I intended to hit the bay today for some wading but the wind was just blowing to hard. So one of the great things about living in Victoria on the Texas coast is that great little lake, Coleto Creek. So with 25 mph+ off I went and I am sure glad I stuck it out.
I did not get to leave until 11:oo, and when I got there the wind was howling and of course the sun came out. I hit a couple of main lake coves with little wind and did not catch a fish. I threw spinnerbait for a while with out success to I decided to pitch the prop bait on a windy bank and managed to pull a couple out including a good one. The 4 or 5 I caught I actually caught reeling it. And those were right on the bank, and I had no bites after the first 5 feet.
This guy smashed it like a ton of bricks!
I headed up lake, stopping at flatter banks alternating between the prop bait and buzzing a spinnerbait. One would jump on here and there but it just wasn’t what I was looking for. So I headed way up lake past the bridge and decided to throw a crankbait some.
I got a new KVD 2.5 from Strike King in a red shad, which I intended to fish on deeper banks for redfish, but I decided to throw it anyway, and what a good choice. Basically I fished the whole straight stretch up the river. The wind was howling, and I mean howling, and I was whipping down the bank. It took me a few casts to figure the speed out but once I did it was game on. It was now about 4 and I intended to hit my last place right before dark with a topwater, but these fish side tracked me. I caught a bunch on both sides of the river.
This was the second one I caught on that Strike King 2.5 KVD, he will work.
For the next hour and a half it was good. I was reeling it at a moderate speed with a high speed reel, occasionally stopping it. The good ones were following it, and when it stopped they smacked the snot out of it.
I caught several like this one, notice he was barely hooked on the back hook. I got smarter and slowed it down and they really liked it then.
The sun was starting to set, and even though I was still catching them, I decided I had to make a move to one of my favorite coves where I have been catching some bigger fish. A large cove full of timber, it has a couple of real nice spawning banks on it. My intention was to fish a topwater, and even though it was as protected as a cove would be in these conditions, it was still to windy.
But with the sun setting it was time to buzz the spinnerbait. In these conditions, pre-spawn, I have been very consistent with the spinnerbait. But the trick is to get it up and making a wake, but keeping it there slow as you can reel it. Those big fish will smash it if you get the speed just right. So I put on my head video cam, and started down the bank when I heard it beep and it shut off, the battery was dead. So I took it off and you can guess what happened. A 6’10” just flat waylaid it like she had not had anything to eat in a month.
A great finish to a good day.
So it was one of those days where it would have been easy to quit. Only 1 good fish came over the side before 4. But I kept after it, made the right changes, and ended up with a nice limit if I was tournament fishing. Maybe that is why I rarely fish tournaments anymore, when you can fish during the week, and on days when everyone else hits the road, your odds increase dramatically.
Coleto is still hot, today was just a matter of staying with it. There are 3 good patterns right now for me. Topwater when the wind is down, spinnerbait and crankbait when it is up. The best places are still slopping banks with grass, and the back of certain coves where they are getting ready to spawn big time. So if you get a chance, go, now is the time to catch a big one!
Good Luck and Tight Lines!
