Inks Lake State Park

On Friday, I packed up the truck with kayaks, tents, fishing gear and the family and departed to Inks Lake State Park about an hour northwest of Austin. It was time for our semiannual camping trip which was planned and booked about 6 months ago.

This tiny park is quite popular and gets full quickly. Our camping trips as of the last couple of years have been multi-family events with three other families. This year, due to the extreme drought condition, we couldn't have grills or campfires so it was propane camp stoves and burners for cooking and roasting marshmallows.

The small lake had a couple of short fishing piers that were not far from our lakeside camp so after dark, I went with my son and another boy to try our luck. There were already a couple of folks there so we had to wait until a spot freed up near the deeper water and one of the lights. As much as we tried, we couldn't catch a thing so around 11pm we headed back to camp.

The next morning, my son and I took the kayaks out to fish a bit. He with the fly rod and I with a spinning rod. I ended with one 15" largemouth bass and my son caught a nice brim. The rest of the time we lent out the kayaks to the rest of our party so they could paddle around the small lake.

I expect that due to the small size of the lake and its popularity as a camp site, it must get heavily fished so I felt pretty good about catching at least one fish.

The kids and the rest of the folks did a lot of swimming, paddling and jumping off cliffs into the cool water due to the nearly triple digit temperatures.

It was a lot of fun and I am looking forward to our next camping trip this fall!

Minnow catcher

My son participated in a two-day youth tennis tournament this weekend where he did well. On Sunday he was too tired to fish but youngest daughter wanted to head to the park and use her dip net to catch minnows. So that is what she and I did.

With her dip net and mason jar, my youngest went around the edge of the park pond swiping the water and collecting tiny fish. She was having fun. In one spot I sort of directed the fish towards her.

So that she could see in the water a little better being it was sunny, I had her wear a pair of Native Eyewear polarized sunglasses that I picked up on sale at REI recently. I had not been able to find my good pair of Smith Optics sunglasses that I have owned for over six years.

Anyways, those sunglasses looked really big on her. We spent about 45 minutes scooping up minnows so she had a couple of dozen in the jar. We released them all and left. She had fun.

One thing I noticed was there were a lot of sunfish in that pond so at some point I will be back with my son with the 5 weight fly rods to catch 'em.

Community Park Fishing

A chunky green sunfish

This morning my wife was helping with coordinating a car wash fundraiser for the high school band so I had the kids. I told my son and youngest daughter to get dressed as I was going to take them to a local park with a couple of ponds that we haven't been to in a long time.

I used to fish this park years ago and it used to contain large brim and some decent bass but droughts and then a really bad flood years ago changed it and seemed to have wiped out most of the bass. The park went through a renovation last year with a new club house with deck, sidewalks, new playscape, parking and boulders placed along the pond shore for small casting decks. It is quite nice now but how was the fishing?

These little guys were super colorful ... and fun!

I only took my son's Albright 5wt fly rod as I wanted him to practice his casting and catch some brim. We started with the quick reminder lesson. His false casts had nice tight looks but whenever he made his final cast, he would drop the tip and open up the loop so we worked on that. It was also very windy which for any fly fisher is a pain. He soon started catching small brim quite regularly.

After a while, he mentioned going over to the second pond on the other end of the park. The only problem with that pond is that except for one spot, it is surrounded by trees. Of course, the one spot faces into the wind so casting was a challenge. However, he was catching some better quality brim. He ended up landing a big green sunfish as well as small bass for some of the better catches from this spot. After a couple hours being at the park, regularly catching brim, we all got hungry and left to get pizza for lunch.

I enjoyed taking the kids out to the park and watching my son fish. I hope to do this again soon.

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.

Fishing adventures

I originally had a trip to Corpus Christi planned this week which got canceled. I was planning on taking my 13-year old son with me. Although today was a rainy and drizzly day, I decided it would still be fine to take the boy out on the river to test out his new waders.

