Fishing Report December 31st

After driving for what seemed like forever down the Matagorda shoreline we finally found the birds we were looking for and hit the surf. After making my way past the first sandbar I received the morning wake up call that no wader would wish on any body... that one wave that catches you when you're not looking and quickly finds any weakness in your gear. A few minutes later (with some dry clothes) I was ready for round two. Between the first and second sand bar there was something chasing bait, and the birds were lending a helping hand. After getting as close as I could, I got into the action with a Bone colored Devil Eye with an orange tail. After bout an hour, I had pretty much had my fill of "dink" trout when I got the ride of a lifetime. We had been hearing that the "Bull Run" was still very much in effect in the Matagorda Surf and now I agree. Yes, that's 12lb cajun line in the picture, that's what made it so fun. It took about 45 minutes to get him to the beach for a quick photo and some rehab before releasing him to make another anglers day. I apologize for the sand in the picture, we had to make it quick, since the cameraman was hooked up when I landed this one.

Dec 16th next day.

The next morning Mark Roznovak (AKA: Foulhooked) from team Paddlecast and I decided to hit West Bay to try our luck with some of the new prototypes from Brown Lures, since he had been testing these new lures with Jason and Jake for some time. I figured he could give me a few pointers on fishing these new baits. Well the morning started much like the day before with fog socked in and a slow ride out of Fatboys Marina all the way to some of the back lakes of West Bay to hopefully get a tug or two on the line!! After finally making the what seemed like a forever run to one of our favorite spots I soon realized that with all of the worrying about making such a run in the thick fog, I left all of my tackle and wading gear in the back of my truck. So here we are 45mins from the truck and I have no tackle to fish with and no boots to wade with but I still have stashed on the boat my book of Brown Lure plastics. So with a little assistance from my bro Foulhooked who found it in his heart to loan me a few jig heads and one of the new prototypes we got to the job at hand of trying to locate the ever elusive yellow mouth. But to no avail at spot #1, same for spot #2, although we did have quite a few strikes on the new prototypes we just couldn't seem to make it stick. Well with a few phone calls and a little discussion we decided to try one of my go-to spots all the way down in Chocolate so 30 mins later we pull up to the spot, set the power poll and start grinding knowing that we will soon run out of time for Mark has to be somewhere by 3. We hadn't been ther for more than a few mins when Mark draws the first strike of the day on a small shrimp tail with the famous legs in pearl with chartreuse tail, a nice 17" trout... and then another... and another and all the while I still can't seem to put it together when I decide to make a little adjustment, so I go to my bag of Brown Lures and pull out a shrimp scented devil eye in pearl color and a chartreuse tail and I was back in the game just like that catching one after another. Although most of the trout that day were a little on the small side we did manage to catch and release over 20 trout in about 2 hrs and even tricked a nice fat 23" yellow mouth into hammering a scented devil eye from Brown Lures to round out a good day on the water with an old friend! So al in all we couldn't have ask for a much better day on water after the fog had lifted and I truly believe that having those baits stashed on my boat really saved my day!!!

Dec. 15TH fishing report

Allthough this trip was a few weeks ago, I figured I would share it with you anyway. The day started out with a friend and I putting in at our local boat ramp (East Galveston Bay complex) with the fog socked in so thick that without the GPS we would have never made it back to the boat launch since the fog never did lift that day. After bouncing around from spot to spot that morning waiting for the water to start moving we finally found ourselves in a mess of fish, my bud was fishing with Assaisn Paddletails for a short bit. While I started out with the big-eyed mullet in the geko color and slow rolled it over shell mud bottom in about 3 ft of water, it wasn't long after that my bud had gotten tired of having to replace his lure ever time he had a bite or landed a fish. He decided to give the big mullet a try in the same geko color I was using, and on his very first cast he landed and released one of the largest trout of the day a nice 23" fat sow. Never again that day did we have to replace a lure due to those trout teeth that seem to devour any other soft plastics. Well all in all we landed somewhere in the ball park of 20 trout and 10 reds for the day releasing all that that we knew had a good chance at making it and all on the same tail. Well except for the ones I lost to the oysters!!!