FISH CATCHING TRAVEL

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Don’t Leave Home Without It.  I don’t!

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This Weather is Making Me Crazy!

It is 6:00 am Wednesday as I type this.  The wind is freakin’ howling outside with gusts to 30 mph.  We are watching the weather channel and last night, and continuing this morning, Dallas had winds to 78 mph at the airport and there are thousands without power.  And the footage from Denton looks like a hurricane. The radar shows a line of heavy storms, it stretches all the way to Chicago, outside of San Antonio coming this way.  While we may not get much rain out of it as we are on the southern edge, it is fast moving so the actual front will be here sometime this morning.  Of course there are small craft warnings on the bay.  Since it is howling right now it will probably only get worse, but there is a slight hope.  Suffice to say my plans to try to weasel at least a few hours on the lake are definitely up in the air.  All dressed up and nowhere to go!

******************Fresh or salt it has a place in your arsenal.

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Glen, who I had the pleasure of fishing with last year about this time, sent along the following pic and question.  And it looks like there is simple explanation.

Nice Mess

He has been fishing with the crappie bobber above his plastic, (It works!) in the South Pass area the last couple of days.  He was wondering what was up with the dead gafftops, just like I was.

You never know which post will generate a comment or two, and the dead gafftops earned several.  Surprised you did not see them Glen, they were all over the POC area.  The comments below make a lot of sense.

First from Ed.

Was down this past weekend also. And saw the same thing. Gafftop scattered all over.
Turns out TPW said that it as due to an early migration in to the bay and a sudden fall in water temperatures that caused the killing. Also because gafftop have no scales they were unable to protect themselves.

Maybe the have no scales but they sure have enough slime!  And Topwater Billy chimed in.

On your gafftop story.
Saw the exact same thing on a floundering trip last year. The water temps had been on a rising trend. Then, we got a two day blast of really cold air. Gafftops, and only gafftops, floating everywhere.
Correlate it however. But it sounds to me like they are.way less cold water temperature tolerant than trout.
Just an observation

Good observation.  And my buddy Faye chimed in.

Weather be damned, the Corrado’s are heading to the coast to fish next Thursday & Friday! We have tried for months to get down.  Between weather and work it never worked out.

I read on a women’s facebook page about the gafftop kill. A lady posted that the TWP had told her that they migrated in too early and the cold killed them.

As always, thanks for the blog.

Soon to be fishing Corrado’s

And basically the same set of conditions happened a few days ago (Last week?) when we had those couple of nights around freezing.  Figured that was it but still found it interesting they were the only fish and most were the bigger ones.  Guess that year class was the first migrators, tough luck for them.  But I guess since Ed saw them this weekend, who knows, the birds may have eaten the smaller ones.  I saw a Blue Heron doing his best to get a big one down, without much luck.  So mystery solved.  Thanks for the input all.  And Fay, good luck.  It looks like the long term forecast is not to bad, the water is warming pretty quickly, and the fish are biting.  Can’t wait for your report.

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And I wanted to share Ed’s technique with you.  He uses a crappie style slip bobber, a small one, above his plastic like a popping cork.  Like all techniques I have a theory  (Of course I do, we fishermen all have them.) why it works.  When he pops it the pop is small, and the sounds resemble a baitfish making that flipping sound.  Not really a “calling” technique like a big popping cork, it is almost a finesse technique.  If you think about what bait sounds like when it is “flipping” on the surface it makes all the sense in the world.  We can all learn something fishing with others, if we will listen.

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One thing I was waiting to tell you about is a jighead I found at the Houston Fishing Show.  I took one look at it and was instantly on board.  It seems to be a simple solution to keeping plastics on the head, one of those things I wish I would have thought of.  In all fairness I have only used them once, but it did exactly what they said it would do, hold the plastic without it slipping down.  The comments on their Facebook page all say the same thing, keeps plastics on until you take it off.  No more having your plastic tear up and sliding down on the hook, sometimes even after one or two fish. They are a little high at $5 for 5, but if you think about it the savings in plastics will more than cover that.  So while I intended to use it a few more times before I reported on them, I am sold.  (Comes with being stuck in the house!)  So check them out, I will be ordering more soon.  If you do tell them I sent you.  No free jig heads were involved in this recommendation.

https://www.facebook.com/pg/deathgripjighead/reviews/?ref=page_internal

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That will do it for the morning’s ramblings and whining.  The rest of the day will be spent watching fishing, thinking about fishing, organizing fishing stuff, and waiting to see what the weather holds.  It has calmed down a little out there, so time will tell.  But hey, if I get a chance to sneak out I will.  A few hours of fishing can make a day.  So keep stopping in and thanks for reading my stuff.

Good Luck and Tight Lines