Finding a pair of decent waders for my son was a challenge. Youth waders are just too small for his size 9 1/2 feet. Men's waders had the right size for his feet but the chest was too big. We eventually found a pair of Magellan waders sold at Academy in a men's small that were close enough to work. At some point when he stop growing so quickly, we'll invest in a good pair of Simms waders.

So, we got to the river and right away noticed something odd along the shoreline. It looked much more bare than I recall. Some time ago this year we had a lot of rain and flooding. Apparently, the river flooded heavily as well. A lot of the trees were broken and stripped by the flood water. We could see large trunks with roots 10 to 15 feet up in the branches of other trees.



We paddled upriver and the water was quite clear and certain parts of the river had changed once again. The large pool where I took my son had a long gravel bar now dividing it. While we could see catfish, gar, bass and carp in the deep clear water, we could not get them to bite.

We fished below some rapids as well as above but got absolutely no bites. My son was wading across different parts of the river getting used to the waders. He said it felt weird when the water compressed the waders around his legs.

Eventually we paddled back to the low water crossing and headed home where I made him some hot chocolate and we prepared for dinner with family at a sushi restaurant. I would have liked him to have caught fish but I know that being out with his dad paddling along the river and wading in the cold water with his new waders was an adventure for him. After all, fishing trips big or small are adventures which is why I even write about them.

Mother's Day weekend family camping trip

This past Saturday, the whole family went to a park along Lake Georgetown in nearby Georgetown, Texas for a Mother's Day weekend camping trip. We joined three other families we know to camp on three adjacent camping sites. This was our first time at this park and it was actually very nice. I brought along a ton of stuff which included some fishing tackle and our two fishing kayaks.

Weather conditions on Saturday were fairly nice with overcast skies and temperatures in the 70s to 80s. The days before we had started seeing temperatures with highs in the low 90s but a cool front came through late Friday evening. The one thing that wasn't particularly positive for kayaking was winds between 15 to 18 mph with gusts above 25 mph.

Lake Georgetown, like pretty much all the Texas lakes, is a man made lake caused by damming the North fork of my beloved San Gabriel river. It is a good size lake covering about 1,297 acres. Besides largemouth bass, crappie, white bass, catfish, and striped bass it supposedly also contains smallmouth bass which is a species I have yet to catch on the fly.

The kids all wanted to paddle the kayaks so we went down to the swimming area of the park and I let them paddle around. After they had their fill, I took one of the kayaks on a scouting paddle to go fishing on Sunday morning. The shoreline was mostly rocky with some vegetation but not a lot. Not a lot of ledges either that I could tell. The wind was pushing me quickly which meant I would have a hard paddle back so I didn't go far and came back to the beach.

That evening I made burgers, hotdogs and sausage for 17 of us and we ate really well. I was stuffed! We made smores and toasted marshmellows, played some games and told some stories around the campfire. I turned in around 10pm.

I got up just before 6am and loaded up the kayak in my truck and headed down to the shore. It wasn't as windy as the day before but as soon as the sun started coming up, so did the wind. I fished the shoreline for about an hour and got just one bite. My stomach was grumbling so I came back in and headed back to camp.

At camp, I started up a grill to heat up an iron pan to make pancakes while someone else made omelettes. Once again, I ate way too much! Sometime later we all went down to the shore to fish for a little bit before returning for lunch and then packing everything up to leave before 2pm. Needless to say we didn't catch anything.

Regardless of the fishing, the rest of the weekend was a lot of fun and I hope my kids had fun, too. We plan to do this again in the fall when the weather is cooler.

Pier fishing across South Padre Island

Last week, just before Christmas I went to visit family in deep South Texas. I had a couple of hours to spare so I took my son to the Pirates Landing fishing pier in Port Isabel just before the bridge that spans over to beautiful South Padre Island. We would of course try and do some inshore saltwater fishing.

