Corpusfishing.com

[bulldog1935]

This plan began 6 weeks ago, Josh and I wanting to plan a February trip for low tides, wading, and fly-rod sightfishing for reds.
I picked the 5 sequential best tides for the month to give us both current and sunny afternoon highs.



At the same time, my buddy Donny in Colorado had been jumping through his computer wanting to kayak the TX coast flats.
A few weeks out, Josh and I made the plan to invite Donny down to Neumie's Copano Bay digs and paddle a long weekend.

The named winter storm that shall remain nameless hit just before our schedule, but that wasn't stopping us. The deep freeze hit the coast just as hard as the hill country, and reports of fish kill looked devastating. Still without water at home, and only recently with power restored, I headed south to meet Donny, who had swept west of the storm, and beat us both down there.
Compared to the second hard snow we got the morning I packed out, Josh's digs sure look inviting.
They had the same water problem, and it would be two days until we got a hot shower, slim pickings in the grocery stores, but we made do





The next morning, wind shifting from NNE to light E, we were launching at Palm Harbor to cross Estes flats.
Note the size of the beach at Palm Harbor



The goal was to get to Little Cut for the late morning incoming tide current.
With a week of beating NW wind, water level on the flats was the lowest either of us had ever seen. My "bright" call, let's head north first to Trout Bayou cut - when we finally ran out of water and had to stand to float our boats, could see Trout Bayou was bone dry. It was a really tough trudge through the mud to float and then drag our boats back to Little Cut. So we should have gone due east straight to Little Cut, but maybe paying our dues this morning paid off.

It was a huge relief when we got enough water to float again, and as we paddled the inside of the cut - right where they should be grazing on the rising tide - we crossed 300 redfish.
Here's Donny hooked up, looking from the cut to the inside pass



Here's Josh at the center shoal facing Aransas bay and far-away San Jose Island.



It would be silly fish catching.



Donny was catching them on Vudu shrimp, which he handed me one and after a slot red, lost it from my paper clip. But the reds didn't care what lure, they wanted the mud balls from bottom-bouncing.



I did just as well on a pink Trout Support on weighted swimbait hook.
Almost all the reds were 18" - think I only caught two out of sixteen under that - I ended up with two slot fish to fillet, and Donny with a 3-fish limit.



A fond farewell to Palm Harbor.



We filleted the reds "on the halfshell" - skin-on fillets for grilling. That night, Josh made us shrimp and grits, and we floated the fillets in ice water overnight, but I wanted to show you Sunday night's meal with massive grilled redfish fillets.
They were amazing, and picking the charred meat from the ribs was the best part.





Josh took a lot of photos, and took a lot of photos documenting the dead trout we found on Estes.
Looking forward to his detailed report here.

[BayFly]

Interesting voyage! Sounds like one you learned from, but I'm a little surprised that Tarpon floats in any water with all of the gear attached to it!

[bulldog1935]

We had a blast - and we're too hard-headed to learn.

We picked the worst wind for Bird Island Basin on Sunday, and the worst wind for East Flats on Monday.

I'm really glad we got Donny onto such a great tide phenomenon stacking reds for him (ok, us, too).
The wind turned out to be brutal the next two days, and we weren't going to last long enough either day to find afternoon sight-fishing with reds up on skinny grass.

[Neumie]

My portion:

I met Ron and Don at the Cabin in Rockport around 9 pm Friday evening. I had to gather my kayak and gear so around 10 we started planning the weekend's trip over a glass on Glenlivet and beers.

We weren't in too much of a hurry the next morning given the weather the previous week. I had set my expectations rather low and was anxious to see how our fish faired knowing water temps had gotten into the 30's. We arrived at the Palm Harbor launch, paid our $5 parking fee and pulled up to the water's edge. The water was way out and we actually had to drag our kayaks across the spoils along the ICW. I had a hitchhiker for the ride.



As we made our way to the south point of Talley Island I found our first floating trout; 18".



Then another. The largest dead trout I measured was 25".



With the tides being low the now exposed "beach" along Talley Island was littered with dead trout of all sizes. We paddled north towards Trout Bayou, but we couldn't make it in our kayaks, so we turned around and waded towards Little Cut dragging our kayaks.



This is where we parked the kayaks and waded along the shoreline fishing the deeper water. Don was the first to land a fish. Then Ron.



Don figured out to bounce lures off the bottom. He limited out on reds. Ron strung up two, and I was busy picking backlashes in between catching undersized trout and reds. We packed it in and again had to wade dragging kayaks before we could get to deep enough water.

Rockport was still shutting water off by 5:00 pm so that meant no hot showers for us nor open restaurants. Ran to HEB to figure out dinner only to find barren shelves. I was able to MacGyver a menu so we had shrimp and cheesy grits for dinner. We had to use paper plates because we had no running water for dishes.



Meteorological Observations
Time: 9:00 am - 3:00 pm
Air Temp: 41 F - 62 F
Wind: 3-5 kn NNE - E (gusting 10)
Barometric Pressure: 1030 mb (falling)
Sky: Sunny
Water Clarity: 3-4 ft
Water Temp: 44 F
Structure: Sand

Solunar
Sunrise/set: 7:01 am/6:22 pm
Moonrise/set: 12:22 pm/1:37 am
Moon Phase: Waxing Gibbous (57%)

Predicted Tides @ Rockport (MLLW)
Low @ 7:52 am (-0.40 ft)
High @ 9:00 pm (-0.07 ft)

Lures
Baffin Magic Sand Shad on 1/16 oz jighead
Plum Sand Shad Jr. on 1/16 oz jighead
Pink Hologram Grasswalker on weighted swimbait hook
Pink Vudu Shrimp

Fish
Trout: 6 dinks
Reds: 5 Slotters, a few Rats

[Tyler]

Thanks for the great reports!
_________________
Like Corpusfishing.com on Facebook!

[bulldog1935]

Thanks Tyler - after we got Donny's complete report, we figured out between us, we released forty-five 18" redfish the day after the freeze ended - I've been picking on Josh about his reported "a few rats"
It was a dues-paid-up day.
We ate my fillets (sent one home with Josh), and Donny took his fillets back to Colorado, still in the ice water.
He also gave us a good report about cooking some on his cast iron griddle.