Fish Catching Travel
Monday
Fall is finally giving us just a taste of things to come. A few cooler nights and some good rain, when combined with the shortening days, mean the good fishing is here. I have been on vacation, and have only wet a line once this month. And when I got back we had a couple of days of rain and thunderstorms that kept me off the water. But it is back to normal around here at Fish Catching Travel, and a full fishing schedule starts now. So you can expect to see a steady stream of reports as I fish till I drop. Fall and winter fishing is my favorite for big fish of all varieties so it is time to get the stuff organized, fix a few things on the boats, and get after it.
My brother Jeff, alias Shoedog, has worked almost every day for the last 5 months, his business keeps him way to busy. When he texted me and wanted to fish a couple of days at Baffin I was packed before I responded. So plans were made, and Monday morning we left Victoria to be at the Bird Island ramp at daylight.
Now my experience at Baffin is one 6 hour trip 2 winters ago. It was foggy when we took off and if it weren’t for the map I would not have had even the slightest idea where to start. With that little knowledge in hand we headed down the Laguna Madre to fish the King Ranch shoreline. There was a light north wind that allowed for a nice drift so we started down the bank. Without a clue we worked in and out, from 1 foot of water to 5 and back again. The drift was perfect and we never started the engine for almost 6 hours.
Shoedog started with his usual, the Rapala Skitterwalk. He throws that thing any and everywhere, and would probably drop it down an ice fishing hole before he tried anything else. I started with the KVD Strike King topwater and for the first hour we had a few blow ups and a few follows, but they were just not eating it. I gave up on it pretty quickly and switched to paddle tail plastics in the 4″ size on a 1/8 jig head. For the rest of the day I alternated between colors and noticed no real difference. As long as it was a paddle tail it worked. Shoedog threw the box at them, everything from Tsunami plastics, popping cork, Bass Assassins, all the while relentlessly throwing his topwater.
The biggest of 2 keeper reds I caught on Monday.
We learned the following, 3 foot was the magic depth. As we worked in and out, letting the wind move us perfectly south along the shoreline well past King Ranch, we found that when we were in 3 foot we caught fish. Nothing much shallower, nothing particularly deeper. A lot of that seemed to be that the bait was there. I think the cool night had them out of the shallows, and we did nothing really shallow. Stay in 3 feet and catch fish, stray much from that and they just were not there. That is one of the real advantages of having a depth finder on the trolling motor, we were able to really see exactly how deep it was and ease along accordingly. The other thing that seemed important was more of a mixed bottom. Open potholes with hard bottom mixed with grass was clearly better than solid grass.
The only keeper Shoedog managed on Monday.
Before day one was over I managed to put 8 keeper trout and 2 keeper reds in the boat. Shoedog was clearly out of practice after his long layoff and only put one keeper red in the box. He did have one fairly big trout on, and unfortunately that one made an escape. It was a tough day for him, but that didn’t stop him from keeping after the topwater, he just could not get it going. The important thing for me was I did not vary from 4″ paddle tail baits. Color did not matter as I threw the mutiple colors at them.
The size run of the 8 keeper trout we put in the boat Monday.
I am not sure how far down we drifted, but you can image how far we covered using the wind and the trolling motor in 6 hours. As we were up at 4 we called it a day early. With fish to clean and the motel to find, we headed back to the ramp fishing a couple of places on the way, and other than putting a few small ones over the side not much happened. The next, and last fish I caught Monday, says it all about our day. When you think about Baffin you think about big trout. Then this happened.
The smallest trout I have ever caught, about the size of the plastic. This is not what you go to the Baffin Bay area for. That’s what I get for throwing something other than a paddle tail Monday.
So not the results we were hoping for in our first real trip to that area. Of course we were fishing blind. But I am not complaining. We had 8 trout and 3 reds in the box, and probably caught around 30 fish, just not that big trout we hoped to catch. And we covered many miles hoping to find some real trout to set up a wade the next day, but just did not find that bunch we wanted to fish the next day. So with that in mind we cleaned fish, found the motel, and ate a great seafood dinner at Doc’s. It was early to bed with visions of big trout in our heads for day 2.