Driving through Port Isabel we looked at the landmark lighthouse and my son asked me about it. I remember as a kid climbing up the spiraling staircase during a school trip. It is really narrow inside but kind of cool. Some other time we'll come with the rest of the family and take our own tour of it. Today we were going to fish.

The pier has a restaurant and bar next to it and it has the biggest rod and reel I have ever seen there. Interestingly enough, it is a fly rod. Here is a photo of it.

Is that a 200 weight you got there?

It was a bit cold out so of course not many locals were on the pier and we had our choice of where to fish. According to the guys working the counter, sheepshead was the species most likely to be caught.

I haven't seen a sheepshead in quite a while. It is wide bodied fish with silvery white color and large convict black stripes across the body. It's a good fighter and quite tasty.

Sometimes you see them in Chinese or Vietnamese restaurants at the buffet, broiled whole. If you look at the skeleton you can see why they are called a sheephead. Their mouth and teeth look a lot like that of sheep and other grazers. They are mostly mollusk feeders so I expect they use those teeth for scraping off barnacles and such.

In the distance my son noticed a barge along the channel heading towards the bridge. As we were watching it slowly passing through the center of the bridge, I mentioned to him a tragic accident that occurred right there back in 2001. A barge struck a couple of columns late one evening which later caused an 80 foot section of the highest point in the bridge to collapse leading to the deaths of four people that drove off the missing section into the water below. This was just a week after Septemeber 11 when folks were still dealing with that tragedy. When they repaired the two sections of the bridge above, they look to have reinforced it with steel, I supposed to help avoid a similar issue in the future.

We rigged up a Carolina rig and cast it out tipped with shrimp. However after an hour and a half we didn't catch a single fish. It was also dark now and getting colder so we left. I was quite disappointment not to have been able to have my son get into any fish. In the past, we had fished at this same spot and had fish on almost every cast so that is what we were hoping for but it wasn't to be. The sunset was beautiful though.

Maiden voyage on Brushy Creek Lake

Brushy Creek Lake is a small lake located in Cedar Park near the town of Round Rock. Before it was opened to the public by the city of Cedar Park, people used to trespass and fish the lake illegally. There were rumors of big bass in it and when it first opened, I was there with other fisherman and indeed some large bass were caught (but not by me). I did manage to catch some decent bass, crappie, catfish and even carp there but after a while it seemed "fished out" and it got significantly more difficult to catch a bass though folks on occasion still caught some decent bass over 16".

Due to the small size of this lake, lack of any significant current and lack of motorboats, it seemed an ideal place to take my son so he could continue learning how to maneuver and fish from a kayak.

We got there fairly late in the afternoon. We carried our kayaks to the canoe/kayak launch and then paddled out to a particular spot I wanted to stay in that is popular with a lot of folks.

My son worked on figuring out how to position his kayak and set anchor. I fished close by but let him figure things on his own and explore. He found a small island with what looked like bird houses set aside for owls. There was a mayfly hatch and the sunfish were going crazy but we were here for the bass so our hooks were in the 3/0 size.

We hung around for a while, not really catching anything but enjoying the water nevertheless. As the sun was starting to quickly set, we started to paddle back to the launch in order to get home for dinner. On the paddle back you could hear some classical music, Bach's Brandeburg Concerto I believe, coming from the nearby golf course. The water was glassy smooth and the air was cool. A great way to end the day.

A little fishin' and a little rockin'

My son has been asking me all weekend to take him to the local guitar music store for their big labor day sale. He got a Gibson Epihone SG for his birthday in July and probably plays it every day. He invited a guitar player friend of his, John, from school to go with us. But before the store opened we were going to the local pond to fish.

We got to the pond around 9am and my son started off with foam spider fly. John was fishing with a small spinner lure on his baitcasting outfit. I could see some decent bass in the shallows and we saw fish jumping out of the water several times attempting to catch dragonflies. However, catching was a bit slow.

