Memorial Day

To those men and women who made the ultimate sacrifice to safeguard this country's freedoms, we remember you today. To all the servicemen and women, thank you as well. Everyone have a great Memorial Day!

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.