Monday, March 28, 2011

Spring Break Fishing


A couple of weeks ago, my cousin invited me to fish with him in Corpus during Spring Break. On a Tuesday afternoon, I drove over to Corpus Christi. My son came along with me which made me quite happy. My cousin suggested we sleep in his travel trailer which is pretty nice with a double bed, a couple of bunk beds, stove, microwave, bathroom, etc. Really nice.

We were up before 6am and on the water by 7:30am. The weather was on the cool side but it looked like it was going to be a nice day. We would be fishing with live shrimp under popping cork today since my cousin said that would be the ticket.

I think I was the first to pick up a fish, a trout. My son also picked up a keeper black drum. Through the morning until the fish turned off around 11am, we probably caught close to 30 fish, mostly trout and had 17 keepers in the cooler. I picked up a 24" speckled trout and a 26" redfish that ran under the boat but somehow I landed him even without a net.

There was one incident that made me feel pretty bad afterwards. I was casting a large topwater plug and at some point and as I snapped the rod forward, my lure hit and hooked my cousin in the shoulder! My cousin didn't even flinch. I hit him so hard that two of the #1 treble hooks bent open! He had two holes in his flesh and his shirt from the hooks. I was thankful that they didn't penetrate past the barbs or we would have been in real trouble.

We returned to the ramp shortly afterwards to clean up and prepare for the evening.

We planned to run the sail line that evening. We made our way by truck to a spot to run it. My son and I got into waders and started to setup the lures on the sail and let it out. In the distance, you could hear coyotes yipping. A couple of trucks were about 400 yards away shooting into a large dune. You could hear the ricochet bullets zinging. Eventually, they ran out of ammo and left.

Fishing was slow and we caught three fish in two hours so we packed it up and decided to turn in.

I was thankful to have had the opportunity to fish with my cousin again. I was thankful for the fish, too. Most of all, I was really happy that my son got to join me this time and had some new experiences.