As I was reminding my son on casting the fly, I dropped the fly near a bass and as I stripped, a small bluegill hit it instead. I had not brought a large selection of flies and nothing to mimic the dragonflies so I tied on a size #6 yellow foam gurlger fly and showed my son how to strip so that it would pop and gurgle and I handed the rod over to him. While the fly lay there, I suspect a bass was eyeing it so on his first strip he got a bite and we landed it.

We could see small bass here and there but the boys were eager to head to the guitar store. I did take about 15 or 20 minutes to give John a lesson on the basics of fly casting. He was good at using the baitcaster reel and so I told him that just like he learned to use his thumb in controlling his cast, he would have to teach himself not to break the wrist when casting with fly rod and that it would take practice. Lots of practice.

The boys were done and we came back home to pick up my youngest daughter and we all headed to the guitar store. The boys really like this store because there are plenty of amplifiers and cords to plug the guitars in to play them. There is also a room for the acoustic guitars as well as a room with drum equipment. We spent more than an hour in the store then stopped by a burger joint for lunch before heading back home.

I have to rest for a bit since my oldest daughter and her boyfriend want to borrow my kayaks this afternoon to paddle around a small local lake. I also have to start getting my gear together for a trip I am taking to the coast in the middle of the week.

Have a relaxing Labor Day y'all!

Easter fishing

Last night we went to Easter vigil mass and today on Easter Sunday we spent the entire day with family, had a great lunch, and the kids had the traditional Easter egg hunt. Later that afternoon I took my son and youngest daughter out to the YMCA lake for some more practice with his fly rod.

Not surprisingly there were some families out there enjoying the park as well as fishing. We found a spot in the shade and my son proceeded to cast and fish. During all of this, I tried offering advice to correct issues I saw but otherwise he was fishing. It didn't take long before the first bluegill hookup!

He caught another fish and we moved around a bit and worked on the casting in the meantime and tried a few different flies.

After discussing some strategies about fishing the edges of weed lines, my son caught his third little bluegill. This one was the smallest of the bunch and this is the one he wanted a photo of to show just how small it was.

Check out my cool fish bone polo shirt!

We started getting hungry so after walking around the park for a bit checking out future fishing spots, we headed home for dinner. It was another successful and fun trip.

Son's first fish on the fly rod

I went with my two youngest kids out to the small lake by the local YMCA to give my son some additional casting lessons with his fly rod.

While my youngest daughter ran around and played, my son assembled his two piece 5wt and I showed him how to properly pass the fly line through the guides and we selected a fly and tied it to the end of the leader.

It had been some time since we had last tried casting and we had to focus once more on the pickup, sudden stop, line control, keeping the loop intact, removing slack and stripping. Lots of things to remember.

One lesson that was learned was to mind your backcast as the first fly was lost to an oak tree behind us. We then moved to a small fishing platform along the shoreline.

The platform offered better casting and we decided to cast towards the shore where we saw small baitfish getting spooked. As I was showing him to how to get the line right up to the shore, I got a nibble so I was positive we would get a hookup.

After a few casts my son hooked a small bluegill! First fish on the fly! He was pretty happy and so was I.

We spent some more time casting but we received no additional bites. He started jigging the fly along the edge of the platform and we could see brim approaching the fly but no commitment. We tried several different flies yet nothing worked for him.

It started getting dark and I rounded up both kids and we headed home. Both declared they had fun so that made me happy. I would love it if we could get more rain so that I can take my son on a river trip where he try for some bass on the fly. That would be very nice.

No longer hardcore?

I haven't been fishing in over a month (no tears please). Last night the planets aligned and I loaded up the kayak to try and do some night fishing. I loaded my 5wt reel with Teeny T-130 sinking line as the hope was that I would get into some white bass.

