Year of the Fish

This February is supposed start the "Year of the Rat" according to the Chinese Zodiac. After returning from a successful two day trip to Corpus Christi, I think this should be the "Year of the Fish". Of course, there is no fish in the Chinese Zodiac (but there should be).

The first day I arrived we set out in the afternoon to fish a spot in the Laguna Madre near the JFK causeway but did not end up with anything so we got ready to fish the evening at Bird Island Basin with the sail line. That night was cold and having only caught two slot redfish and having lost the wind we turned in at 10pm to rest and set out the next morning in the boat.

The next morning we loaded the boat and went to several spots trying to catch trout or reds with live shrimp but we couldn't even lose the bait. We didn't see any fish in the clear water on that clear bluebird day. The water also felt cold. Things were supposed to change along with the wind direction that night so we went back to Bird Island Basin later that afternoon.

This time we got there early around 4pm and set the sail line out with a decent south easterly wind and the water seemed to have warmed up as well. We could see plenty of bait fish in the shallows and as the sail line went out just past the drop off and within minutes had fish on. We made four runs that evening until midnight and each one contained fish. All in all we ended up with eight trout of which two were a very healthy 25 inches and several in the 17 and 19 inch length. We also ended the night with 8 very nice black drum. The 100 quart ice chest was stacked with fish.

That night there were also two older gentlemen that had set out a sail line and caught a whopping 32 inch trout! They released it but very likely the odds are it won't survive. It would have been best to have kept it.

After arriving home to Austin I prepared the grill and broiled the fresh redfish on the half shell (fillets with the skin on) prepared with lime juice, salt, pepper, garlic and some chili pepper. It was very good!