Another Great Day!

They say that a day fishing is always better than a day at work. Even when you are retired a day fishing is better than staying home and doing "honey dos".
Yesterday opened with a fantastic sunrise and then proceeded to be a fantastic day on the water.

I was joined by a friend from Laguna Vista, Dale K. We headed North at around 6:30. Water conditions were almost perfect, light winds from the NW. Water was perfect for topwater action.
We ventured to  a small bar known by many as the Hump. I have it marked on my GPS as Glenn's Bar. The tides have been exceptionally high and there was probably another foot of water on the bar.
We started at the East end that seems to drop off into some deeper holes quicker.
For some reason there was very little topwater action and so we switched to plastics and were into fish almost immediately. For the next hour we caught trout on almost every cast. Trouble was for every twenty landed, one would be legal. I left Dale and decided to hit the West end. This area had paid off for us in the "Fishing for Hope" tournament.
I changed back to my favorite topwater and connected with a nice 22" on about the third cast. I was soon joined by Dale, who had also grown tired of catching the small schoolies. Together we were able to put together a limit of nice trout.
At around 10, we decided to look for some redfish and ran to the flats just North of Bird Island. There was nothing there and I decided to make a drift in Airport Cove before heading in. Dale connected with an undersized flounder. I changed from my topwater and put on an Excite Bite 6 " bait. I quickly connected with a good keeper flounder, followed by a nice 19" trout which we released.
We headed to PI. I marked this one down as another one of those great days in paradise!

How to get more readers?

I really like to write, take pics and video, and share, but I'm never sure who's reading. I've had this blog for a number of years and as of today only have twelve followers. Now I do this partly for my own satisfaction, but also hopefully bring others to love the LLM and what happens down here.
I've tried a number of things to try to attract more subscribers, but the numbers seem to stay the same. Is there a way to actually know who is reading my blog? Oh well...on to other things...like fishing.

This week I spent two days in the salt and we managed to bring home limits both days. Wednesday we headed North. We fished the 58 area and managed to catch a few fair trout. Most were taken on plastics and Gulp. There was lots of floating and suspended grass. It was hard to work topwaters and at times working a sinking plastics was a problem. Water conditions were good. The waters around 58 always seem to be fairly clear. There is always lots of tidal movement around the various bars and points. I like to fish some really deep sand holes that always seem to hold trout. These are as my son would say..."nipple deep" wade spots. There are usually lots of trout around these holes, but not always keepers.
I found another fairly good plastic that I really like that has great action. It's a five inch soft plastic known as a Suicide Shad made by Big Bites. Its a little tougher than the Yum Momey Minnow and much less expensive. Problem has been finding them. I managed to locate them at an academy in Houston. Even had difficulty finding them online!

Another GREAT "Fishing for Hope" Tournament

The old man took three young whippersnappers and competed in the 11th annual Doctors Hospital At Renaissance "Fishing For Hope" tournament on Saturday, August 27, out of Louie's Backyard on South Padre.

 Michael with an undersize red.......



Team Uno Mas competed against some 200 others boats and some 800 fishermen including guides from the area.
On Friday Michael Middleton, my son from Halletsville, Texas, and Brandon Paul, a friend from Huffman, Texas left Port Isabel at six and headed North. We fished a number of spots on that pre-tournament day including "58", "44", the humps, and a few other choice spots. We managed a three man limit of trout, but no reds or flounder.

That night we discussed our course of action for Saturday. We had been joined by our fourth team member, Casey Morris from the San Antonio area, and decided to be at "44" prior to starting time which was six. We arrived well before daylight and were chunking topwaters before light. Two of our best reds hit at about ten minutes after six. I took a 24.5 and Michael secured a 24.
As it began to get light we were greeted by a large flotilla, as fishermen began descending on all parts of the LLM. If we had not hit our spot early and spread out on the flats we would have had lots of visitors. When we all returned to the boat at around nine, we had 2 keeper reds and three trout. A fair start but a long way to go for weight in fish.
We headed West toward what I call Glenn's Bar and began a total coverage of all four sides of this bar. It lies out in the very middle of the bay and is hard to locate, but local guides fish croaker here. a

                                                             My Flats Cat did well!