I got to the lake around midnight and paddled out to a boat dock in water 8 to 10 feet deep and adjacent to a deep channel. The dock had several bright lights illuminating over the water. I could see baitfish nervously swimming about and then a couple of splashes. I tied on a #8 Cypert Minnow and made a poor cast. I let it sink, put the tip of my rod down below the surface of the water and started to strip it in. In that first cast I caught my first white bass. Cool!

In the next hour I proceeded to catch seven white bass, males between 11 and 12 1/2 inches long. From 1am to 1:30am not a single bite. At this point, the wind started to pickup and the temperature dropped as a week cold front started pushing through. My legs were still wet from the paddling and I was getting cold. My shoulder was also starting to hurt a bit. In the old days, I would have kept on fishing until dawn. I paddled back to the ramp and headed home. I was back in a warm bed just before 3am.

I got up four hours later as I had promised my daughter that I would take her and her boyfriend fishing today. We were back at the lake by 9:30am. The wind was a steady 15mph coming from the NNE. Air temperature was in the mid 40s and so it felt pretty cold. We found a spot somewhat sheltered by the wind where we fished for about an hour and a half and then we decided to come back home.

I filleted the fish I had caught the night before and we had them for lunch. I then remembered why white bass are more trouble than they are worth. The fillets aren't all that big and so it takes more fish for a decent fish fry. This means a long time filleting fish.

Once again, in the old days I would not have been complaining. I must be getting old and losing my hardcore fishing attitude. Man, I hope not!

Right now, after cleaning everything and putting it all away, I am dead tired. I think I am going to take a shower and go to sleep early. I am such as wuss! :-(

Oh yeah, Happy Valentine's Day! Hope you get some today! Fish that is! ;-)

Second casting lesson

Yesterday afternoon I took my padawan learner to a small pond to get some additional practice casting with his fly rod. This time, we tied on a leader and fly so we could also work on retrieve techniques.

Among learning how to retrieve a fly, we also worked on picking up the line from the water. We also covered the haul as we did this to increase loading the rod for a forward cast. In addition, I showed him how to use his index finger and thumb on his line hand to create a "guide" for the line to shoot through.

All in all, there was a lot of information provided and I let him soak it in and practice his casts into the water. He did quite well. The lessons will continue...

Padawan Fly Fisher

Yesterday, Christmas day, my 11 year old son received his first fly rod. It was a combo I put together from an Albright 5wt rod and reel I purchased back in October when they were on sale. He was very pleased with it. Today we started the first casting lesson.

Of course, as luck would have it, the wind today is gusting to 29 mph so it was an added challenge among all the other challenges of learning to cast with a fly rod. We started with the basics such as starting with the tip low to pickup the line, making a short speedup and a hard stop to load the rod, getting the line moving and making the forward cast then making a hard stop and as the line shoots forward and the loop begins to unroll, dropping the tip a bit. Easier said than done.

I myself am a visual learner. I have to see how it is done to get a good grasp of the concept so I demonstrated the cast to him while highlighting what all is going on. I also held his arm so he could feel what I meant by a short speedup followed by a hard stop. I then placed my hand behind him at the point where his should stop so he hit it and would know not to over travel.

Teaching someone to cast, particularly a child, is not as easy as it seems. We spent maybe 20 or 30 minutes practicing before stopping. I didn't want to overdo it as the lessons will continue over time. I expect he will pick it up soon enough but the lessons are also helping me in concentrating on places where I have gotten lazy in my own casting.

Maybe one day when he is older and masters the fly casting arts, he will take on his own apprentice. In the meantime, I will resist the urge to talk like Yoda as I continue his education.

No fishing last weekend but good one nonetheless

While I had no fishing this weekend, it was still a good one. My daughter's high school band hand a great performance and they were part of the top six bands chosen from the thirty bands that competed in the area marching competition to move on to state competition in San Antonio next week! Way to go Vista Ridge Band!

I also got to talk to my cousin in Corpus Christi and I will be heading to the coast to fish it on Friday and Saturday. I have high hopes of bringing back some trout and maybe some redfish as well. This will likely be my only chance to fish anywhere until possibly Thanksgiving week.

