I had it all figured out. We were having our annual church leadership retreat at a beach house in Sargent this past weekend and some of us use our "down time" to see what's biting in the Intercoastal Canal just off the edge of the lawn.
Troy and I were able to head down early and decided to fish Mitchell's Cut before our first evening session. We were also looking to fill our bait bucket with shrimp & baitfish for the night-time fishing.
It should have been obvious that we were off to a bad start when I ended up leaving my camera behind. We were less than successful even though Troy caught a handful of shrimp, one mullet, and a small unidentified bait fish with his cast net. He also landed a whiting, but I got skunked.
We decided to head back and fish the IC for a little bit before the meeting started and Troy again had the hot hand. He caught a small sheepshead, and this nice redfish.
I caught a croaker and a couple of gafftop on dead shrimp but was still looking for the real deal.
When the meeting broke up about 10:30PM we headed out to continue where we had left off. We weren't out 15 minutes when a Norther blew in with 30mph wind, light rain, and the temperature dropping 15-20 degrees.
It was obvious that fishing here was a bust. There were whitecaps on the Intercoastal and the wind was blowing right in our faces.
Then Troy came up with "the idea". I'd been talking about how much success I'd been having recently in Palacios and he asked, "Why don't we go there?". Hmmm - the wind would be at our backs if we fished the seawall and we could wear jackets. If nothing else we at least could say we tried.
While our compadres continued to visit and some got ready for bed, we headed off into the night for a fishing adventure.
We found fish in Palacios. The sand trout and several small specks were liking the 1" glow double shad rigs and Troy caught another small redfish.
For a while we were catching doubles.
This shot shows a triple between two fishermen.
Three specks!
I was in the thick of them when Troy took this picture.
We didn't catch any keepers - many that were mighty close - but none legal. We were offered two nice fish from a gal who had hoped for a heavier stringer and we gladly took them to the cleaning table.
When we returned with our fish story several couldn't believe we had stayed up all night catching little fish in the cold and wind and others wanted to know when we were planning the next trip so they could join us.
It takes all kinds!
1 comment:
How many times do I have to tell you, don't ever, ever take fish from strangers.
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