A SOLID OCTOBER
By: Capt. Stephen Boriskie
As I halt all outdoor activities while this strong cold front bears down on us today in the middle coast I am reminded of how solid the first half of October has been. When the calendar turned to ten-one, it was almost like a switch was flipped and all of the sudden we had higher, more normal Fall water levels. The air seemed different even though a front had not slipped through. The water seemed cooler and the fish more active. The days are shorter giving way to more overnight rest. Even the crowds had thinned out around here as if deer season had already begun. Add it all up and the result was a fish almost every cast!
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Redfish are the talk right now with numbers of undersized fish in the 18″ to 19″ range abundant. My experience has been the smaller under 10″ rat reds are not as common as these larger ones ending up on the hook. Limits of slot redfish are almost the norm with a few oversize thrown in to keep it real. I have polled our guides with text messages throughout the day and they are catching similar fish too. It doesn’t seem to matter whether it’s live or dead shrimp but they are both working better than cutters.
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The speckled trout catch isn’t up to snuff in my trips right now like in the past few years for this time of year. Most of my guys are in the boat throwing bait and I chalk it up to the higher than preferred winds we have been seeing due to these fronts that are now blasting through Texas. I cannot seem to get out on the reefs where they have been holding because of the angry bay both before and after the fronts. The wade fishing trips however have produced impressive numbers and size of trout using either croaker or lures, true to wading year round.
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Black drum and Sheepshead with a rare showing of Flounder are the other species we have been boxing regularly in this first half of October. This is to say we are not limiting out on these guys but seeing good numbers. This should continue in the rest of the month and on into the end of the year.
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It’s no wonder why this is our favorite time of the year and why the lodge is booked almost every guide for every day. This is the perfect time to round up the family or customers and get to the coast. When you are catching a fish on almost every cast it makes you realize what a wonderful abundant resource we have in our coastal waters. There are many to thank for such a bounty aside from mother nature and the time of the year. Conservation efforts are working and you can see that in the numbers of fish we have and also in the health of our bay and our estuaries. Donate where you can to these groups and participate with your time and effort to ensure the future generations not only will have the right to fish and the waters to do so, but they will likely enjoy days like we are having right now wearing out your arms and putting some fine fish on the dinner table.
