Post-Front Maneuvers

As I type, our water temperatures have been cold enough for a long enough period to cause most of the algae and plankton in the water to die. This, along with that fact that we haven’t had much rain to this point has resulted in some areas within the Galveston Bay Complex becoming incredibly clear. While gin clear bay water is pretty to observe it can certainly present some challenges when it comes to tricking fish with lures.

On a recent post-front trip we were faced with just about every obstacle imaginable. In addition to fishing in very clear water, the barometric pressure was through the roof, there wasn’t a cloud in the sky and it was dead calm. Based on past experiences I knew that leaving the dock well before sunrise would make it much easier to fool our fish. Dark colored soft plastics such as Red Shad, Texas Roach and Morning Glory Bass Assassins offer an appealing contrast in low light conditions. In addition, I believe sound (vibration) gets elevated a tick in a trout’s sensory pecking order when there’s less light in the sky. It may sound like a minuscule detail but just the mere gentle slapping sound of our lures onto the water’s calm surface is instantly detected by our sought-after species, initiating the instinctive reaction strike that we’re trying to accomplish. Just think about the number of times we’ve immediately hooked up as our lure hit the water.

My two clients and I began our first drift of the morning tossing 5-inch Assassins rigged on 1/8 ounce Bass Assassin Pro Elite jigheads along the edge of a shell covered flat in about 4 feet of water. This particular flat offers an irregular drop-off into a mud-lined gut about 12 feet deep. The bites were subtle and the only way to even get a shot at getting bit was to let our jigs flutter down close to the bottom. The smaller design of the Pro Elite head dramatically improves our chances when using this on-the-bottom slow-rolling technique as it allows the buoyancy properties of our soft plastics to really have an impact as they slowly sink and hover in the strike zone.

I drew first blood with a typical Galveston Bay two-pound trout, then Marty and Rick chipped in with a redfish and speck respectively. We were able to trick a few more trout and an over-sized red before the sun rose high enough above the horizon to warrant a change in bait colors. We all have those days when the bite is so good that color doesn’t seem to matter. Then there are days when it most certainly does. This day was the latter for sure. I tied Chicken-On-A-Chain Assassins on Marty and Rick’s lines while I grabbed a Slammin’ Chicken for mine. I’ve found that the more natural or intermediate colors like these can be excellent choices at the crack of dawn in clear water. Plum Assassins and Purple Demon MirrOlure Lil’ Johns are also very effective in these conditions. Our decision would prove to be correct as we milked our bite for another hour or so until a lull in the action forced us into changing things up a bit. There’s no doubt that the fish were still there but the brighter sky wasn’t allowing us to get close enough to the fish in the extremely clear water.

It was time to switch colors once again. We switched over to Laguna Shrimp, which is a light pink back with kind of a pearl-clear, glitter-filled belly. This color has been a game changer for us this winter in similar conditions. I made a few other adjustments in an effort to bring back our bite.

I did something that I feel is very effective when drifting or wading in clear water. It’s yet another detail I think a lot of folks tend to overlook and that detail involves looking into the sun. I positioned my boat to where we were facing the sun and therefore greatly reducing the shadow of a 22 foot Whaler with three grown men in it. This is obviously more difficult to accomplish when there is a breeze but this particular morning was dead calm. If you think that casting a shadow doesn’t affect fish just watch how mullet and other baitfish react when a pelican flies through the sun. They scatter like crazy when the shadow hits them.

Repositioning the boat actually helped us in another way as the tide had shifted to where it was flowing toward us which meant all of the fish were facing away from us now. It creates a much more natural presentation when we can swim our baits toward the trout as opposed to coming from behind.

These aforementioned changes, however, were not quite enough to get the job done. Changing to brighter colored tails wasn’t enough in the negative feed situation in which we found ourselves. These were full-bellied post-front trout we were trying to catch. They were more likely to eat a small morsel than a big meal, so we downsized to 4” Assassin Sea Shads which also created that little bit of vibration caused by the paddle tail. Our adjustments worked for the most part as we picked off scattered specks, reds, and an occasional flounder over the course of the next couple of hours…until the bite eventually faded again.

At this point the sun was much higher in the sky and the majority of these fish had found their way off the flat and down along the bottom of the drop-offs into deeper water. By now the tide level had dropped considerably which also contributed to these fish staging along the deeper edge of the guts we were fishing. Our bite was never hot and heavy but we managed to dupe another half dozen trout before heading to the marina. Overall, we were more than satisfied with the results on this Chamber of Commerce postcard day, when fishing this time of year can be challenging, even without the high-pressure blue bird skies.

This article described my approach for a specific area under the circumstances discussed for this particular time of year. It’s meant to give guidance based upon my own successful experiences and is by no means the be-all and end-all strategy compilation. The key takeaway from this piece is having the cognitive awareness to know what changes to make and when to make them, whether it’s deciding which color to choose or which direction to walk down a shoreline. To effectively do this one must be familiar with the characteristics of the area they are fishing, and then be able to use those characteristics to their advantage as scenarios change. And remember, changes that seem very small to us can mean everything to a trout.