Keith Lake Chain Produces Fall Trout and Reds, But Flounder on the Other Hand?

Took out one of my son's childhood friends, Colby, who is like a half nephew and he calls me Uncle Mike, out into the Keith Lake chain for some fall fishing this past Saturday - November 6.  Although I had to make a cell phone call from his driveway at 5:30 a.m., he put himself together and was out the door in less than time than I could tie on a spoon.

We got launced at Junior's at 6:05 a.m. and headed out in the morning twilight.  I had high expectations and felt we couldn't go wrong in Keith Lake, especially with the freshwater influx into the north end of Sabine Lake from Rayburn and Toledo Bend.  The water looked good, we had good calm conditions early.

But, the ride to through Keith Lake, then through Redfish Pass and along all the points in Johnson showed no early gull flight overhead.  It was early, but I still fully expected to see birds.  We proceeded back to Mud Lake, cast netted some shrimp for tipping grub tails and catching what I now believed a very attainable limit of flounder.  Ok, 2 per person in November isn't much, or is it.

After catching some shrimp, set up a drift on a strong incoming tide with an ENE wind to push us along as well.  We were fishing curly grub tails in a root beer color and tipped with shrimp.  My favorite flounder hole produced that hammer thud on the 3rd cast, missed him.  A couple casts later, hooked up.  This fish starts to run, Ok, redfish.  Then she breaks the surface, she's a nice speckled trout - a 22 incher.  Made some more casts and produced another trout and an undersized Red.  Wait a second here, who's catching all the fish.  I turned to Colby and said "You go'in to watch me catch fish, or you go'in to start catch'in as well?"  It didn't take him long before he began contributing as well.

Soon after are first drift, we spotted a nice flock of gulls and began to catch a mixed bag of trout and redfish.  Most of the trout in the keeper size while the reds were mostly undersized with an occassional slot red.  We fished this pattern for awhile and managed 7 keeper trout and no tell'in how many redfish, we released all of them. 

Along with all the fishing, we did some exploring and sightseeing. Had a nice flock of geese fly directly overhead and had ducks flying within eyesight all morning long.

Now, back to the fishing, as you probably noted, no mention of flounder.  To my amazement, we didn't catch the first flounder all morning.  I'm confident the flounder are still in the Keith Lake Chain.  Water temp was 69 degrees, and the tide was running quite high.  I can't imagine them having migrated out of there just yet.  Besides, I've caught nice stringers well into November in the past.

We'll make another run at'em this coming weekend, but I may just give Calcasieu a try as well, gett'in into some flounder over there sure would be nice.  I can honestly say achieving a limit over there won't be easy, but it will be nice to know I won't have to stop at two in the box.

Later, and enjoy the few pics I managed.