Dec. 14, 2011:
Yes, I am still alive and fishing! One of the first questions that Ronnie asked me this morning when he got in the boat was, "man, where have the reports been?" I try to type up at least one to two reports a week but seem to have fallen off the face of the planet the last month and a half. I have been either guiding duck hunts or fishing trips almost every day over the last month and a half and the few random days I didn't I was taking care of other chores and errands. From the water it has been just like Gino said this morning, "catching not fishing."
I have spent almost equal time between Calcasieu and Sabine and both have been exceptional but completely different. On Calcasieu every fish whether trout or redfish has been in less than 5' of water over oyster shell however, on Sabine nearly every trout has been any where from 6'-20' deep. I am catching some reds on Sabine in shallower water in the 2-4' range.
Albert and Seth drove in from Austin to fish with me last Wednesday on Calcasieu despite my efforts to persuade them to reschedule. Given the conditions it was not one of those days that we should have done well on but we ended up running out of room in the cooler. We had our 15 reds within an hour and a half then switched to catching trout. All of our reds ate an East Beast TTK on an 1/8oz yellowmouth jighead in 1.5'-3' of water over oyster shell. We moved out deeper in 4-5' and began flipping trout in the boat on the same plastic until we called it a day. Our largest trout of the day ate a maniac mullet and was mixed in with the reds in the shallower water.
Paul, Mike, and Angel fished Thursday and Friday with me and left with their fair share of fish as well. Our first drift of the morning on Thursday landed us 45 trout in the box all on East Beast TTK as well. We then moved to some oyster shell that was a little bit shallower in 2-3' of water to catch our 20 keeper reds before bounching around looking for a bigger trout bite. We kept the East Beast TTK on for the reds as well. On Friday Paul was dead set on catching some flounder but unfortunately that bite just didn't happen for us. We gave up on the flounder around 1:30 that afternoon with only 6 in the box and went and caught the trout pretty good before calling it quits. The tide was just about slack with very little bait activity and we had to switch to pink Corky fatboys to get bit on a consistent basis.
Chad brought his mom along on a trip Saturday that he had purchased at a CCA banquet. We had communicated quite a bit via email before the trip and he had emphasized that he would really like to put his mom on some redfish and I think he got his wish. We limited out on redfish on our first stop in the lake in about 45min then just kept on catching and releasing for a while. We caught the reds on a glow/chartruese KFM and East Beast TTK both rigged on 1/8oz yellowmouth jigheads. We also had some solid trout mixed in with the reds that were somehow able to beat the reds to our plastics. The wind ended up howling later on in the morning so we spent the rest of the day in the ICW catching redfish nearly every cast until we called it a day. We must have caught nearly every undersized redfish there was around but it sure is fun flipping fish in the boat right and left!
Gino, Ronnie, and Marcus fished with me today and we absolutely had a blast. We were soaked from the fog on our first run but quickly limited on trout up to 5.5lbs on maniac mullets and swim baits. We left the trout biting to make a run to get in on the redfish bite and that sure didn't take long to get bit. Your redfish limit gets filled pretty quick when the entire boat is hooked up! Gino whipped us pretty good with an East Beast Hackberry Hustler on a 1/4oz yellowmouth jighead. Ronnie was throwing a maniac mullet and Marcus was fishing the East Beast TTK and neither one of them had problems hooking up either! I was the professional netter which is always a good problem to have.
I had to make sure and swing by Daley's to stock up on a few more before typing this up but one particular bait that I have gained a lot of confidence in over the last few weeks and has also caught several of our biggest fish over that time period is the new maniac mullet by Tidal Surge. It gives those fish quite a bit bigger profile and the better trout and redfish have been eating it up. I change the treble hook out for a #4 VMC treble to help increase my strike to hookup ratio. I also recommend fishing it on a swivel or Tony clip.
I have some openings left between now and the new year and I don't think the fishing could get much better but seems like I've been saying that for a while!
Capt. Adam Jaynes
www.justfishsabine.com 
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