Fish Catching Travel
My lovely wife was off work today so I decided to hit Coleto for a quick morning trip. Things are still in the same basic pattern for me. Points, points, and did I say points? I made it out at daylight so I went to a main lake point near the small island and started with a buzzbait.
There are still fish to be caught on buzzbait, but when the sun is up, it is over. The one redeeming thing to be said for it is when you catch one, it is a good one. So about 10 minutes after I started I put this one in the boat.
This one just sucked it under.
There are fish shallow all the time on Coleto, one of the things I like about it. Clearly there are other ways to catch them right now that are more productive. But for me when a bass eats a buzzbait it is a thing of beauty. After catching this one I fished one more point with the buzzbait without success, so I put it down and went to throwing a worm.
Over the next couple of hours I basically point hopped. I put one in the boat on one point, 3 on the next, and then one more on another. None of them made the picture cut. It was slow, or I just did not land on the right place at the right time.
About 10:30 the wind started to blow some so I headed up lake and tried a frog on big grass mats. Normally this time of year I can catch a few doing that. It is so cool to see them blast that thing through the mat. But for some reason this year I can not seem to find them under the mats. Maybe I should be punching the outside edges with a tungsten weight and a Space Monkey. Something to try next time.
I decided to finish the morning throwing a small Strike King crank bait on the outside edge of the grass. You can almost always catch some fish on Coleto throwing a small shad shaped crankbait. My favorite colors are the Sexy Shad, sliver with a black back, and a Chartreuse. Today it was the Sexy Shad in a small bait that runs about 5 foot. It keeps the bait over the top of the deeper grass and still in the strike zone out to about 8 feet.
Over the last hour I got 4 bites. Three were bass, but none were over a couple of pounds. Of course, the best one I caught was this:
Catfish hit a crankbait a certain way and I can almost always tell. And of course they start rolling and that usually clears it up.
That catfish whacked it and led to the best tussle of the day. You have to be so careful with a crankbait and bass, but with those rubber lips the catfish never come off. In fact, it is usually a hassle to get the bait off, and in this case it was no exception. How he got all six hooks in him I will never know.
So about noon I called it a day and headed to the house. The last few trips to Coleto have been about the same and I can’t wait for fall. So tomorrow it is off to the Gulf. I have not checked the winds or the tides yet, and that will be the determining factor in where I go. With no fish in the freezer it will be a straight meat hunt tomorrow. I hope to put some trout in the boat, but will go with the reds if that is the way it works out.
So thanks for reading my stuff. I appreciate each and every one of you who stops in.
Good Luck and Tight Lines
