Windy day fishing

I had promised my son to take him back to the pond one last time before he goes back to school tomorrow. I picked up some night crawlers from Wally world and we headed to the pond for an hour as we had to be back early.

The conditions today were cloudy skies and windy. I decided to still take along my 2wt as I would try to keep the wind behind me.

The night crawlers I bought were huge and so we had to cut them up into chunks that would fit on the size 10 hook my son was using. It was a dirty job but once we did that, my son started catching fish.

We found a corner of the pond where the wind was to our back and was a bit more sheltered that I could cast well enough. It also happened to contain plenty of bluegill so we stayed in that area for the entire time.

As I was bringing in a rather large bluegill, I saw what looked like a 2lb bass cruising like a shark near the struggling bluegill. I called my son over and we saw the bass take the entire bluegill in its mouth and start heading to deeper water! My 2wt started bending deeply and then the bass released the bluegill though it kept close to it until I pulled it from the water and released it.

Even though today was a short outing, it was still a fun and memorable time with the kids.

Pond fishfest

On Friday I took my son and youngest daughter to the same pond we went to last weekend. The day turned out to be a very warm day with temperatures reaching into the 90s. We waited until about an hour before sunset to start fishing as by then there was some shade available and the fish should be eager to bite.

Earlier in the day, we had stopped at a trading store in town and picked up some red worms and so this was the primary bait for today. It took my son a while to figure out how to keep the worms from falling off the hook. Eventually, once he did, he caught his first fish of the day; a small bluegill.

My son continued catching bluegills pretty steadily. They were small at first and progressively got bigger. There are some really big 'gills in that pond! We also saw a huge crawfish walking along the shoreline.

My daughter found a friend to play with at the pond. Another gentleman had showed up at the pond to fish and brought his daughter that looked to be 4 or 5. My daughter, being a socialite, went over to make a new friend and they basically ran around the pond searching for plastic lures and playing with the worms.

Since my son was doing really well on his own, I decided to take my 4wt to fish along with him. I was using a size 8 Cypert minnow fly and caught so many bluegills in the 7" to 9" size that I lost count. We did catch one small green sunfish but primarily the pond was filled with healthy bluegill. I did also catch one small bass and I figure there are much larger bass in there but I didn't managed any.

Sunset came around and it started getting dark. My son didn't want to leave. As the frogs started to sing, I switched over to a small Gurgler top water fly and as soon as it hit the water, I caught another big bluegill. Eventually I couldn't see my cast around 8:20pm and I told the kids it was time to leave. My son asked me if I had any of my headlamps in the truck so we could keep fishing. I told him we would come back some other day.

While I was packing up the rods and the worms, the kids rolled each other down the steep grass embankment.

I intend to take the kids one more time this weekend before their spring break vacation comes to an end. It is supposed to be pretty windy today with gusts in the 20 to 30mph category. I hope not since that pond would be great to try my 2wt on. I'll post up later as to how today's trip went. Hopefully, it will be as good or better than Friday's.

At the pond with my son

Last weekend I took my son to Cabelas so he could pick out a new fishing rod/reel combo. We ended up selecting a new 6' spinning rod and reel combo made by Quantum. Today we took it out to a new pond to give it a test drive.

As is a policy of mine, when taking the kids fishing I myself don't fish so that I can devote my time to coaching them.

We picked up some small meal worms and proceeded to fish the pond. It is essentially a retention pond about a 1/4 acre in size at the entrance of a subdivision. I was told it held sizable bluegill so I thought we should take a look.

In the middle of the pond is a large fountain that I expect circulates the water to reduce algae growth. The center of the pond seems at least to be three feet deep. My son started fishing on one end where we had seen some fish as we came close to the pond. However, after about 10 minutes or so we moved on to the opposite end.

While I was checking the count of meal worms we had, my son caught the first bluegill which was fairly nice sized. We photographed and released it.

We moved around the pond and had one other bite in the hour and a half we were there. Even though the fishing was slow, we observed the shoreline of the pond had hundreds of snail shells along it as well as baby frogs jumping into the water as we walked by.

It was a good time and I was very happy taking my son out. It's spring break for his school this week so I plan to have a couple more outings. We might even try fishing for white bass in one of the rivers in which they come in about this time of the year to spawn. I'll have to check the reports though before heading out there.

Operation Nighthawk

I spent Friday and Saturday in Corpus Christi on a mission to harvest a few fish from the bays that my family and I could enjoy for Fridays during the Lenten season.

My cousin and I loaded up the boat with supplies, launched and arrived at our destination around 10:30am on Friday. Our destination was Nighthawk Bay. We moored the boat next to a duck blind just 10 feet from the drop off. It took almost two hours to unload the boat and set up camp.

We had a small strip of shoreline to set up the tent and the sand was a bit soggy. We picked up dry sea grass and created a mat of it to place the tent over which worked out very well.

