Corpusfishing.com

[Prof. Salt]

I took the morning off from work and headed to the local flats before daylight, hoping to find some feeding activity. Tide was scheduled to crest late in the morning, but I figured it would be worth a look. Rather than starting the search in my usual little lakes, I moved on back to the top of a large lake. The incoming tide should have stacked up some fish up at the top moving in with the advancing water, or at least that was my hope. I was correct, but this morning many of the fish were low slot or even undersized. That's not the norm in this lake, but I'll take what I can get and keep smiling. As I got close to the lake entrance, I noticed in the very early light what looked like a raft of weed on the surface off to my right. On closer inspection it was a bunch of redfish tails waving on the surface, not weeds. I quickly turned aside and eased up close. Now I could make out the tails, and I waited for them to come into easy range before casting to them. The fish were not able to see well yet, so it took three casts to get a hit. Finally a good fish slammed the bait, and the others scattered in foam and noise. My fish made a long run before turning aside to run to my left. Suddenly the fish spit the hook, and I was back to square one. The fish were moving away in all directions, so I just went back toward the lake I had originally wanted to explore. I worked around one side and towards the back, I began to find fish one or two at a time working along in the shallows. The grass line was too shallow for reds, and only mullet were up there. That helped me filter out the unwanted splashes and ripples and concentrate on the ones that would pay off. I found a pair of reds swimming together 20 feet out from the grass. I waited for them to close the gap and then put a bait out ahead of them. One surged ahead and inhaled the craw lure, but then spit it out. Two lost fish in a row... this was not the way I hoped to get things going. I pushed ahead toward the back of the lake, and found scattered reds along the shorelines, but all out 10-20 feet because of the shallow water level. I hooked several and spooked a couple, but not because I was being careless. Sometimes they're just spooky.

I noticed up in the pasture above the grass edge there were a few deer feeding. One large deer noticed me and just stood to watch as I paddled slowly along. It was an 8-point buck with a really large body. Soon another buck farther back in the brush raised his head. He was also a big-bodied deer, but it was early and there wasn't enough light to count points yet. A total of seven deer stood there as I paddled by. I assume they went back to feeding after I moved past, because they never blew or alerted.

In the next finger at the top of the lake there were several fish on the edges. I approached them one at a time and landed several. The hooked fish never seemed to spook the other nearby fish, so I just hopped from one exposed fish to the next, scooping them up and releasing them. On the third finger I found another pair of fish and one came to the net. I worked to the back edge and found another fish chasing minnows at a little point. He looked pretty nice, but when I set the hook the fish wasn't pulling drag. It rolled around kicking up mud, and finally rolled itself into the net. At 20 inches it was a quick release. As I began to work my way out of the lake, I found several more reds, all out in open water. It was shallow enough in that end of the lake that nothing was more than four inches deep, so it was pretty easy to spot approaching redfish as they swam slowly looking for treats. I saw one red coming and its back kept pushing above the surface. When it turned sideways there was a long sliver of bronze shining in the early sunlight. When it got to the spot I wanted, I pitched the craw ahead and slowly began to reel. The fish slammed the bait and immediately ripped off several yards of line. I worked the fish in and got it into the net. This one was close to 28 but not quite "too big", so it went into the box. I finally had a fish to take home! I kept moving as the search for another one carried on. As I got back to open water at the base of the lake, I spotted tails ahead. They worked to the left so I paddled ahead to intercept them close enough to make an accurate cast. The fish who saw the bait slammed it, and I landed another upper slot fish to make a pair in the box. For a couple of minutes tails seemed to pop up everywhere, but most of the fish were just spooky and would bolt away when they noticed the lure. They were clearly redfish, but didn't want to play despite the tailing behavior. Odd. Within another minute or two the tails disappeared and mullet took over the splashing responsibilities.

I covered another four miles, taking the long way back to the truck but only encountered one more feeding fish. This one was in a little finger lake, being very quiet along a grass edge. There wasn't a single ripple coming from the fish, but that dark tail would pop up every few seconds as it checked grass roots for shrimp. I waited until it swam around a cul-de-sac and came back towards me. The bait was laid out just ahead of the fish and it instantly ate. It ripped drag as it ran back towards the dead end, then ran past my kayak the other direction before spitting the hook. That wasn't the end of looking, but it was today's end to catching. I hit the truck by 12:30 with another 11 miles in the books, and 14 reds caught. Now it's time to put this down and get back to my office work, lol.