Last weekend (10/17), a nice little cold front pushed through, figured the lake would be lit up with the flight of gulls over hungry fish. Went out in a friends boat, along with another friend of his. We launched at the RV park on Pleasure Island and proceeded to run across the lake toward Garrison's Ridge, then all the way to Johnson Bayou. Not a single flock of gulls! Fished the mouth of Johnson Bayou, one oversized redfish, one undersized redfish. Expecting the tide to turn and come in, we decided to head south to find better incoming current.
Once again, ran all the way to Blue Buck Point, nada, all the way through the south end of the lake, nada. We ended up all the way in Sabine Pass trying to catch some flounder. All the while, not a single flock of birds, except for those following the prop wash of a ship. And, nothing more than a couple of hardheads.
Made the run back to the launch where we meet up with another group just coming in as well. His comment, "Could you believe all the birds?" My buddy replies, "You've got to be kidding." He says, "No, not at all, the north end was wall to wall birds". He had culled some keeper trout and a couple of limits of redfish to boot. He called a friend of his who was fishing the south end that was experiencing the same thing we were, no birds, no fish. But, that friend got the word and made the run to the North End to join in on the fishing frenzy.
Well, that's experience no. 1 on the bad side of the 80/20 corallary.
The following Saturday (10/24), decide to bring along my buddy's friend from last week's long boat ride and make a late afternoon trip. Word once again was, "wall to wall birds in the north end." I know how that goes, but, this late in the day, gotta go on the best and only information we had.
Headed into the North end via a boat launch and ride from Port Neches park. Get in behing Stewt's Island, nada, run along further, looking, trying to find just a glint of a gulls flapping wings, nada. Beginning to sound familiar. We figured, this can't be, can't end up in the wrong 80% again.
Well, continued to run up into Coffee Ground Cove, and saw a couple of gulls sitting on the water, decided to inspect a little more closely. A swirl in the water, some nervous bait, that trout kissing the surface of the water sound, yeah baby, we found'em.
No flock of gulls, but we had finally found some fish. Caught one trout, moved around, looking for more signs, caught some more, began culling some keepers out of the schoolies. For the most part worked one area pretty good, had one boat move in, but they kept their distance.
Decided to see if there were greener pastures, ran further east and found a good flock of gulls. By this time, we already had 8 keeper trout. We fished this flock for a solid hour and a half and finished off our two limits of trout and also picked up 3 keeper reds. Caught most of the trout and reds on plastics, glow Yum minnows. And, couldn't resist some topwater action and caught a few on a Top Dog Jr. silver belly, black back.
We finished up right at sunset and headed back in. We didn't want to quit till we had those two limits of trout. To get those, it was probably a 6 or 7 to 1 ratio of schoolies to keepers, so, you could say we caught a bunch of trout. And, we could say, we finally found the right 80%. That's fishing both ends of the spectrum. But one things for sure, you don't know where the fish are from your couch. Get out and get'em.
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