BigBendFishing.Net

Fished for a few hours Friday afternoon. Started out a little slow with some small trout and missed topwater blow-ups. Went looking for some reds. Found plenty of reds but could not get them to eat anything. They would swim up to topwaters, look at them and then dart away like they smelled funny or something. Right at sunset I found several very large balls of bait out on the flats that were being destroyed from below. Started chunking topwaters to the edges of the bait balls and very quickly caught a nice limit of fat trout. No monsters but a nice 16"-18" average fish.

Saturday morning the wind was blowing but the fish were biting. Overcast skys and a strong wind equaled topwater action til lunch time. Skitterwalks and pops were the ticket. Most of the time you had to feel the fish bite, could not see the baits or strikes between the large swells. Sometimes I think it works better that way, you can't overreact to seeing the explosion. Anyway, kept a few fish that had had massive hook damage but threw the majority of them back. Already had enough for a good fish fry from Friday. This is by far the best trout season we have had here in the last 10 years, or maybe I have just learned how to catch them.

You learned how to catch them.

I would agree about the topwater bites in big wind. We've seen better action either in flat calm water or big swells like you're talking about. Usually this year it's been the annoying in between wind that messes up my topwater bite. I also agree that you've learned how to catch them (which is more than I can say for myself) rather than this is the best year in some time. We've had a good one, but we've had better. Let's just hope the oil stays away/gets cleaned up before we all are forced to switch to bass fishing for a few years.