Fish Catching Travel
Sorry there has not been a post in a few days but we were out of town. After taking care of that, and a few other things around the house, I checked the weather and tides and decided to head to POC. The tide was supposed to be up at 10 or so, and the wind was supposed to be around 10, and both were right.
With that forecast I decided to start with a topwater, and that turned out to be a good choice. A couple of words on that. First, I missed way more than I caught, but once I got my mojo working, it has been awhile, the bites came consistently until after 10 a.m. Second, I am using a topwater I have not used on the Gulf before, the Strike King KVD Sexy Dawg Jr. in the 665 Bone color.
This report is not intended to be an ad, but I learned something yesterday. I have been walking the dog with a Zara Spook since the mid 70’s and am pretty good at it. And the Spook has been a staple in my topwater arsenal that whole time. But I wanted to give the Sexy Dawg a try, and folks it works. But the reason I wanted to talk about it is this: If you have trouble walking the dog, this bait is for you. In fact, it walks so easy I had to scale back some. Just reel it slow and twitch the rod tip in a short twitch, twitch, rhythmic action, and it will work. In fact, if it catches on itself you are jerking it to hard. So if you are a topwater fisherman, or want to be, get one and try it out, you will not be disappointed.
It works.
Enough of that, on to the fishing. I of course headed to Big Bayou like always and started on the first long shallow grass bank on the left. I fished the whole thing without a bite until I got to the first cut which had water moving in it.
The first one I managed to put in the boat, but wasn’t my first bite.
Like I said earlier, I was missing them pretty regularly. When you have not caught one on top for a while it is hard to not jerk when they first hit it. If they miss you just have to keep it coming until the rod loads up. Just keep working it as they boil it, and they are likely to finally hook up. And it can even be harder when a good red is tracking it and boiling all over it. Over the next few hours I had blow ups pretty consistently in all the drains in Big Bayou. It seemed there were a couple of trout in the mouth of each of them, and the reds were definitely on flooded grass points.
Since I wanted to catch trout today, I passed on the reds, at least when they let me. Every bank with grass on it had reds all over it. They were definitely close to the points leading into and out of the cuts. If I had taken a spinnerbait when the tide was still moving up it would have been a killing. Be that as it may, I still caught reds. Here is the first one.
This size was moving all over the grass banks.
While I am not sure exactly how many I caught on topwater, the fishing was good enough I kept throwing it until almost 11 when they really did quit it. Now the plan was to do some wading, but that got short circuited. I started throwing plastics, a 1/8oz. jig head with a electric chicken 4″ paddle tail, and caught a red or trout here and there, but it was slow when the tide was full up and the water not moving much. I headed into Barroom and there was a big rip, and it was covered in grass.
That rip also had one very important thing, bait. There was bait working and flashing all over so I started drifting right along the rip, and the fish were there. It ran from Big Bayou across the bay, and there were a few birds working. I decided to throw a popping cork, and that worked, though I was missing a lot. And some of those I caught were small, so I went back to the plastics.
Another nice one drifting Barroom.
It sure seems the trout are just a little bit bigger across the board this year. At least it seems that way to me, but you would have to ask a couple of guides, they would know. But no matter what, when you can catch this size the fishing is pretty good.
For the day I ended up keeping 4 for the pan, but probably caught about 15 – 20 trout, and 4 or 5 reds. Of the reds a couple were keeper size, and the trout would have easily been a limit. I caught on popping cork, plastics, topwater, and even a couple on spinnerbait. The fishing is good right now, so do what you do best and you should be successful. There is good croaker available so if that is your thing, it is time to get after it. If what I have caught the last couple of times at POC is any indication, the croaker fishing should be awesome.
So with a forecast for lighter winds tomorrow, it will be back to the Gulf. I think Keller may be on the menu, as it has one of my favorite wading banks. If the fish are anywhere near that size, I look for a good day tomorrow. So thanks for reading my stuff.
Good Luck and Tight Lines