Albright Tackle Oktoberfest Blowout

As I was reading one of the fly fishing forums today, I came across someone mentioning a closeout sale at the Albright web site. The link is http://www.albrighttackle.com/oktoberfest.html and they have several rods and reels for 70% off but selection seems to be diminishing quickly.

Since I have been meaning to get my son his own fly rod for some time, I went ahead and purchased a nice GP 8' 5wt for $37.50 along with a click and pawl reel for $14. Not bad! Once I scour ebay for an appropriate fly line, this will be a great Christmas present for him. Can't wait to see his face!

The closeout tackle doesn't come with the standard warranty but still comes with a product replacement guarantee. I just thought I should mention that.

Having fun at the TPWD Expo 2008

Since I had told my kids we were going to the Expo, they were pretty excited. My youngest one was up promptly at 7am and was ready by 7:30am. My son took a little longer to get up and get ready but we were out the door by 8:30am.

Having experienced the limited parking at the Expo before, we have been taking the shuttle buses for the past couple of years. Once we got to the expo we headed to the required education for shooters, got our hands stamped, and then got in line for the clay shooting. Unfortunately for us this wasn't the youth shotgun queue and so we had to move and go get in another long line.

My son waited about 30 minutes and finally got his turn. They get three shots at three slow moving clays that pretty much are launched directly towards them as opposed to the side. He didn't hit any of them but still enjoyed it. He particularly liked how the shells ejected though he wasn't sure he liked the recoil. He still prefers shooting the air rifle for now.

After that, we moved over to the fishing area and took a look at some freshly caught fish that are on ice that kids are encouraged to touch. They had everything from shark to mullet on ice. They also had tanks with live sea creatures that can be touched. My daughter tried to touch a crab and it struck at her though its claws were bound so it couldn't hurt her. As she pulled her hand, she punched her brother in the nose as he stood behind.

I took a photo of my youngest in front of an exhibit sponsored by the Texas ShareLunker program. This is a program where by an angler that catches a bass weighing 13 pounds or greater can donate the fish to TPWD for breeding and study. In return, they are provided with recognition of their catch and I believe they get a replica mount of their catch. There a few replicas of bass over 17 pounds on display. They looked like real pigs!

We then moved on to the fly fishing tent and the kids sat down to tie some flies while I checked out what the various fly fishing clubs from around Central Texas had on display. There are a lot of great fly tyers in the area. When I returned to see what my kids had tied and they gave me their flies, I didn't know that my son's fly had super glue on it and almost got it stuck to my fingers! As I type this, I still have some tiny amount of feather on my thumb and index finger.

The next stop was to visit the Texas Buffalo Soldiers. Their exhibit had a real frontier feeling to it and their uniforms and dress were very authentic. They were all great story tellers as well.

After having some lunch, we visited some tents with some "critters". We saw a peregrine falcon, various amphibians, reptiles and snakes. My daughter startled a diamond back rattlesnake in a plexiglass cage and it took a defensive position and gave us a good warning with his rattle. I told my daughter that if she ever encountered one of these snakes on her own, to back away.

As the kids were getting tired after four straight hours of activities, we went to take a look at some native insects, plants, and walked one small trail before heading back to the shuttle bus. We barely got to scratch the surface of the exhibits, activities and events available. We saw a large tank that provided people with the chance to learn to scuba dive. We saw several folks wearing wet suits about to get in the large tank. That looked kind of cool.

All in all, I had fun, the kids had fun and it was a great learning experience for everyone as well. If anyone ever has a chance to be in Austin next year during this time, I highly recommend going to the Texas Parks & Wildlife Expo. It really is a great event.

Turtling

I didn't do any fishing on my own this week as I was feeling somewhat under the weather with a chest cold. This afternoon while I was out in the backyard with my son, plinking with the pellet gun, he asked me to take him to the pond. My wife went to a movie and I took all three of my kids with me.

