Thanks for sharing BD

Thanks guys - still catching up with Saturday and Sunday...
Steve arrived Friday night and moved into his trailer with Lou and me - and brought more beer.

Saturday is always a busy day with weekend power boaters, but most important, we had to look for shelter from a strong south wind 16 to 18 kts.
We added a long drive to Seadrift, launch at Charlie's, and a 2-1/2-mi paddle along the Intracoastal Waterway to Welder Flats - more mud marsh.


It was a great choice for the day - room on the deep flats for the power boats, and no room for them in the mud marsh lakes.
Josh established himself as the mud marsh king with an early redfish limit.
We saw hundreds of spooky reds with their backs out of the water - and very tough to catch, mostly because they were so close together. Twice I cast to a fish, lined a different fish, and they all exploded.
I did bring home a nice flounder, and Josh made 4 artful fillets for me.


Good photo of William here, when I joined him at "lunch beach"


Saturday night was Josh's fabled shrimp boil - he gets better at this every year with his own spice blends - and that's saying something.


We always have a great time around the firepit. Saturday, we were also joined by Josh's friend Chase.

We knew Sunday would be another strong south blow, a short day, off the water by 11 am, and picked Brown & Root flat because the focused wind down the cut channel is a guaranteed ride home. Lou and I found some wind shelter to drift, Josh joined us with a redfish that he caught twice, jumping out of the boat when his stringer was drifting away.
More spooky redfish - we saw fish everywhere, and they fled when they saw a lure. Chase stayed out and was telling Josh on the phone that he was catching over-slot fish.
Steve came in with a nice 22" red sight-fished on TSL Grasswalker chicken-on-a-chain


The epilogue, well, great times with great friends - fish are gravy - got my thanks out up front.
We had to hang around Rockport a bit longer to get Steve's errands, had a nice seafood dinner at Mickey's in Aransas Pass, and a slow drive home.
Josh loaded Steve and Lou with half-shell fillets, and a guide coming in handed Steve a bag of red and black drum fillets.
So Steve took home a lot of fish to MA - he's almost as good a cook as Josh - and maybe MA will let us borrow the trailer again.

Thanks friend - certainly the best eats the coast offers - our flounder fishery closes next month for the winter.
We brought in 4 nice ones over the week, all around 18"
But the fishery does need the rest. The reason I asked Josh to fillet mine, in the past, I've filleted 22" and 24" (fly rod catches) with room to waste.
Josh doesn't waste anything, and throws a virtual skeleton into the bay.

Rob, the Salty Style with Silver Wolf was the trip tackle - fished from 3-g micro-plugs, and caught every fish that mattered except the flounder.




Even though Josh laughed about the rod length, it fished light lures really well in the tight marshes - it's very much like fishing a fly rod.
At $100, it's also the least-expensive rod I took out.

@G8trwood - yes, it's a super-progressive taper with a flexible but still fast tip, fast mid and powerful butt, and it fishes the full range.
Also kept the 24" red from going under my boat - he was taking some drag at 3-lb set, and was a blast (that's a 16" red above).
The only reason it won't retire my 7'1" ML is that rod is freakishly light-in-hand for all day fishing (caught the flounder with 3" Swim-Z shad tail on Texas-eye jighead).

this just off the grill...

Shared with my folks (just up the road) who made it a feast, with homemade Spanish rice, green beans, and my mom's banana pudding, which is beyond anyone else's.
Not only that, they only ate half their skin-on grill-blackened redfish fillets, and will still be eating them tomorrow, so they sent me home with half the banana pudding.

Man, Ron really covered the trip well both with pictures and written. I’ll fill in some spots from my perspective.


Day 1

As Ron mentioned, my sister and I started the annual trip running north to a sleepy, coastal community called Indianola. It offers back lakes and protected water for kayak regardless of wind direction. We launched around 8 am.



We started in the deeper waters and caught a couple trout at a pinch which we had to throw back due to mid-season regulation changes. We found ourselves meandering through the back lakes to find redfish gorging themselves on 4” finger mullet and 1.5” shrimp.



It was shallow enough that the reds had their backs out of the water so we got to sight cast to all of our redfish.



We ended the day with 4 keeper reds and my sister got a bonus flounder. When we got back to the fish cleaning table we cut open the stomachs of the redfish to see what all they had been feeding on and found one redfish had two 7” juvenile Tarpon and another had a 6” rat; first time I’ve ever seen that.







