Saturday, March 05, 2011
3/2/11 Beautiful Day on Sabine lake
I got a call from Dan Oko inquiring about the upper coast of Texas , specifically the Sabine lake area last week. He was writing a story for Texas Highways Magazine to high light what the area had to offer in terms of what to see and do.
I was thrilled he wanted to fish and get an insiders view of the our area. The bite was slow to say the least from daylight until 10:30 AM. The tide wasn't moving then but was starting to move later in the day. The Red fish started doing their thing right on time . The 1st fish weren't real aggressive but shortly after they showed their real colors and gave Dan a good fight with aggressive strikes. I attribute feeling the 1st subtle strikes to the combination of a CastAway graphite rod and PowerPro braided line, the sensitivity is unreal.Dan had brought his photographer Ben Desoto along to document the days activities thru the eye's of his camera. I'm really looking forward to seeing the finished shots he took during the day. I learned several things during the day just watching how he used camera angles and lenses to get up close to the action.
We had 7 Reds in the boat and 6 of them would keep. The Specks were camera shy and never showed them selves. I new of a spot where the Flounder should be this time of the year so we ran over to the marsh where the tide was falling out off the flats. Sure enough we barely got the trolling motor down when small shad were basted into the air right off the shore line. One cast and Dan had a nice 15" Flounder on the way to the boat. We picked up 3 Flounder from that spot, 2 of them would keep.
All in all we had a great day on the water with good weather ,fair winds and hungry fish. Dan and Ben were hungry so we stopped by Peggy's on the bayou for Po Boys and Burgers on the way back to the boat launch.
All except one of the Reds we caught ate Chicken on a chain sea shads pinned on a 1/4 oz.jig head. The other came off a Pumpkin/Chrt. assassin under a popping cork.
I threw many different baits, top waters, crank baits, several colors of plastic but they only liked the Chicken color. All the Flounder liked the Chicken color to. When I cleaned the fish I found they were feeding on small crabs the size of a dime, dark back & white belly.The chicken on a chain must look like the crabs in the fishes eyes. I wonder if we would have done better trimming down the size of the sea shads to match the hatch?
All in all Dan was pleased with the fishing and what the area has to offer. His dead line for the article is March 10th . Hopefully we will get to see our area high lighted in the pages of Texas Highways magazine in the near future.
Tight lines, Capt. Michael Rector
¶ 11:20 AM
