Christmas Snookin'

I have been looking forward to a Christmas time snook trip for a while... We got to the Valley on friday night, and we hit the ship channel saturday morning in Keith's friend's Dargel. The morning bite was good, and I landed this 28.5" snook on a Lunker Punker. (same fish, different angle)

From there we had several more on Baby Busters and Gulps, and ended with 6 snook for the morning and tons of big ladyfish.

From there, we went back to Keith's and got his skiff rigged out. We took it for a little maiden voyage into South Bay right before dark. Here's some pics of the (almost) finished product:

It's small, but it's pretty much the perfect ship channel boat! From there, our evening got interesting. We found out that the dogs got loose from the backyard while we were out, and the dog catcher was on the chase. By the time we got home, Rusty and Louie had been shot with tranquilizer darts and were falling out fast. Long story short, Louie got thrown in the clink for the night, and we had to do some fast talking to get him out the next morning because we didn't have his paperwork.... Back to the fishing....

We launched in the ship channel on Chrismas Eve morning and after jockeying for position with a couple other boats that were crowding our spot, we started on a snook rampage for the next 20 minutes. Before the sun broke the horizon, we landed 10 snook and had a double hookup and several back to back fish. They were hitting right against the shoreline and they were very angry!

    

After putting on a snook clinic for the other boats that were moving in on us, but only catching ladyfish, we headed out to check a few more spots and fish some dock pilings. The dock bite was working well, and we added six more snook to the tally for a total of 16 for the day!! We also broke off a couple of big ones near docks, and sight casted to several giants that were not eating... We also got checked by a game warden who told us he made a trip all the way up the ship channel just to check us because he got a call from another boat that we were catching alot of snook. Hmmmm... We got a good laugh out of that. Very fun morning on the water, and a great way to break in the new skiff!!!!

There's still a trip or two to come before we head back to Austin, so I'm hoping for some more pics soon!!

Huge Triple Tail

Keith shot this blog-worthy triple tail today offshore of SPI. It was 28" and he shot it with no reel or float line. Nice one bro!

Aussie boys on Travis

This morning we set up a 4 boat guide trip for the Australian and Thailand fishing team. They are in town to compete in the Hobie World Championship kayak tournament on Lake Bastrop and Fayette. We hit Lake Travis to get them a feel for how the local fish are biting. We started off early throwing poppers over shallow ledges. The topwater bite was working good early, then we went to lipless cranks and shaky head worms on docks and brush piles. We ended the morning with about 20-25 fish. I was impressed with these guys skills. They were dead on with their casting, and I'm looking forward to seeing them do well in the tournament!!

Here's Justin Dingwall with a nice Lake Travis Guadalupe bass:

This is Tim Maas with a largemouth he caught on a dock walkway with a shaky head power worm:

Adrian Baguley of the Thailand team with a nice largemouth that ate a Rapala popper:

Fun morning of fishing, boys!!!

Port Isabel 10/21 - First Fishing Trip!!

We made a quick trip to the RGV this weekend and hit up Port Isabel & the ship channel on Sunday. Keith and I started the day early looking for a snook bite, and found them stacked up and eating until about 8:00am. We landed three, but we hooked up on several, and missed a few more confirmed snook bites. We also had a couple opportunities to sight cast to 30"+ snook. Unfortunately, I left my flipping stick at home, so I lost a good one that I couldn't slow down with light tackle. We also caught about 8 nice mangrove snapper and lots of crevalle and ladyfish. 

We headed in at about 9:30 for some breakfast, and to meet up with the afternoon crew. Rachel came down with Jeremiah, Noah, Jeff, Serena, and my mom. We loaded up with Transformers and Spiderman fishing rods, got live shrimp and hit up a couple honeyholes in the PI area. The boys had a blast and we caught mangrove snapper, jacks, piggy perch, ladyfish, trout, croaker, and a couple of nice flounder. After getting outgunned with the Transformers rods by big snapper, they switched to the big rods and muscled up! 

Not a bad haul for a first fishing trip!! We all had fun watching the boys reel 'em in & I can't wait to do it again. 

Wednesday Night Finale

I fished the last TTZ Wednesday night tournament of the season with Trey Epich and we took 3rd place out of 25 teams for $140. We caught most of our fish on jigs after dark. It was a close finish, as all top 3 bags were within ounces.

Chandeleurs Redfish

Stephen Gustafson did some damage with his LSU rod again! He sent me this pic of a 40" redfish that he caught at the Chandeleur Islands in Mississippi. Nice catch!!!!

Redfish Rod Strikes Again!!

Cade Smith sent me this pic of Callen with his first redfish!!! The redfish rod is still doing damage! Congrats Callen! I've got a feelin' that this kid's going to be a heck of a fisherman!