Corpusfishing.com

[longrod]

“It’s going to be really windy tomorrow, are you going to stay at home and help me with chores around the house?”

Silly question to ask a guy who had the weekend fishing that he had last week and is hell bent on going back for another round. So I loaded up the kayak and was out ready to launch before the sun made its way above the eastern horizon. It was already fairly breezy, but the paddling wasn’t bad. I know enough about paddling by now to know that I should make the upwind trip before the wind picked up. What I didn’t know is how tough it is to paddle crosswind in a hard blow. Coming in later in the day, I was making five strokes with the left to every one with the right. During the last stretch, I was using the left arm exclusively and even then came in to shore about 150 yards downwind of where the truck was parked.

Next time the wife asks me to stay home and do chores because of the wind, I will know to leave the kayak and just go wading.

Enough about that. I did do some fishing. For all the wind and moving water, clarity was still good enough to target pot holes and sandy pockets. The bite started with skipjack. The third one was a monster and earned its nickname “the poor man’s tarpon” with long line stripping runs and multiple leaps and head shaking displays as it tried to throw the hook. I thought for sure that he would have spooked any redfish in the area, but it wasn’t long and I was stringing up a 23 inch Red who must have been watching the skipjack. This puppy gave up two respectable water clearing jumps during its efforts. I don’t believe I have seen that from a red before. For the next hour, I caught and released multiple reds in the 14 to 19.99999 inch range.

The wind was really starting to howl by now and the bite had slowed, and for an hour or so I went without any takers. Made another short location change and noticed some finger mullet busting out of the water. Made a long cast and wham, fish on, broad red shoulders rolled on the surface and then took off, felt like a really good fish, maybe oversize. It had been a while since I retied the knot on the Mansfield Mauler I was using and sure enough it broke. Mullet were still jumping in the same area so I grabbed my backup rod and proceeded to catch and release five more reds in the 18 inch range and two others that were just shy of the 20” mark on my pole.

I was ready to go. The wind can really take it out of you and being beat up by a loose fitting shirt is no fun. It was then that I spotted my mauler about 40 yards away, it looked to be just bobbing in the waves so I decided to try to get to it before the wind carried it out over deep water. I was just about to reach for it when the large Red it was still attached to took off like a bat out of hell. I hope the hook rusts out soon.

Got home, cleaned the red and myself and got ready to go watch the Hooks take a beating at the hands of Wichita. All in all a very good day.

Sunday dinner.

Good seats at the game too.

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WORK TO LIVE, LIVE TO FISH