Tuesday
We were at the ramp and off to the King Ranch shoreline at daylight to start where we had our best luck Monday. It was cracking daylight, and fairly calm, so out came the topwaters. It was a new day and they cooperated. Lots of blowups and misses, we still managed to catch 10 or more small trout and one keeper red.
Shoedog with a nice red morning 2.
Jeff was throwing a light green top and silver sided Skitterwalk. I threw the Strike King KVD for a while, then reverted to throwing multiple different topwaters. I tried big ones, small ones, shrimp poppers, you name it and they all ended up in a pile on the dash. Nothing worked better than the Skitterwalk and the bone colored KVD. When it slowed down I went back to the paddle tail but for some reason it was not happening. Finally about 10 we decided to make a move. We headed down the Laguna to around marker 150 where there is a set of islands with a couple of floating houses and headed in to the west bank. We drifted out and worked in, and though we still managed a few more trout and reds, there was just not any size. So it was time for another move.
We were headed to Baffin and trying to decide where we were missing the mark, and we decided it was structure. As we passed mile marker 160 we noticed some spoil islands on the right. By now it was noon, the wind was light, and it was just plain hot. We dropped the trolling motor down and I started with a popping cork and plastic shrimp and Shoedog kept throwing his topwater. We kept in the channel throwing to the tops of the spoils and working the drop. It was not long before Jeff had one just smoke it.
Now that is more like it.
Conditions were perfect. The tide was slowly falling, and what little wind there was was blowing over the top of the spoil piles into the channel. From that point on the bite was on. I lost a really big fish on the popping cork, and Shoedog really got it going.
Another good one eats the Skitterwalk.
From that point for the next couple of hours we used the trolling motor and moved down the inter-coastal tossing our topwater to the tops of the piles and working it back over the inter-coastal drop fairly fast in a walk the dog pattern. The best places were the points and cuts in the piles. We caught small and good trout regularly, and one thing was clear, the good ones wanted it and blasted it. There was no question when that happened. In fact I had one of the best blow ups in my long years of fishing, a titanic blast, to bad it was a big lady fish.
My best one on a topwater. It made 20″, but was not in the class Shoedog was catching.
We notice that when we would catch some smaller ones there were usually several there. When the better ones hit that would be it for that point or cut. Or so we thought.
One of Jeff’s biggest trout. At 23″+ it was one solid fish.
While most of the better ones were solitary, when this one got close to the boat you should have seen the one with it, a real monster. It was trying to get the topwater out of the other’s mouth and stayed with her all the way into the net. And on that note we called it a day. The spoil piles between 160 and 171 definitely had some really nice trout on them, and we finally got into a few fish that we hoped for when we started our trip.
With Jeff having a 5 hour trip home we called it a day around 2. Just before we got ready to head back to the ramp a big tug pushing a double barge went by us and made it about a half mile when he ran aground. It was something. We heard the barge begin to grind and we looked over as it slammed into the spoil area and the tug actually went on the spoil and smashed into the barges tilting sideways. He finally was able to twist and turn and back to get off, and then continued on his way. It was a crazy scene and I am sure it was a close call for the skipper.
So for our first trip to a new area I am ok with the outcome. We wanted to catch some of those better trout, and we finally got it done. We wanted to learn about the area, and this was a good baseline for future trips. As those of you who fish it regularly know, the Laguna Madre is a great place, and a fabulous fishing hole. I can only imagine what you lucky guys catch who fish it often. What a place. So I am hooked. I can’t wait for this winter and some serious wading, I can only imagine how it must be when that 30″ smokes a topwater on a misty foggy morning. Like Falcon, Key West, and Belize, the Baffin area is where dreams are made and I can’t wait to get back. Who knows, it may be next week.
So keep stopping in. There is lots of fish to catch and places to fish. I get the same thrill catching a fish I got when I was 5 years old catching bluegill in farm ponds. It never gets old. Thanks for reading my stuff.
Good Luck and Tight Lines
