Coastal Bend Rods: 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!!!!