The Front of Baffin Bay:

This is the area of the famed rocks where the names are legendary in the annals of trout fishing-Point of Rocks, The Badlands and Pensacal Point.

Here at the mouth of Baffin, the anglers find the shallow rocks near the deepest water of Baffin Bay next to even deeper waters of the Intracoastal Waterway and the Riviera Channel. It's this shallow rocks/deep water connection that makes the front of Baffin the most productive trout terrain in the lagoon for a high percentage of success.

Forget it, says David Green, one of the top trophy trout catchers in Baffin Bay. He and his clients pulled in 66 trout of 30 inches or better during 1996, but saw the trophy numbers drop to 14 during the off-year of 1997. He's hoping for improvement in 1998, but he doesn't expect early action to be best on the rocks where the weekend fishermen tend to congregate.

Rather, Green will be concentrating on shallow, grassy, soft-bottom flats near the front of the bay. These include the Tide Gauge Bar on the north shore and the Kenedy Ranch shoreline along the south shore between Penascal Point and Corrales Point.

Another prime location is Cathead Flat, an area of soft-bottom shallows that reach out into Baffin's open water starting at the east end of the Tide Gauge Bar.

"Two feet of water or less will be the depth to fish, and you'll probably want be wading," Green advises. Timing will be critical. Green will be keying on water patterns that produce a distinct temperature differential between deep water and shallow water. It could be between the high 40s and high 50s or the mid-50s to mid-60s-in other words, conditions that make it decidedly more comfortable for trout to be shallow.

At the same time, Green will tend to avoid the post-front pattern of high pressure and sunny, warm days, the kind that brings out the crowds. Instead, he prefers pre-front patterns with moderate northeast, east or southeasterly winds. Cloudy skies and drizzle are especially preferred. "The ideal time frame would be a week before a full moon, with northeast winds of 10 to 15 miles per hour on a day of overcast," Green says.

Of course, he won't totally ignore the rocks. By late spring, especially the month of May, he'll be hanging tight to the rocks.At all times, weekdays will offer better opportunity than the weekends when the boat traffic will be heavier.

The Forgotten Lagoon:

If the rank-and-file aficionados of heavyweight trout have a weakness, it's too much focus on Baffin Bay.

They see the sprawling Upper Laguna Madre as just miles and miles of water to cross on the way to Baffin from marinas along the JFK Causeway or the launch ramp at Bird Island Basin. That's just fine with veteran fishing guide Doug Bird, who has been one of the top catchers of trophy trout in the lagoon for more than two decades.

Bird doesn't mind trailing behind the crowds bound for Baffin because he finds big fish opportunity in their wakes. The prime example is the King Ranch Shoreline, stretching along the west side of the lagoon from Pita Island to the north and down to Emmord's Hole to the south.

Ask anglers anywhere in the Coastal Bend to define quintessential trout waters and they'll mention the "outside beaches" or the shorelines of shallow grass and sand facing open water and exposed to prevailing southerly winds. Well, the King Ranch Shoreline, with its mix of shallow grassbeds and sandy potholes, is the greatest outside beach in the entire Coastal Bend. It is also a freeway, with morning and evening rush hours of boat traffic traveling to or returning from Baffin Bay. Either way, the boats tend to run shallow, right on top of the trout terrain.

However, Bird has learned that the traffic doesn't so much run the trout off as it just shuts them down for an hour or two. So he targets the shoreline from mid-morning to mid-afternoon, and has been rewarded with heavyweight action on topwaters and soft plastics. He generally prefers the Pita Island area, where a deeper natural gut comes close to shore, or the Emmord's Hole area, where trout have access to deeper water near the shoreline.

The most ideal conditions are when light southeast winds are pushing bait against the shoreline. Next best are northerly winds that put the shoreline in a sheltered lee.

Bird's normal tactic is to wade in waist-deep water, casting to the edge of thick grass beds piled up against the shore. He also hits any sand spots within casting range.