Hillman Guide Service

[CaptSteve]

This southwest wind has been blowing for a long time around here. It's kept me off the water for 6 straight days, so I was plenty mad at the fish when I finally got back on the water this past Tuesday. The problem was that the wind wasn’t quite ready to give up yet. It made catching really tough that day, but every day following was nothing short of phenomenal. Several factors contributed to our success; the wind eased up quite a bit, we got on the back side of the full moon and we had better tide movement. In tough conditions it’s easy for folks to voice their concerns regarding the trout population in our huge bay system. I'm here to attest that we have A BUNCH of fish! When the conditions get right and everything falls into place it's some of the best on the Texas Coast. We had several days where we caught early limits of trout then ran all over the bay catching (and releasing) fish at literally every stop.

The pattern is still very much summer-like, but look for that to deviate somewhat after the next two or three early cool fronts. Trout will begin to spread out a bit for a week or two before settling into a solid fall pattern by early October. I’m certainly not saying that you won’t be able to catch fish during this transitional process, but you may just have to move around a little more and work a little harder at times.

Sept. 4th – Steve and Sloan Tuttle had to grind it out with me in stiff WSW winds only to scrape up a handful of fish. Getting a late start (8:30) didn’t help our chances much either. We resorted to back lake redfishing for the most part because the trout bite was pretty worthless. They ended their trip with 5 mid-slot reds, 2 specks and one 22 inch black drum in the cooler. We also released a 30 inch redfish and several big black drum along with numerous undersized fish. Red Shad Salt Water Assassin Sea Shads were our best baits.


Sept. 5th – It was a very slow start for Mike and Jerry in the nagging west wind. Around 9 AM the wind started subsiding and the tide began to move out. The moon was also nearing the horizon (minor feed). They put their first trout in the box at 9:30 then just kept catching until we left that area with their 20 trout limit at 10:45. We hit several different areas and caught lots of really nice trout for the next 2 hours before heading in. We caught over 60 keeper trout up to 24.5 inches (several that size) releasing all of them. The list of baits we used is almost too long to list, but included Bass Assassins, Queen Cocahoes, Rattle Traps, MirrOlure Little Johns, Catch 2000’s, Skitterwalks, She Dogs, Norton Sand Shad and Pluggin’ Shorties. All of our fish were caught over shell in water depths ranging from 3.5 feet to 9 feet while casting to slicks and active bait.


Sept. 6th – It was more of the same good stuff for first-time customers Brent, Brett and Don. The only difference from the day before was that they didn’t have to wait for the bite to turn on. We started catching on our first drift and had 15 trout in the box before the tide ever even started moving. Once the tide started rolling out it was showtime. After getting their limits we made 4 or 5 other stops and caught trout everywhere. Brent took big trout honors with his 25 incher (released), but his son Brett who had never fished with artificials caught more than any of us. It was an awesome morning of fishing with three generations of great guys.



Sept. 7th – Carlton and his two boys Robert and David hit the weather just right which has been hard to do this summer. I could basically just take yesterday’s report and change the names. The only difference was that the quality of trout was a little better today. We never caught anything really big, but most of our fish were 18 to 23 inches. Carlton also caught the red he’s always after, a 26.5 incher. Plum was by far the best color today. The topwater bite was also the best I’ve seen in a while. We caught close to 100 fish. Those boys may very well be ruined from this point forward. It’s going to be hard to top this trip.