We started out with topwaters, but quickly switched to plastics and a Gulp like bait known as Excite-a-Bite.
For the next several hours we put several 20"trout and two good flounders in the cooler. Michael took a 20" flounder that was the third best in the tournament.
The trout were down deep and in deep water. They were simply taking the baits without very much action. The technique was to wait until the bait stopped, almost like a snag, and strike hard. It reminded me of fishing for bass with worms.

                                                            Casey Morris with a "WannaBe" keeper trout.....



We ended our day with three reds, fourteen trout, and two flounder. We headed for Louie's Backyard at around one thirty, knowing that we still had about another hour to fish, but we were tired and decided to go and weight in.

The people who put this tournament on are top notch and those that run other tournaments could take lessons from the young ladies who run the show.

TEAM UNO MAS
       Casey Morris       Brandon Paul       Glenn "Pop" Lemke      Michael Middleton



Thank you.    

Summer Fishing is HOT!

And I don't mean the weather. We've been hitting our wade spots very early in the morning, like before light. If you want a spot, you gotta get there early. Tides have been strong and lots of bait . We've been throwing plastics, but topwaters are also catching fish. 
I have started using the 51/2 inch Yum Shad. Its a big bait and fairly expensive, but not as costly as croakers. Its a very soft bait and I am finding that it is most effective by simply rigging it with an eighth ounce wide gap head and simply cast and use a slow retrieve. I am putting no rod action on the lure. The bigger trout are slamming it. Many times they are simply rolling it up in their mouths and letting go as I get ready to net. No hook set!!
Today we were on our bar and by 7:30 we had a three man limit of 20-22" fat boys! We also had nine other boats move in by eight. 
We continued to catch and release trout until around 9:30 and then headed back to PI. I switched to topwaters and for about 30 minutes had probably another twenty trout on. Its been great!
Here are some pics from the last three days. Gotta head to Houston in the am. Take care...Be careful...and God Bless!

TIME PASSES TOO QUICKLY......especially when you get OLD!

It's hard to believe that the last time I wrote in this blog was eight months ago. I've celebrated another birthday, anniversary, hunting season, Christmas, new year, spring break, and a great start to the 2016 fishing season.
We've had the usual early spring weather with cold front after cold front. Lots of wind with those fronts, and then those fantastic days following. Its during these times when our waters turn clear and the winds drop to almost nothing that the fishing becomes HOT!
It's wader time in January, February, and into March, but April is the time to put those puppies away and get wet. There have been those days that drifting paid off, especially if you had some of those "fishermen" who repeat that age old saying, "Why get out of a perfectly good boat and get wet?"
My answer is "we are drifting right over some great fish and they want slow fished baits this time of the year." Doesn't work, they still insist staying in the boat. Can't really blame a couple of them, as they are short people and some of the places I like to wade are "deep".

For many years I , like my brother in law, David Wood, have been a die hard topwater plug fisherman, but old age has forced me to change my ways. Working that topwater hours on end tends to play heck with my arthritis. There was a period where I really shunned Gulp, but last year started fishing it. Its easy to use and catches lots of fish. Still a little specialized in the kind of Gulp I use...only use the Gulp Croaker!
I still like to throw plastics. We just had my sister in law come down for a visit and she managed to bring her husband, Don Rink. Don is a great guy, loves to fish, but is a home body. Leaving his place in Beaumont for more than a day causes him undue worries. I love him as he always comes bearing gifts. He and wife are great garage salers and this time he brought me a tackle box filled with plastics. There were more than a hundred bags of "good" brand name saltwater plastics along with several hundred jig heads....I think he paid $8 for the total!
Also I've been taking lots of GoPro videos and have to decide when and how I'm going to use them.
So I plan on writing some more and trying to put together a few videos.
See you on the LLM!

"Early Morning Start"

Been real lax on writing in my blog. Seems its easier to just go fishing. I've been taking lots of video and finally decided I needed to put some together. This is GoPro footage using a chest camera. I've decided to try other techniques since Michael has really gotten into doing an almost daily video update on facebook and WWW.texasbowhunter.com.

Hope you enjoy.