By the evening our friends Whit and William along with my friend Andy had made their trip down from Dallas and joined us for dinner; Flat Iron Steak, Grilled Shrimp, Crab & Toasted Pecan Risotto, and Grilled Romaine with Grated Parmesan.




Day 2

We ran to the west side of Copano Bay to Port Bay, more specifically, Italian Bend. It’s a place I enjoy fishing during our winter months. The winds were supposed to be SW in the morning swinging to SE for our paddle back, but it ended up staying consistently from the SSW the entire day.



I didn’t have much luck other than small trout on topwater and a gafftop on a softplastic. Shallow or deep I couldn’t find fish. My sister, Nina, caught a stud of a redfish; right at 28” and 9-¼ lbs on my Boga. My buddy Andy saw bait jumping on the shoreline and strung up a very nice flounder.





Dinner that night was a group favorite; Moondogs. It’s a solid place right on Fulton Harbor overlooking Aransas Bay and offers solid, consistent food; big, cold beers; and an amazing view.




Day 3

I really don’t have much to add to this day. East Flats has always been a consistent producer for our group, but we only scratched together 5 or 6 keeper reds in our group. The redfish were there, I saw them. I spent most of the day standing up in my kayak and drifting the flats and saw a ton of redfish, but they were really skittish.


Day 4

Not much to add to Ron’s report from the day. I was able to bang out a relatively quick limit sightcasting to redfish, but still had to work for it. Our group saw well over a hundred redfish with their backs out of the water just slowly perusing the shoreline, but any cast within 10ft of their existence caused them to flee for their lives (rightfully so).





I spent most of my day fishing the very back of the back lakes. Sloughs with turns so tight my 15ft kayak had me making 30 point maneuvers to continue on. For every dozen reds I made, I would finally hook up with one. It was a blast, for me at least.





Our last dinner as a group would be the traditional shrimp boil; CLICK HERE FOR RECIPE. As usual for each night it ended with beverages and cigars around the fire pit.






Day 5

The windiest day of the trip……thankfully? By day 5 most of us were wore out, but Brown & Root Flats does allow some protection and the option of paddling into the wind at launch so it would be at our back returning to the launch.



I had poked out into more open water to drift the thigh deep waters. I was working a topwater and had some small blow ups, probably piggy perch, before a really solid one swiped at it. I tossed the topwater back in the general area and it got swiped again. Third cast I switched to a soft plastic, a Lil John, and hooked into a solid 24” red; I strung her up.

At the end of my drift was WIlliam and I said to him, “I just caught the dumbest redfish on the flats”, and went to grab my stringer to show him. It was gone, both the redfish and my stringer. I must have clipped it in wrong. Although it was an extremely long shot, I paddled back up wind to reset my drift. Threw out my drift sock, stood up in my kayak, and started to scan the waters looking for a bright orange stringer or very small float. Drifted right back into the shoreline without seeing it.

I was done. Even though it wasn’t even 9 am I was already tired of the wind. I paddled over to Lou who was about 75 yards away from me, and about 2/3rds of the way there I glanced to my left and I saw it; my stringer WITH a redfish. I made a hard left and briefly chased it down with my kayak. I jumped into the water and chased it some more on foot. It stopped after 20 or so feet. I was able to reach down, grab both ends of the stringer, and yank it and the redfish out of the water and above my head. I effin’ found it!

I’m still in disbelief. I told William, “I really did catch the dumbest redfish on the flat, because I was able to catch it twice”. A rough measurement on Google Earth showed the difference from where I approximately strung it up/lost it and where I found the stringer to be about 150 yards. Anyways, that’s my final day report. I didn’t get many pictures so here’s one of my kayak.



Thanks again for coming down and fishing, even though I threw in some muddy waters on this trip. We’ll do it again next year.

Josh, that's perfect - thanks for those great photos, and the view from your boat.

Adding a note about Indianola. It was the major port in Texas until hurricanes 10 years apart destroyed it, and it wasn't rebuilt the 2nd time.
Most everyone I know who's "from here", their ancestors immigrated through Indianola, and likely Josh's family, as well.

Mike, that's why the gratitude was the first thing out in my OP.

