Rayburn Midday Update

Decent bite reported despite post-frontal conditions

Proving their resilience, the largemouth bass of Sam Rayburn Reservoir treated anglers to a productive start on day one of the Costa FLW Series Southwestern Division event. Still feeling the effects of a severe weather system that moved across the Gulf states, Rayburn has a lot of muddy water, and the water temperature has dropped a handful of degrees.

However, lighter winds have allowed the lake to settle considerably from the washing machine it was less than 24 hours prior. There’s still a pretty good chop on this Angelina River impoundment, but running end-to-end without requiring a chiropractor is entirely doable.

The majority of boats we photographed seemed to be targeting prespawn staging areas such as points, humps and grass edges outside of spawning bays. Lipless crankbaits, bladed swim jigs and Carolina rigs dominated the efforts.

South of the 147 bridge, we found a cluster of boats, all working the mouth of a western creek. Among them, pro Stephen Johnston caught several on the Carolina rig in about 30 minutes, while Russell Cecil reported having an 8-pounder in his well — also caught on the C-rig.

Coming off of Monday’s full moon, the waning gibbous phase imparts less spawning motivation, say some pros. Nevertheless, a lot of fish had moved up prior to the blow, and they’re likely still in some of the spawning areas protected from the wind.

This, plus the bright skies of today’s post-frontal bluebird conditions will have loads of fish tucking tightly into the shallow cover. Several anglers were already hitting the flooded buckbrush and willow habitat by mid-morning, and we witnessed a solid 3-pounder taken by a co-angler from the brush.

We’re expecting the afternoon to be even more productive as steady sunshine warms the water and continues to push fish into cover where they’re more easily targeted.

Tune into flwfishing.com at 3 p.m. CT to check out the live weigh-in.