Fish Catching Travel
My brother Jeff, alias Shoedog, has been so tied up with a remodel on his business that he has been working 7 days a week since January. He just has not had time to fish other than our trip to Belize. So he finally was able to shake loose a couple of days and wanted to put some reds and trout in the boat, so it was off to POC first.
Since I caught such a nice bunch of trout tossing topwater last trip we headed to Big Bayou to start the day. The tide was out and set to be high at noon. We started fishing the cuts and drains and were rewarded with plenty of bites. To bad only a few made it in the boat. It may have been the worst hooking percentage I have had in a long time, but we stayed with it. The KVD topwater did put 3 or 4 trout and the same amount of reds in the boat, nad one of them I caught was a good one that went in the box. Jeff managed this red early.
Our first keeper. As you know I always take a picture of the first one, cause it may be the last.
As the morning wore on the topwater bite subsided so we switched to some plastic and Redfish Magic. One thing we found out later, a dark plastic was not the ticket, but more on that later. Then Shoedog hooked this nice trout on a spinnerbait. One thing about trout on spinnerbait they are almost always good ones.
A nice speckled trout. This turned out to be the day’s biggest trout.
Around 11 it seemed to die on us. We hunted and pecked in Barroom without success. I do not know if we were just not finding them, or they were off with the tide, but we just could not get anything going. So Shoedog said where would you go if you had to catch a trout right now. So I said why not the Oilcut at the Coast Guard station.
We headed to the last big cut throwing plastics and I caught a small one. For the next hour we would catch one here or there, and Jeff put another keeper trout in the boat. Like I found the last couple of trips, they are really eating those Glass Minnows. So Jeff switched to a Berkley Havoc in the 3″ pearl paddle tail and that seemed to really help, but we were still just not on them.
As we were fishing the last little stretch near the mouth I wanted to fish there was schools of minnows on top and the occasional splash when one bit the dust. So we headed to them and started catching fish. Then Jeff had a big bite and the fight was on. With him using light line and a light action rod I had time to get the camera out and make this short video.
This is the heaviest 25″ redfish I have ever seen. Where is this guy at tournament time?
After that little episode in the Oilcut we decided to wade the outside of the old Coast Guard station. The wind was blowing right on it and we fished it hard. I managed to lose one on plastic, and Shoedog missed one on top, but other than that we struck out. So for our last stand we decided to return to the dock area on the south side of Barroom and wade.
That turned out to be the better choice, and though the water color was somewhat off-colored, we had lots of bites and caught several on topwater. We both had fish that just wouldn’t make it, and I added another keeper red to the pot. They were right on the bank near the grass in less than knee-deep water. At that point we had fished hard and decided to call it a day. We only ended up keeping 6, but most of them were nice. It was one of those days when we caught fish, but they just did not make the cut. To bad considering it has been just the opposite for me the last month. But that is fishing.
Here is what I did learn. We should have started out wading right off the bat, and stayed in the water all day. Clearly lighter colored plastics were working better, to bad that did not dawn on us earlier in the day. The topwater bite is still good and if we had stayed in the water wading we definitely would have caught more fish. But hindsight is 20/20 and we learn from our choices, and since I am hitting the Gulf in the morning we will see if that plays out.
On the second day of Shoedog’s 2 days he decided he wanted to catch a few bass, so we headed to Coleto yesterday and had a rain shortened day. I managed to catch a big one so stop in tomorrow for that report.
And I wanted to let you know that last week I hit 45,000 visits to fishcatchingtravel.com. for the year. That tops the total visits for the whole of last year already, and we are not yet half way through the year. I am so appreciative of everyone who stops in and reads my stuff. It keeps me going when I am tired and lazy. So I keep fishing and blogging, and it is thanks to each and every one of you. And it gives me someone to blame all this fishing on! Keep those cards and letters coming.
Good Luck and Tight Lines
