the most negative situations, with high, ballooned barometric pressure in March, dragging soft plastics rigged on sixteenth-ounce heads on the bottom, using soft twitches to hop them up every few feet or so proves the best way to make inactive fish take a bite.

A soft plastic rigged on a super-light jighead and dangled under a small cork can work even better to keep the bite-rate at a reasonable level during the calm lull. This is true in all months and at all temperatures―the cork and the jig sometimes solves the tough-bite puzzle better than all other things. In this specific scenario, a slow, subtle presentation, one which doesn't use the cork to create too much commotion and which involves fairly long pauses often works best.

Contrastingly, anglers deploying the cork and the jig to cope with the other negative brand of weather which commonly afflicts our efforts this month will use faster, more vigorous presentation styles. When persistent, strong onshore winds linger for days and muck up the water, anglers hoping to find a way to catch mature trout should consider deploying soft plastics dangled under corks. The noise created by the cork coupled with the suspension of the lure in the faces of the fish facilitate the effectiveness of this method when big waves and dirty water create difficulties for trout on the hunt. Stronger winds and bigger waves elevate the need for heavier jigheads, whether the worms hang under corks or not.

Certainly, in some ugly conditions in March, when moist winds howl under cloudy skies for days on end, some Texas anglers maintain decent catch-rates by throwing soft plastics, usually paddletails, rigged on fairly heavy jigheads, which help keep them down in the water column. Strong winds tend to pull light offerings to the surface. This fact generally negates the potential efficacy of slow-sinking twitchbaits in the warm, windy kind of weather which often occurs this month.

Keeping a Fat Boy or Catch 5 under the surface when wind speeds ramp up to twenty knots or more becomes difficult, even impossible. Consequently, fishing these lures in a conventional manner in such conditions makes little or no sense, as they behave essentially like topwaters. One way to cope with strong winds and deploy a slow-sinking twitchbait involves taking an original Paul Brown Lure and bending its tail sharply down.

With its tail bent downward to almost ninety degrees, a Brown Lure will stay under the water better when the March wind screams like a banshee. Deploying the lures with sharp strokes of the rod tip, similar to the way one would activate a popping cork or a lipped crankbait, makes the bent lure spin. Because it moves in a circle rather than side to side, it stays down in the water better, and many of the best trout anglers recognize the fact a bent-tail Corky will produce strikes in strong winds, when other slow-sinking twitchbaits won't.

Onshore winds of high velocity also elevate the potential for catching trout on floating plugs. Air and water temperatures in such weather conditions often rise into the upper-sixties or even the seventies while the calendar walks from winter into spring, and these values urge fish to hunt actively. Anglers throwing topwaters while onshore winds howl this month should consider size and presentation, just as they do when winds fall silent.

Larger, noisier plugs like She Dogs, full-sized Skitter Walks and One Knockers make good sense in this situation. These kinds of lures prove easier for trout to find in tall waves and murky water than the smaller, quieter ones. When presenting full-sized floating plugs, smart anglers work them with high levels of intensity, using sharp, deliberate strokes with the rod tip to make the heads of the lures snap from side to side and displace plenty of water.

The most effective presentations usually involve twitching sessions which include a reasonably high number of strokes, up to eight or ten or so, to get the lure wobbling back and forth, generating considerable noise and commotion. Long pauses between twitching sessions also elevate the potential for earning strikes, which often come as sudden and violent explosions, while the lure bobs up and down on the waves.

For this reason, a floating plug carrying rotating props sometimes works well when strong onshore winds persist in March. These lures make lots of noise when anglers use deliberate, focused twitches to activate the props, and they provide flash when bobbing on the tops of the waves, the blades of their props twinkling as they slowly rotate. Similar to the way the cork and the jig sometimes solves a seemingly impossible bite-puzzle, these slush baits sometimes save the day for anglers this month.

Generally, trophy trout anglers who exclusively use lures love fishing through the gateway to spring because of the excellent potential the transitional time offers for catching the fish we most revere. Getting the job done this month does require thoughtful, sometimes specialized, seemingly extreme tactics. Depending on which kind of tough March weather prevails, these tactics vary widely in their basic attributes, demanding versatility from the anglers who deploy them.