THE WIND IS MY FRIEND

Redfish aplenty October 8, 2009. The wind was blowing in the high 20s and gusting over 40 MPH but the redfish were still near where they've been for several days. We had to keep telling ourselves "The wind is my friend" to make us go fishing in the first place. Two pelicans showed us exactly where the bait was on top of a bar and once we anchored there the reds were biting steadily. We sometimes had on two at once. We missed 3, broke off 3 and caught our limits of 6 total in about 3 hours. I expect the redfish and black drum fishing will remain excellent for the next few months. Speckled trout may be another matter. We need more rain and some cooler weather to turn the trout on. Although there have been rains around the region there has still been no fresh water inflow into the bays. The salinity remains very high due to the double whammy of Cedar Bayou being closed and the long drought. It's currently raining in the region, so hopefully this will improve the trout fishing. But in the meantime, thank goodness for reds and drum.

May 4, 2009 - Redfish save the day again.

Overnight the wind had moved from strong out of the South to strong out of the North. Such wind is not conducive to good trout fishing. With a family of four including 5 and 7 year old boys, we left Cove Harbor looking for redfish. Caught four on cut bait behind the spoil islands north of Conn Brown harbor. When the bite slowed about 9:00 AM we got a call from a friend who was catching large trout near Mud Island. I gave the customers a choice of whether to move to another spot for redfish or go all the way to Mud Island and hope the bite was still on there. We arrived at Mud Island about 10:00 to find the fish had completely quit. After an hour or two we gave up on trout and moved all the way to Dagger Island to look for more reds. We didn't find a single fish. I decided the best thing to do was move back to where we started the day. The fish were there better than before. We caught 6 more for a total of 10 redfish for the day. Several of the fish were caught on Zebco 33's and not a single hooked fish was lost. This had a lot to do with how the family paid attention and worked together to be sure each hooked fish made it into the boat. The boys were a real treat to be around. "Yes sir" to everything and they even asked permission before doing anything that might be wrong. They gave me new hope that America will still be a great country thirty years from now.