BigBendFishing.Net

I'm sure y'all can tell me: Where do the bigger trout hide? We must have caught 50 trout in East Bay (Callaway/Tyndall/Sandy Creek) on Sunday and today. All were 12 inches or less.

It's a little far from most of your fishing holes (except Old Dog and a few others). But the right tricks for bigger trout should be the same.

My theories include:

Not fishing deep enough/not finding holes and dropoffs. I've had luck before slowly working out to deeper water from the 2-3 foot depth close to shore. Usually I like it right up next to the bank for reds right at sunrise, then deeper water for trout as the sun gets higher. We went out to about 5-6 feet this weekend and stayed there when the little trout found us. The big ones never showed.

Wrong lure/bait? We tried topwater Chug Bugs, popping corks/Cajun thunders with Gulp/pinfish and bottom fishing with a 1/2 ounce weight The poppers with Gulp Nuclear Chicken pulled in babies every time we cast. But no mamas and daddies.

Sand/grass mixture. There's not a lot of sandy bottom in East Bay. But we did find some, with grass on the edges. That's been a big-trout producer before. But this weekend, just catfish.

There probably are other things I'm missing entirely. Any ideas/advice?

Don't be afraid to look for them in the skinny water with the redfish. If you're catching a bunch of little ones, move. Similar sizes seem to school together. Big trout wander around alone alot.

I am no expert, but had an interesting experience out of Keaton Beach on Saturday. Throughout March and April we have been catching a lot of 'dinks" .. 10, 11, 12 inchers. We seem to catch these where it's 'all grass' and find a few bigger fish where there is 'spotty bottom.' We spent some time over all grass catching bait (pinfish), and boated 2 trout at 15 and 16 inches, but almost every other fish we caught was 13.5 to 14.5 .. no real 'dinks.' The trout were all caught under cigar style CTs. Then we went looking for spotty bottom, and one of us ditched the CT and started jigging a straight line. Bingo. For some reason the trout would not touch our pinfish under oval CTs (blues and sharks did), and they steered clear of jigs (gulps/slurps/plastics) under the cigar CTs, but they could not leave the straight line alone. Almost every cast into a patch of grass brought a hit of something more than baitfish .. and we had very few dinks. We took our limit (2 of us) .. with all going between 15 and 17 (so no really bid trout) and the throwbacks were mostly all very close to 15. I wonder if they lie in wait in the grass patches waiting for something easily seen to cruise by in the sandy spots.

Here's the best "awnser" I've seen yet:
http://www.bigbendfishing.net/phpbb/vie ... ut+stories

If your looking at open water.... turn around.

Great article... I went to the web site and there is a ton of good stuff there!
thanks Littoral

bman wrote:Great article... I went to the web site and there is a ton of good stuff there!
thanks Littoral

Happy to help. I re-read that stuff as often as possible and learn something new everytime.

I agree - good article - I'm sending this clip to the sob-in-law:

One goober in the boat can ruin everybody's attitude.

This weekend I caught a good number of quality trout. Because of the high wind I had to fish with just a hook (no jighead) with the rod tip low to the water. This allowed the bait to stay out of the grass on the fast drifts. Rather than twitching the bait,just a slight movement of the rod tip worked best. Any tension in the line made me set the hook,any slack in the line made me reel up slack and set the hook. The fish were not biting aggressively. Many of the fish came on the slack line hookset. That meant they were coming to the boat after they picked up the bait. All the fish were holding in 4-6 feet. The extra high spring tide water made it more difficult also. It made the fish more prone to roam rather than hold up in traditional places.
I was just fortunate to keep hunting fish 'til I found them.

Thanks, all. I'm gonna give those big boys and girls another chance.