Cool river bass on a hot day

In the last few days the temperatures have been getting up into the high 90s. Today seemed like a good morning to wet wade the San Gabriel for bass and so I headed to one of my favorite spots along the river and paddled upstream.

I noticed that the algae has started to build up in some spots along the river making it tough using some flies. However, I had success with most of the flies I tried today picking up almost a dozen largemouth and Guadalupe bass. Most of the bass preferred any fly with zonker strips and black seemed popular as well.

I didn't go too far upriver given there were bass everywhere. Most all of them fought great for their size. There is something about river bass. Maybe it's the current that makes them hit hard and fight hard compared to their lake and pond brethren.

I enjoyed being out in the kayak and getting to wet wade in the cool river on a hot day for the first time this year. Hopefully, I will be able to get back there next time and try for some carp.

When size counts

I spent a few days in Corpus Christi fishing with my cousin, Captain Garza. We went all over the place from Port Aransas to Yarborough Pass and we barely caught a limit of redfish and half a limit of trout in those two days. However, though we fell short in quantity we made up in spades with quality.

On Wednesday evening we made our way to Yarborough Pass which is located about 15 miles south of the entrance to Padre Island National Seashore. Once through the pass to the Laguna Madre side located just south of Baffin Bay, we set camp and fished until 1:30am. During that time we caught only a handful of fish though they were quite good fish.

The first one I caught was a 28 3/4" speckled trout! This was followed by a slot sized redfish and then an 18" trout. My cousin picked up another large trout at 26 1/2" and then a 20" trout followed to our surprise by an 18" flounder. The last fish to be caught was a 28 1/2" redfish that I tagged since it was just over the slot size.

At about 4am, I woke up to the sound of a dog barking. Now, we were pretty much in the middle of nowhere. Apparently someone had driven up during the night to fish but nobody approached the camp. I went back to sleep and my cousin didn't.

The next day was really hot and my cousin caught a nice redfish and trout while I caught nothing.

To make a long story short, the rest of the time we simply shot the breeze and reminisced about our youth, music, and the pursuit of more fish in the future. I am very glad I got the opportunity to bring some fish home to cook for Mother's Day tomorrow. While there weren't that many fish caught, they were some big fish supplying plenty of bags of fillets to enjoy. Yep, sometimes size does matter.