Spent the long weekend with my buddies Lou and Steve in a canal house at Palm Harbor.
This is kind of a big deal for us, planned for two months since first scoping the rent properties and checking moon and tides. Two of our friends dropped out, and that's ok.
The moon was was waning to a new moon.
NOAA tides for Saturday were a high tide at 2am, a second high at 12:30, and a strong low tide at 8pm. The tide followed the same pattern, an hour later over each of the next two days. 40% rain chance the whole weekend, and the fresh water in the bays has definitely affected the spec population. We saw bait everywhere, Sat and Sun, nothing was feeding on it, but that was also likely affected by the power boat traffic.
The contrasting rainy skies made for some great photography.
The plan Saturday was to begin at Sandy Point, the southern tip of Talley Island, paddle the perimeter, fish the sloughs and especially the cuts, hoping to make Big Cut for the strong afternoon tide.
We were mostly fishing TSL grasswalkers and had fly rods rigged for the opportunity. I started the morning with tiny rat red in the first slough on Talley. The wading water in the back of Trout Bayou and the former cut to Aransas Bay was loaded with little stingrays and tiny reds, but nothing was feeding. Same story around to Little Cut, where we paddled through to Outside Beach.
Little Cut had a strong wind current going onto the flat, and below the surface, a pretty good tide current going out. Nothing but dink trout, so we ate our lunch, set our drift socks, and drift-fished Estes back to Sandy Point.
One thing this trip, first time we've had tail-after-tail bitten off TSL grasswalkers by dink trout.
By mid-afternoon, we were two-thirds through our drift and found fall redfish in trout bayou.
My first was a respectable 18-inch rat on chicken-on-a-chain
missed another on his run trying to get the hook set, and followed that on the same lure with a 25" red that took me round and round.
When we met up at sandy point, Steve had our dinner rounded out with a 22" red on pink trout support, so we headed in to make our grocery errands and cook.
Strange thing when we filleted these fish and checked their stomach contents, new moon notwithstanding, neither fish had eaten a bite before they took our lures at 1pm. I'm chalking that up to the power boat traffic, too.
Steve poached the fillets in a cajun sauce on the grill
Lou handled the salad and garlic butter for the bread, I sauteed the green beans in olive oil and garlic - it was great and we ate too much
The canals have green lights on the bottom, which didn't draw much bait, but did draw all the resident tourist trout - all 14" and smaller
I've seen these canals when you could walk on the bait, and the schoolie specs would come in at night - I've sight-fished 22" and 23" specs here.
This one and 2 of his buddies chased a tiny popper, but they only fell for that once, and I had to switch to the slime line and tiny whistlers to turn more.
Sunday would be a weird day all around. We decided to paddle straight to big cut to see if the morning slack tide would draw something more off Aransas Bay than the dinks. Sitting for lunch, the sky was beautiful - and nothing but dink trout in the cut.
fishing lunch complimented with a Ballast Point Sculpin
Starting the drift home inside of Big Cut, the wind current and rising tide should have us on fish right away, and it did. My strangeness was a bigger redfish than the previous day's, a good 10-minute fight where I saw the fish 3 times. My line was carrying a huge ball of yellow grass. When I lifted the line, the grass ball slid right into the redfish's mouth, and he came unhooked like it was a hook remover. Within minutes, the rain wall hit us with a gale to 35 knots. Drift socks trolleyed to the stern rode the gale perfectly.
Lou and I actually enjoyed the rain, but Steve had just lifted his drift sock, the gale cocked him sideways, and a wave washed him off his boat.
His biggest concern was his I-phone in a ziplock, and he headed for the barn. Lou and I set up a second drift in Trout Bayou, but didn't find redfish where we did the day before. Lou did get rat reds on Sunday.
We made up for it with a great seafood meal at Los Comales in Rockport.
Monday morning, Steve decided to pack on home to get ready for a big deal at work, Lou and I decided to wait out this big wall cloud, so we had a great breakfast of salmon omelettes rolled up with tortillas and link sausage.
We were out by 10:30 and had a bang-up day. Same plan, paddled to sandy point fished a bit on the wind seam, but this time the bait was being slashed.
Anybody know what this is? We caught them all day, all across the flat
along with dink trout
One more gratuitous Big Cut photo, and you can see the incoming tide seam
We had the flat all to ourselves - there were no power boats running, and the little fish there were attacking our grasswalkers - also had no tails bit off the lures.
I missed another big red - really thought I had this one set.
But made up for it with a 21"
I fished this lure all day, and you can see the abuse it took
For our last evening meal last night before packing out this morning, Lou and I drove into Corpus and ate at Thai Spice
I'm taking my 89-y-o dad to Arroyo next month.
Posted: 09 Oct 2018, 20:25 • 
