FISH CATCHING TRAVEL

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Looking at the week’s weather it was definitely a day for the river before the crappy weather, which is on the way, gets here.  A little rain with a cool front will help get us further along towards fall, which I am ready for as it is 84 degrees as I type this.  And the lake should turn on a little more with this coming weather so it will be time for more of that this week.  It was hard not to go this morning but I spent the day getting all new tires on the skiff trailer and it is ready to roll.  So we shall see how it all comes out but I have the shrimp plastics in the boat and am just a little more organized than on Thursday.

Weather

81/65 Sun and clouds mixed.  20% chance of rain.  Wind S 10 – 15 moh.

Tides

High 12:53 am  1.4   Low  1:27 pm  0.4   (Will be interesting to see what the river is doing relative to POC tide times.)

Solunar Times

Best 1:21 pm to 3:21 pm.   Good 7:05 am to 9:05 am.

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Change of Plan

It was about 9:00 when I headed out to the Lavaca River.  On the way I crossed Garcitas Creek and when I looked down there was only 1 truck there, and it looked like a duck hunter, so I whipped into the lot and dropped the skiff in the water hoping for a peaceful day.  And on that note I only saw 2 boats all day, but the skies were filled with waves of geese and the Sandhills never shut up all day.  Not only did the fishing turn out to be good, the rest of the day made it one of those great days to be on the water.

The water had cleared even more since I was there last week and looked great.  The wind was blowing about 15mph up the creek so I headed down, planning to just let the wind move me along up river and really give the popping cork a try.  The plan was to keep after it and see if that really was the ticket.  I brought along a ton of shrimp plastics and started with a pearl body and a pink tail on a 1/8th jig head about 24″ below the popping cork on 10lb fluorocarbon.  And like I discovered last week, they wanted it, and it was game on.

This went on for about 4 hours.

After I took a few trout pictures just to give you an idea I gave the pics a rest, the fish on the other hand kept biting, and some/most were just nice fat keepers.  I easily caught a couple of limits, and managed a few bonus fish to boot.  Not only was it trout, it was an easy 10 reds today, though the majority of them were rats.  All of them wanted it close to the bank, with most coming in a couple of feet of water.  As the day wore on they wanted it popped a few times fast, stopped, then popped some more.  But I never was able to figure out a pattern to the popping that they liked any more than another, but they were consistent no matter how I worked it.

The bite was definitely on.

I fished both sides of the river, from near the bay to most of the way back to the ramp.  It was probably 6 places, and all held fish.  Starting about 10:00 I kept with the popping cork until around 2:00 and then it was plastics.  And like I found the last 3 trips the better fish clearly liked the popping cork.  It was an easy dozen in the last place on Controlled Descent Paddle Shad and DOA Cals, but the popping cork makes some kind of difference.  You can probably put any plastics on the cork and beat fishing the plain jig head/plastic combo in the rivers right now.

Several small reds like this and a bonus largemouth.

Other than the geese and ducks today there was one other thing, I caught a bass.  Now that does not surprise me, what surprises me is I have not caught one before.  The funny thing was he was in with a bunch of trout and small reds chasing bait.  One thing that did happen several times today was catching one throwing at moving bait.  Whether bay or river, find some bait, find some fish.

This is one of those trips I give an A+.  Peace and quiet surrounded by the great outdoors, and the fish biting consistently.  The only funny thing was it took a little bit to catch the first one, (Maybe 10 minutes.) but from that point on they never quit biting.  The wind was perfect, another blessing.  The only bad thing, I broke a rod today, to bad, I got that rod at Academy 5 or 6 years ago for $8, it was a discontinued $100 rod and well worth it.  Thank goodness I have one left.  See buying all that stuff you “will need”, like those bags of shrimp bodies that were $1 at Cabela’s, will pay off.   Guess that is how all that stuff hanging from the peg board in the tackle room got there.

Not sure what is next but fishing is it.  Tomorrow might be a little sketchy, but if the thunderstorms stay away and it clouds up and drizzles some I intend to catch a few bass.  Not having my camera at the lake the other day didn’t let me show you the big one, it was a hoss.  And the one I lost a couple of casts later was in the same class.  So a revisit to that spot is on the agenda.  So keep stopping in and thanks for reading my stuff.

Good Luck and Tight Lines