The water at the pond was really clear so I expected the fish to be somewhat spooky. The amount of grass in the shallower sections made for some great ambush points for bass. I explained this to my oldest girl. She tried her best but this was one of those rare days (which I have had in the past) where the turtles are in an aggressive feeding mood.

The pond is loaded with small red-ear turtles. You could see them poking their heads out of the water near where the bait fell. You could also see them making a bee line towards it and eventually picking it up. Sometimes as many as three or more would fight to get to the bait. Needless to say, this made for difficult fishing as the "bites" where mostly the turtles picking up the bait. Thankfully their tough beaks avoided getting hooked though a couple came close.

My son did manage to hook and land one bass which he was really excited about. Those pesky red-ear turtles ruled the day though. Turtling is a rare skill. That is, when they get in these moods it's rare you can catch any fish. We'll catch them next time...the fish I mean.

Catfish hole redux

One of my nephews is visiting us for a couple of weeks this summer. One of the things my son wanted to do while he was here was to take my nephew and he to the place my son and I went a couple of weekends ago to the spot he caught a few catfish. So, I made preparations this week and rented a small sit-on-top kayak from a local kayak shop.

Yesterday, we went to the YMCA in town that has a small, shallow lake and I had my nephew practice his paddling skills since he was fairly new to it. After an hour, he got pretty good at moving forward, turning, stopping and paddling in reverse. I then got all the fishing gear together that night.

This morning we set off to the same put-in as before and headed upriver. My nephew found it a little more difficult paddling against a current (light as it was) but he did just fine.

Eventually, we got to our destination which was the pool where we had caught catfish two weeks ago and rigged up. My son was the first to catch a catfish though my nephew followed soon after with one on his first cast.

Both boys concentrated on their fishing and in the hour and 45 minutes, my nephew caught and released six fish with a couple around two pounds. My son caught and released five on his own.

We paddled back to the put-in so we could get home early to clean up to have lunch with the rest of the family. Both boys enjoyed fishing and paddling together and seeing cranes, herons, a raccoon and finding a sun bleached deer antler. I had fun taking them out as well.

Here kitty kitty!

Today I took my 10 year old son on a guided fishing trip on the San Gabriel river. I was the guide of course. This meant I brought no tackle along for myself. My son brought along his spinning combo, worm hooks, bobbers and, of course, some big fat nightcrawlers.

We paddled to a pool where I was sure we could catch some bass as that is what he wanted to catch. The first fish to strike was indeed a bass but came off. We then went to the end of point of a gravel bar that was adjacent to deep water and tried our luck there. He caught a catfish! A good one to. He then caught another one. And then another. On the third one, I got jabbed by the spine in the pectoral fin as I was taking out the hook and the kitty twisted about. It wasn't a bad jab but enough to hurt and draw blood. This was a good time to teach my son about being careful of those catfish spines and to always carry a small first aid kit which I had in my bag. A little alcohol swab and a bandage and I was fine.

Now, at this point, I was sort of stunned as I have never caught a catfish from this pool. I have caught some nice cats upstream from here. He continued trying to catch a bass (or a carp which he saw splashing about) but kept catching catfish or got hits but no hookups with whatever it was. In less than 2 hours he caught 7 catfish with the largest going over 4 pounds. The largest one gave him a good fight and we took a photo of it and released it. Actually, in the photo it looks as if he is holding the catfish up but just out of camera range above his hand I am holding the line since the catfish was a little heavy for him to hold up that high.

We had a good time on the river and while he didn't land any bass, he did enjoy catching those catfish. We also saw several herons and a large hawk fly over the pool. I am thinking I need to get him his own kayak because the both of just barely fit in my kayak. He knows how to paddle but I may need to tether his kayak to mine when paddling upriver as it hard work sometimes. We'll be back for those bass some other day.