And btw, if anyone is interested in this sort of thing, here's Josh's GPS paddling trails for all 5 days.
indianola


Port Bay


East Flats


Welder Flats


Brown & Root Flat

Scotto, there's a world too far from the salt that's filled with pressure.
Overflowing of thanks to Stevo for his extra effort to set us up, and Lou and I were styling in Steve's travel trailer all week - all that other world pressure sublimated away.
When Steve arrived Friday night, Lou and I couldn't help but notice his road funk lasted until Saturday night's bacchanal.


ps - flounder fish tacos

Hi Scotto,
I couldn't tell you what tackle Josh used - maybe he'll chime in. I know he likes Waterloo custom rods, made for the TX coast, and aimed at all the right niches.

I had a very good rod story this year. My salt finesse rod that I didn't bring - floors, stuns, bowls over - Yamaga Blanks BCIII-82/B. It casts 2 g to 130' with the reel properly set. While it's a great rod for wading and excels at Arroyo docks, I'd never fish it from a kayak. for the simple reason it can't stop a redfish from going under the boat, which would be its demise and heartbreak. Expensive to replace, and delayed by Mr Yamaga's production queue of so many wide-ranging salt models. I have taken it out on the kayak several times to wade and fish Estes cuts, but still worried about it.


This year I added inexpensive Abu Garcia Super Light Shore Jigging rod - $100. Compared to the Y/B, it's longer, wider lure range, stouter, not quite the low-weight-end, but close - and able to stop a redfish from going under the boat - which it did on my trip-fish 24" red.

Had it matched with Zillion Silver Wolf and super-light PE#0.8 X-braid.
(this is the 16" rat red at Little Cut).

The Abu rod won't cast its 3-g low-end to the distance of the Y/B rod, but it fished 1/15-oz finesse jigheads in the marsh perfectly. It was very much like fishing a fly rod.
It was me that let the rod down in marsh - I just didn't go in with a mud marsh mindset. My experience sight-fishing reds will spoil you, wading Fence and Allyn's lakes on remote San Jose Island with a fly rod. But then I've never seen redfish stacked like this in sloughs, like Josh saw at Indianola and we all saw at Welder.
Paid my dues this trip, and I'll go back with a mindset and a mission.

The other place the Abu rod excelled was casting 5-g finesse plugs to greater distance than I needed both wading Little Cut and drifting East Flats.
Two lures excelled for me there. First was Ima K-Ta bora (mullet), suspending/diving lure both in Little Cut and East Flats boat channel.


Second was INX Label Supra 65 prop-tail shrimp on the flats, and the short, soft tip on the Abu rod excelled at working this plug.
This lure caught my trip-fish red, and another before I lost it from my snap.


Caught my flounder on my trusty ML, 13Fishing Omen Green and braid-raced Zillion,
fishing my reliable 1/8-oz Z-man Texas Eye jighead and Minnow-Z shad tail (different color, Sexy Penny)


The rod I still haven't broken in after 2 trips (first trip was a wind-blow-out) is wonderful wide-range MH, which fishes 1/4-oz TSL Grasswalker with aplomb, and on to 7/8-oz Corkys and 1-oz big winter topwaters.

After the freeze last year, TPWD narrowed the speckled trout slot to 3 fish, 17 to 23", increasing the probability of catching schoolie males, and saving nursery females from the creel. That's really added pressure by guides for redfish on accessible flats. This whole trip, we found redfish lure-skiddish. While I got many Grasswalker strikes, I didn't catch a fish on one this trip, and that's extremely unusual.

I hope Stevo didn't take offense at my observation. He was buzzing for 24 hours after he arrived, while Lou and I had tacked down from the first day to salty mofos. Steve is a friend and brother for life, and I once told his ex-wife - I love you Merry, but I've loved Steve longer.

So Rad!!!
I’ve been Nerding Out on all your guys gear ..
Bulldog I’ve been watching JDM/BFS fishing vids all morning especially the mountain ones .
So cool !
And Josh I just checked out those Waterloo rods .
Some seriously good offerings on their site .
I’m really feeling the Waterloo Phantom rods in 7ft spinning configuration.
It’s seems like the action would fit my style for all purpose angling.
Not to mention it’s affordable!
My inshore quiver needs serious help ..
Tight lines guys !

What a great string! Looks like a terrific trip. Great photos. Thanks!