Since the sand was so wet, the stakes we originally had were getting pulled out by the wind so I went down the shoreline scavenging for something that would work and found the remains of a folding chair and used the lengthy rusted metal legs to drive into the sand and that was perfect.

While scavenging the shoreline I noticed a gun case. Out of curiosity we opened it up and it contained a really rusted shotgun inside! It could have been left behind accidentally by some duck hunters or possibly fallen off the boat and floated to shore. Regardless, the shotgun was too far gone with rust and salt to be reconditioned so we left it.

Once camp was set up, we went wade fishing for a while and found no fish so we rested for a while.

Just about an hour and a half before sunset, I went back out to the edge of the drop off and started casting a minnow lure with my baitcaster. I didn't bring a fly rod for this trip as the water past the drop off was about 4 feet deep and not conducive to sight casting and I needed something that could cover a lot of water. Within minutes, I got a hit but lost the first fish.

After a cast I would use a quick enough retrieve to keep the minnow lure moving just below the water surface. All of a sudden there appeared a large wake behind my lure and then I felt pressure and had what felt like a redfish on the end of my line! Unfortunately, after several seconds, it came off. I repeated my cast and retrieve and was again rewarded with a strike and hookup and this time it was on!

I could tell this was a decent redfish as it took line and my drag zinged every once in a while. By this time, my cousin took notice of my rod bent over and headed towards me. I landed the first fish which was a beautiful 25" redfish. For the next two hours we had pretty consistent action though after the redfish action died down the trout action heated up. At least once we had a double hookup on trout.

Almost as soon as it appeared, the bite stopped after it got dark. By 11pm we had the last bite and then ate dinner and turned in for the night. At that point we had five redfish ranging from 24" to 27" and ten trout ranging from 16" to 22" in the cooler.

The night was a very humid and everything we left outside was wet and within the tent we had condensation and the outside of our sleeping bags were damp. During the night we could hear coyotes, raccoons, and hogs coming around the camp and in the distance you could someone shooting a semi-auto rifle at 2:30am. Well, my cousin recounted what he heard to me since I was out like a light until 5:30am.

In the morning we had some coffee and a light breakfast and packed everything up and left by 8am. We took the boat back out of the water at 9:30am and by the time we unloaded everything at the house, cleaned everything and the fish it was past 1pm. It was easy to tell at the boat ramp cleaning table that we did much better than most and it took about an hour to clean all the fish.

After this we had a late lunch, cleaned up and napped for a couple hours. After that we headed to Bird Island Basin in the evening to try our luck again. To make a long story short, we stayed there a couple of hours and only caught one hardhead catfish so we went back home to turn in.

This trip exceeded my expectations for this time of the year. It was also a fun adventure. I hope that when I run out of fish from the freezer I can get a chance to get out there again in late March or April. Tonight, I am still reminded how tasty the grilled redfish on the half-shell was. Real tasty.

The next generation fisherman

This afternoon, I asked my kids if they wanted to go fishing. The youngest two said "Yes!". Last weekend I took them briefly to the YMCA lake without any luck but this time we were going to a neighborhood park and we were going to give meal worms under a float a try.

Before we left, I had stopped by the local pet shop for a cup of meal worms but all they had were the "super" worms. They were a bit big but since that is all they had and sunset was going to be approaching soon, I got them anyways.

I rigged up a small spinning rod for my son and the pink Barbie pole for my daughter and we headed to the park.

The day had turned out to be a pleasant day with temperatures in the 60s. We walked around the pond looking for fish. I decided to every once in a while throw a meal worm in the water and see what happened. In one spot, soon after the meal worm would hit the water, you would see a swirl appear and the meal worm would get sucked into the vortex. I told my son to cast into the vortex and we waited.

Not long afterwards, the float went below the water surface and start taking off. It was a nice sunfish! I had my son bring in the fish and we snapped a photo of this nice 8 1/2" to 9" Green Sunfish and then released it.

My daughter, however, seemed to be more interested in exploring the park and had abandoned her Barbie pole. My son was intent on catching more fish though the "super" meal worms were fascinating him.

We moved to a different spot and found fish but given the size of the worms, the smaller sunfish would grab the tail but not the hook and so we had a lot of false strikes.

As the sun started setting and we were out of worms, I told the kids we were heading home. My son was disappointed as he wanted to continue fishing. While in the truck he asked me about building his own spinning rod which is something we discussed last weekend. He was still interested in doing that. I am still looking for an inexpensive kit for an ultralight spinning rod.

Just before bedtime tonight, my son asked me if we could go fishing tomorrow. I told him that tomorrow is a school day and he answered, "What about after school?". I responded, "We'll see".

I am getting the impression that my son is now coming into his own passion as I did about fishing. So it looks like this year I will be devoting much more time to fueling this passion by taking him with me more often. It also seems like I have some work to do with my daughter. ;-)