Corpusfishing.com

[Prof. Salt]

Friday afternoon I was in a hurry to play with the fish, so I loaded up as soon as I got home and headed for the flats. The wind was blowing around 15mph, which made seeing the fish tricky, but that challenge is offset by the quiet time of day when nobody else is on the water. Tides were relatively high, and as I made my way from lake to lake it was clear that things might be slow. Fish were generally not active, but redfish are something like college aged guys... sometimes they are all hungry, but there are always a couple up and rummaging around for a snack no matter if it's feeding time or not. I kept looking for these snacking fish, and over the evening I found them. The first was 24", the second was 20" and then they got smaller. I didn't really mind - I was enjoying time on the water and getting a workout alone in nature. By the time I headed for the truck I had caught eight reds. Just before the launch there is a marina that is mostly unused. The entrance into their launch is overgrown with grasses, and as I passed by I slowed to look for a tail. Sure enough, a red rose above the surface within casting distance. I pitched the little Z-man TRD Craw to the fish and he ate immediately. Unfortunately after a couple of runs he was able to spit the hook, so I headed for the truck and was home by 9:00.

Saturday morning I drove to the launch and headed back to the same areas. As I got close, there wasn't enough light to see yet, so I stopped on a barely submerged sand bar that juts out into the bay. After a minute or two, I could hear a few fish feeding on the bar. I positioned the kayak where I could look towards the East so the little light available would help me see any fish. I saw a fish approaching some mullet, and put the lure between him and his prey. He decided my bait was good enough and as I set the hook he tore across the shallow area disturbing several other good fish that had been quietly hunting. When I got the fish in it measured exactly 28" but no more, so in the box he went. Once it was light enough to see better, I started working along the reed edge towards some back lakes. I was moving slowly to avoid blowing out any fish, and I noticed an odd swirl of something moving slowly towards the reeds. I figured it was a little black drum because I see them in the area quite a bit. What smacked the lure was no drum, and it tore out making quite the racket as it rolled around and splashed, trying to wake every fish in the bay. When this red finally came in it measured 29.5" so it went back swimming. I pressed on towards the lakes and noticed a big group of reds working the shoreline towards me. They were creating a large bunch of wakes and were not easy to miss. As they got close, they hit a shallower spot and stopped to figure out where to go next. I could see a couple of the fish turning around, and I managed to get the bait ahead of them. The fish that ate measured 27.9" and went into the box with his buddy. Several of the fish were now heading away from me so I paddled ahead to catch up with them. I caught up and pitched a bait ahead and into the edge of the grass. The fish that ate measured 28.5" and had 14 spots. This one was a hard fighter so I worked the fish for a minute until it recovered and let it go. The back lakes didn't hold any feeding fish, so I worked around to the river with the idea of working the more protected shoreline. As I came around a corner there was a boat sitting ahead on my shoreline with folks fishing, so I decided to run across and just work the choppy side. I'm glad I did, because I found a pod of reds working the grass edge. I managed two fish out of the group, including one that went 27" to complete a limit. The other fish was larger and probably oversized. I didn't measure it because I was done keeping fish, and I could already see signs of another group of fish ahead, so I was in a bit of a hurry.

A hundred yards down the shore there were three shore birds doing the familiar "hop-scotch" routine on the grass edge. I know exactly what that means, so I paddled quickly to close the gap. The fish were moving quickly, and as I got close I pitched the bait against the grass just ahead of the approaching fish. There was a thump but when I set the hook the bait shot back towards the kayak. I reeled in and paddled again to catch the group, made another cast and got the same result. If the fish had been small I might understand, but these were tanks capable of producing strong suction when eating a lure. After the third fish thumped the bait without hooking up, I reeled in the bait and looked closer at it. The hook had been broken in half and there was no way to hold onto a fish ...yep, that might explain it. I put that rod down and grabbed the other one, loaded with a Trick shot lure, but I figured these fish were not going to be picky. I was right. The next red broke the school up so after releasing another 27" fish, I made my way into a cut that would bring be back to the sandbar where I had started. I found another fish along the way, for a total of eight reds landed. The smallest fish Saturday morning was 27" and I paddled back to the truck a happy man.

I took Sunday morning off to worship and then I built a foam box that fits inside the hatch of the kayak so that I won't have to wrestle the old fish bag in and out of the hull every trip. The box is made of 3/4" pink foam and looked like it would work well. To prove the concept I headed back out Monday morning. As I sat on the sandbar in the darkness, I heard a redfish slurp some poor fish off the surface ten yards away. I pitched blindly to the noise, gave the bait a couple of gentle twitches and the line went tight. There was a lot of commotion, but after a couple of runs the hook pulled and I was ready to get started locating some fish. Tides were high and still coming in, so I knew fish might be hard to spot. Then again with the low morning winds I hoped maybe things would work out. I chose the shallowest lake first to maximize the shots at visible fish. As I turned into one cove, I could see a few black drum tails already waving. As I moved toward one of them I spotted a red crawling on the grasses, with his back and tail above the surface. Since this fish was almost within range, I changed course and pitched him a bait. The fish was hungry, so we danced and managed to spook several other fish. The red was just under the maximum size, so it went into the box on ice. Within a couple of minutes I spotted another redfish coming out of a small drain. He was barely visible, but I could see the faint wake easily enough. As it came into range I put the bait out ahead and gave it a twitch. Boom! This guy was hungry too, and made plenty of racket as we fought to determine a winner until the fish finally lost and came aboard. At 26" it was a good candidate and went into the box too. Then I worked across the flat towards the drum. I saw one nice looking tail and put the bait two feet beyond. Sometimes these feeding drum can be so engrossed in digging for a meal that they will not see your lure, even after 10 or more passes right beside them. So I used sharp but very short twitches. My little craw lure looks a lot like a shrimp, and the dark green color is easily seen in the muddy water. The fish I was was casting to disappeared from view as my twitching lure got close, and then came that dull thump. I gave it a half second before setting the hook because sometimes drum only get part of the lure and miss the hook. The delay worked, and a lovely little 20" drum came to the kayak. I explored a few more lakes on the way towards the river, but the river was calm without any visible fish activity. I went two miles up and two miles back without seeing a single fish. I think they might have had rain upriver somewhere and it made the water very dirty and fresh. I dropped back to the bay and headed for a larger lake system, and there I found lots of drum. Most were impossible to get a reaction from, but a few discovered my lure and came home for dinner.

The holiday weekend gave me three chances to get on the water, 33 miles of paddling and 18 reds with a few bonus drum. I'm a happy guy and now I'm ready to get back to work for a few days!