Lake Austin Fat Triplets!!!

Well, today ended a little dry spell I was having. I havn't blogged any fish pics lately because I've only been catching little ones in my tournaments! Well, the little fish streak was shattered this morning on Lake Austin. LA has been fishing really good lately, and several really big fish have been caught. Bryan and I decided to do a little early morning mission and try our luck! We pulled up to a creek mouth, and on the second cast, I hooked into the first of three 9 pounders!! I caught all of them on a Bandit 250 crankbait using my 8' custom crankbait rod built on a Castaway 965. Within about 10 minutes, I had all three fish in the boat! The 2nd and 3rd jumped several times all the way out of the water, and I was yelling at them the whole time to stay down! Fortunately, they all came aboard and all survived! It was the craziest 10 minutes of bass fishing of my life!! I'll have a video added soon!!

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Bass Champs- Falcon Lake

Here's a couple Mexican bass that got a free trip to the US on saturday. Bryan Cotter and I had a bit of a tough day on Falcon, but we did manage one nice one... Bryan caught the fish on the left on a mag fluke outside of Benavides cove. It went about 8.5lbs. I caught the 5lbr on the right on a jig. We hit alot of spots, but had trouble catching the numbers and size we were looking for. Congrats to Terry Oldham and Jaime Buitron... they caught a 9lb average and won it with over 45lbs!

NOT a Longhorn rod!!

Just orange and black.... Phenix X-13 with cactus, a cracked paint reel seat, inlaid quarter, and a little JTob wrap... The pics came out dark because we finally have a little rain coming through.

January Club Tournament

I partnered up with Rachel for the first club tournament of the year on Lake Bastrop! Rachel fished hard all day and caught this 19" bass on a shaky head rattlesnake. We had a good day of fishing, and Rachel was quick on the net... We ended up in 4th place out of nine teams, and my 17+ lbs was enough to start the year 1st in the club standings. I was proud of Rachel for putting some good points on the board in her first tournament!

Happy New Year!

Cheers to 2012!! This last year was one of my favorite years of fishing, and I'm hoping 2012 will be even better. Make a resolution to hit the water more often this year!!!
I am honored to be featured in the Mud Hole rod builders calendar for the second year in a row!! The 15' CTS fly rod was a fun build, and I'm humbled that it got some recognition among some of the best builders from around the world!!
Go catch a giant this year and send me a shot with your Coastal Bend rod in the pic!

Texas Longhorn light offshore rod

This is a Longhorn rod built on a Phenix PSW700M. It has Alps components, an EVA foregrip, and x-flock over ribbed EVA rear grip. The thread is Madiera and Pro-wrap, and the finish is Threadmaster lite. This one will be paired with an Avet and used for light offshore work in TX.

Ship Channel Snook Trip

On 12/27, Keith, Steve and I hit the Brownsville ship channel in the Panga to look for some snook. It was very low tide, but the water was clean and the snook were hungry. We ended up with 9 snook, 3 reds, and a bunch of ladyfish. Steve had the hot hand on the ladyfish with a gulp shrimp, Keith was hammering the snook on a chrome/black baby buster, and I caught my snook on a white 6" gulp jerk shad. The biggest snook was Keiths at about 27". We had some strikes from some giants, but didn't connect. This was Steve's first redfish, so we snapped a pic. Good times with the family this Christmas holiday!