“Red Hot Airboat Action” – Bay Flats Lodge
With the higher temperatures we’re experiencing right now, we’re finding that we generally seem to do better in the back-country areas over mud and grass on high-tide days. On days when lower tides are the norm, we’re not finding the bite to be very active in back-bay locations where the mud and grass mixture is common. These back bays require a certain level of water in order to be attractive to the fish, especially in real skinny shallows, and especially during the heat of summer.
Anglers shouldn’t altogether give up on the back lakes this month, but should start searching for trout over a hard-sand bottom with a mixture of occasional shell. A lot of anglers will catch their fair share of trout over shell in August and September as a result of their focus upon many of the larger, open-bay shell reefs while tossing live bait. Anglers should do whatever is necessary in order to separate themself from the rest of the fishing crowd while throwing nothing but artificial baits.
Top water lures should be your first go-to bait this month, and you should be tossing them into the darkness of the very early light hours just prior to sunrise, and then again during the hours of the day just adjacent to sunset. Experiment if you will, but a lot of anglers like downsizing their surface baits this month to the smaller-sized lures, especially in instances of very slight wind conditions and little wave action across the surface of the water.
If you’re looking for alternate wading options, you might also like to try concentrating a few wading sessions this month along the leeward shorelines of Espiritu Santo Bay and San Antonio Bay while keying in on sand guts with intermittent grass patches. Many anglers will be doing this a lot in August, and will generally be looking for structure in the neighboring area that shows signs of depressions and pockets running parallel to skinny water along the shorelines. It’s not common for the top water bite to last much past sunrise, so be prepared to switch to plastics while heading out to deeper water as the morning progresses. Good luck, and keep grindin’!
