Saturday, March 05, 2011

Big Wind Big Fish

The weather was picture perfect all week - someone called it California weather. With the end of the week in sight though, a cold front was approaching which promised some much needed rain. It was also predicted to arrive with some serious wind so our normal fishing program would need to be modified if we wanted to eat fresh fish on Monday.

I lit a fire in the fire pit and set out the fishing light before we headed out for supper.

Spoonbills was closed on Friday as the staff was volunteering at the Matagorda County Fair. We have been wanting to try the River Bend Restaurant so this was our chance. We enjoyed some fresh seafood and began discussing whether or not the fish were going to cooperate.

There seemed to be some fish activity under the light when we got back to the trailer so I rigged Tracy up with a TTF 1/8 oz double glow shad rig and tied on the back half of clear mirrodine soft plastic mullet to my line.

Before long Tracy hooked something big and the fight was on. Thankfully we had her drag set just right and she was tenacious about getting this fish in.

Now that is a big redfish! This bad boy was 11 lbs and 28" long.

This is the slightly damaged but still intact jighead that was used to catch the big red. We fished for a couple of hours and caught small trout on the glow shad but nothing big enought to keep.

The front came through and the temperature dropped so we were fishing from the bank all day. Tracy continued to have the hot hand all morning and into the early afternoon. She caught a couple more reds and several small flounder. I had cast netted up some live mullet so we had several options.

I finally got into the game by combining cut mullet with chartruese Gulp to catch these two keeper flounder.

We both lost a couple of fish that we believe were big enough to keep but didn't let that minimize the happiness we felt at turning what should have been a blow out day into Monday's supper and a bag of fresh fish to give away. God is truely good!

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