We just got back from 4 days on Arroyo Colorado, we stayed in the Spencer Bell house (where we also stayed last year).
The cooler weather and big wind over Friday and Saturday was a big boon to the dock fishing under the lights, making it easy for everyone who tried to catch a limit.
I'll give you the tallies up front - I caught 4 limits, Lou caught 3 , Susie caught 1 and Dad caught 1.
We strictly stuck to our bag limits for calendar days, and everyone laid off in the evening if they had a limit from the early morning.
We kept a few injured 15-16" trout, but we were shooting for 17" minimum, and everybody's limit stringer included a 20-22" (male) schoolie spec.
The most productive lure was Tsunami SS3 in blue back, with black back a close second. Got a few fish on Hogy's epoxy jigs, both 3/8 oz and 7/8 ox (which will literally cast halfway across the Arroyo). My dad grazed through everything in his tackle box, and probably got one fish on everything he tried, old-fashioned spec rigs, cocahoe, some curly-tail thing.
The bait shop across the street got one charge of shrimp while we were there, Susie caught her limit on shrimp, and Lou caught about one-quarter of his fish on shrimp.
When the going got tough, dead calm and spooky fish, next to live shrimp, the most productive lure was a spec rig (tandem) tied on 2-inch swim shad, with glow up front, and blue back in back.
Had to vary retrieves to find what make the fish strike, and also fish different depths to find where they were willing to strike.
We brought home 104 vacuum-sealed fillets, split between 3 households - every single fish I filleted was a male.
The most productive way to fish was sunset to about 9pm, take a nap, and get back up about 2 or 3 am to hit it again. Often arriving to fish the wee hours, would find schoolies so thick under the light, would catch 4 to 5 fish in consecutive casts.
Oddly, we had a very-well secured stringer with five 18"-22" fish stolen from the dock Sunday night, between 9pm and 2am - can't imagine anyone committing a class B misdemeanor over a few fish - I'm pretty sure I know who did it, and that part is even stranger, and included a 2nd class B misdemeanor - another story for another time.
Also brought home 276 MB in photos, so won't give you the whole play by play for the week, but a few choice photos.
This is my stringer, arriving Thursday night and getting up Friday morning (17-21").
and since you don't see too many photos of me
Lou arrived Friday afternoon, and called my dad and me in from our only power boat foray to Green Island, where we caught 1 trout between us.
Saturday morning photo with mine and Lou's overnight limits.
Aside from the glass core of the rockfish rods below, here's the Glass content - the one trout I caught at Green island was on the Lami Classic Glass and venerable Lew's BB-25SW
I filleted every fish, mostly after a good breakfast and before a morning nap.
Susie flew into Harlingen Saturday - Lou and I weren't fishing Saturday night, and this is Susie's limit
She caught all these on live shrimp, using the XUL rockfish rod, 4-lb test, and had so much fun, Lou went to the computer and bought her a matching rockfish rod on ebay.
Susie's stringer included this 20" schoolie (the hook grabber is exactly 15")
My Dad turned 90 this year, and this is his stringer from early Sunday morning.
Dad looks a little younger than usual in this photo.
one more gratuitous pile of fish photo
and one more gratuitous sunset