The Haves & The Have-Nots

The water in Tres Palacios Bay is steadily warming and the bait fish have returned.

There are millions of tiny glass minnows in the bays now and the speckled trout follow them to the lighted piers at night.

When we returned from our trip to OKC on Monday, I took care of a few things around the house and headed to Palacios with my UL & some tiny glow baits to see if I could connect with my "fishy side".

I arrived at about 8:30 PM and planned on staying until midnight. I finally headed home at 3:00 AM so that should say something about the fishing. I did not have my Pentax with me and took some pictures with my phone.

Schoolie


The largest of this double was close to legal

Typical Speck

There were hundreds of specks around the lights and they would only hit things that were super small. Now when I say small, I mean less than one inch and on a 1/32 oz jig head. I tried the fly rod with a variety of shrimp patterns but they were really keyed in on the minnows. My fishing companions who showed up with big daytime-baits were skunked. I tried to share my little stuff but it's tough to cast a little crappie jig with a heavy saltwater rod and 20 lb mono.

I counted the first 20 fish (between 8:30 - 9:30) and just relaxed and enjoyed myself for the rest of the time. The fish would bite for a while on one bait like a micro-grub and then they would quit. I switched to a 1" double shad and the fish responded by coming alive again. I have accumulated quite a supply of small crappie and panfish glow-in-the-dark plastic baits and it was great fun catching tons of fish.

The minimum size limit on speckled trout is 15" and I caught at least 25 fish that were between 14" and 14 7/8" but I couldn't squeeze that last 1/8" out of any of them.

I like the idea that you don't need to measure your success by how big the fish are or whether you get to take any home, but instead by how much fun you had catching them.

The trip was a great success!