Corpusfishing.com

[Texican]

Well for me anyway.


A few weeks back, a friend of mine said she NEEDED a vacation.
Knowing that I often went fishing, she said she wanted to go too. So plans were laid for the first week of October and away we went.
We had gone fishing once before two years ago at Goose Island. before we went, she assured me she knew how to fish and had gone many times with her parents and grandparents. It soon became apparent that it must have been the standard leader/weight/dead bait style because when I handed her a live shrimp she immediately threaded the hook down the entire length of the shrimp's body!
It was a bit of a struggle, but I was able to convince her to try hooking them through the head or tail.

Fast forward two years.

The minute we hit Rockport I stop and pick up a pint of live shrimp for her (I mainly use artificial, live mullet and cut bait). We get to the motel and rest up while waiting for nightfall to try our luck off the motel pier. Sadly, sometime during that period the batteries in the aerator pooped out and all my shrimps was dead and gone. By then all the baitshops had closed so she just used the dead shrimps while I threw artificials. Using a small bit of shrimp, I caught a small perch, skewered him on a hook and tossed him out into the waters of little bay. So I'm catching schoolie trout in the lights on a small floating Rapala, meanwhile she's not having much luck with the dead shrimp having only caught two stingrays and hardheads. Sensing growing discouragement, I take a tip from a radio story I had listened to earlier about placebos and go to my tackle box and pull out a VMC 3/0 flounder hook colored red. I hand it to her and say," I didn't want to have to do this so soon, but looks like we're going to have to use these special lucky red hooks.
She looks at me like I'm full of it.
"Trust me".
Using the red hooks, she starts catching better fish. Nothing special; whiting, croaker, sandies, but a better quality of fish. On subsequent fishing trips during our stay she would immediately ask, "Where are my red hooks?"
Just before calling it a night, the rod with the perch goes off with a vengence. I grab the rod and can tell it is big, powerful and pissed off and can see it it thrashing the shallow water of little bay off in the distance. I don't have a net with me so I start trying to walk it back to shore. The fish has other ideas and begins swimming towards the pier.
"no, NO NO!
Too late. It manages to use a pier piling as a fulcrum and pull the hook.
It was fun while it lasted.
Wednesday was a knockaround day and thursday was spent behind Packery Channel and the surf. As we all know now, that was a bad idea and should have been switched. Getting a five hour late start we find Packery bridge elbow to elbow. I can't fish like that so we head to Fish Pass Jetties to try the surf and wait to see if the crowds thin a little at the bridge. After about an hour of being pounded by the waves we pull the plug and chug back to the bridge. A little room has opened up so we hoof it to an out of the way spot, set up the rods with mullet and cut bait and wait.
And wait.
And wait.
Four hours of nothing but rebaiting of hooks stripped bare by voracious mystery fish.
Bummer. But it was cool to see the skipjacks thrashing large schools of tiny fish right at your feet by the waters edge.
Friday is go-home day but we have about a pound of dead to get rid of and she wants to fish some more so we head to Goose Island State Park.
While she is using the shrimp half piece at a time, I castnet some mullet and set them out on two rods and throwing a variety of artificials with rod #3. Still nothing of substance caught on the dead shrimp, artificials or the larger rods even though the conditions are favorable. Though she is now out of shrimp, I guess she is still wanting to catch SOMETHING so she points at the bucket of mullet and ask, "Are those any good?" I tell her yes so she reaches in, fishes out a mullet, hooks it on to her well used 17lb. mono leader with a 1/2oz weight setup and tosses it over the side. She puts the rod into a holder so she can light a cigarette. I go over to the rod just to double check the drag setting. While I'm pulling on the line, I feel a large tug in the opposite direction and hear angry splashing.
"YOU GOT ONE!, I holler to her.
Cigarettes and lighter go flying.
She grabs the rod and starts reeling while I quickly reach in just to back off the drag a touch then I'm hands off. She soon gets the fish to the pier's edge. Fortunately, the night before I had showed her that rather than holding the rod out and cranking the fish straight up, to reel down to the fish and gently hoist it over the side. She executes the move perfectly and just as the fish clears the railing the leader breaks at the weight and a 17" speckled trout hits the deck of the pier. She is ecstatic and I'm sure folks in the parking lot can hear her.
We go through the last few of the mullet with nothing to show for it but now she is happy and we can leave for home.
But not before taking a picture:

You can see the red hook in the photo.

We get back to town after dark and she quickly loads her luggage into her SUV to go home. She is slightly crispy, sore and worn out. Before she leaves I tell her, "Your housemates may ask you how good can a vacation be if you come back beaten bloodied and bruised? You tell them that if you come back in that condition then you must have done a lot of stuff and had a good time doing it."
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"Money will buy you a fine dog, but only love can make him wag his tail." - Kinky Friedman

PS: Screw you Photobucket!

[rwnitro]

Well written report. Enjoyed reading it.

[Towboat Trash]

Good report Gus, sounds like a fun time. TFTR.
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[ladyfishinginthewater]

i always fish with red hooks.

[Tyler]

LOL! Great story and pic. I use those red hooks too especially for pompano rigs
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