Hooked Up: March 2012

This big trout season is flying by and we have been taking the good days with the bad. This has been the warmest winter I have fished since I started guiding, and has made the trout do some pretty unconventional things. Establishing a true winter pattern actually means that we have to have some winter weather to hold the water temperatures in the 50s. I am recording week long stretches of temps in the low-70s range on a regular basis, fishing in a t-shirt, and occasionally sweating in January and February. Maybe global warming is real? Joke.

With the warmer than average temperatures, trout have been scattered, to say the least. Typical winter wades require very little movement when you locate the fish. This season finds us moving quite a bit as the fish are scattered from knee deep to five feet of water. The old cliché "Every day is different" has never been truer for me while on the water. If there is one thing that always has, and always will be a constant, it is baitfish. Regardless whether the trout being more scattered than normal, they are always near their food supply. Making sure there is bait in an area that you are planning on fishing is as critical as having your Simms waders on when you get out of the boat this time of year.

The water clarity in Baffin is below average this year. Unfortunately, there is some kind of algae bloom taking place. The bloom is not as severe as it has been in years past, but it is there, and can add to the difficulty level when trying to locate structure where the fish are held up. Saying that, when the sun gets up a bit, and if the wind is not blasting, you can still see the grass and rocks. The Upper Laguna Madre (ULM) has just the opposite issue, crystal clear water, in fact, too clear on most days. In all of my years fishing these waters, I have never seen more grass growing on the bay floor than I have seen this year. The grass has taken over, which makes for clear water, but it also fills in the fish-holding structure we refer to as potholes. Unbelievably, I look forward to days of cranking winds that sustain themselves over 25 mph. As I sit here and write this column the trout are a little slow to move into the King Ranch shoreline and shallow flats of Baffin. Regardless of potholes or water clarity, they will be moving in knee deep water throughout our bay system during March in anticipation of a first spawn. I look forward to these days as shallow water trout are some of my favorite to target, and they are fat to boot.

Previously mentioning all of the grass growing in the Upper Laguna, we just dodged a "Hail Mary" thrown at us by TPWD. They were considering shutting down over 15,000 acres of the Upper Laguna due to prop scarring from boats that draft too deep and have left (minimal) scarring over the past couple of years. The local Indians went wild at the thought, and I do not think TPWD was quite ready for the uprising they received. The TPWD has since decided to spend more time on education to detour this activity versus shutting it down except to the use of kayakers and poling skiffs. This whole deal was a land grab, at best, by a special interest group and, just wrong on many levels. If there is anything we have a surplus of in the Upper Laguna right now it is seagrass. Dredging some openings along the ICW to allow better access onto the flats would prevent 90% of the scarring along the ICW, which is where the majority of the scarring takes place.

Back to fishing - Lure selection, in my opinion, is directed entirely by water clarity. My favorite colors in Baffin have been the morning glory (black) and the red shad (black/dark red) in the 5-inch Bass Assassin. The MirrOlure Corky has produced very well in the brighter colors such as Texas chicken and pearl-chartreuse. We are utilizing the same lures in the Upper Laguna; however, we are switching to more natural colors due to the crystal clear water. Colors like baby bass, Panhandle moon, and albino shad have been great choices on the Bass Assassin, while the Corky lures are best in dayglow, silver hologram, and pumpkinseed.

All of the female trout will have eggs in them starting in March. Give them a chance to spawn, and handle them gently.