David Wood is a South Padre Island fishing guide with over 20 years of experience. He is the author of three books offering expert fishing advice.
As I was preparing for yesterday’s fishing trip, I tried to keep my mind on things to mention here. The first thing I did was pick the fishing rigs I wanted to use for the day. If you are like me and have a piscatorial arsenal of gear at the ready in the garage, it is best to tune all of it to the manufacturer’s recommended line weights. That way you know what each rig is by the size of the reel and therefore the tensile strength of the line on it, without having to remember a bunch of custom rigging I might have done in the past. I was heading out light, taking two small spinning reels and a fly rod.
I cannot really stress just how important preparation is, often being the major difference between a great day of fishing and just a regular day of fishing. What I mean by a regular day of fishing is an exercise in
knottology, or knot tying. It is best to have a system down for rigging and re-rigging, doing as much of it as you can on the dock the night before. Bites often don’t last all that long, so sometimes fishing fast is the key to great catches. Taking advantage of the fish being active can be a real trick on days when they only want to bite for a few minutes at a stretch. Having rigs prepared to go makes all the difference. It is great to be good at tying knots, but rigging is never fun during a blitz.
Bull reds are still a lot of anglers’ primary target up and down the Gulf Coast right now. The sheer size of a bull redfish makes it an exciting catch. I remember when it was a rare sight and occurrence too. Redfish have
made some major gains in biomass over the years, providing a bounty of angling opportunities for Texas. While bull reds are fun for being big gamefish, it’s the juvenile redfish that make for great sportfishing due to their willingness to take artificial baits and shallow-water habits. Sight-fishing for them is a perennial favorite of many area fisher-people. It’s still a great time of year to hit the back bays and cast to cruising juvie reds.
The trout bite has still been the mainstay of my fishing lately. I love to catch them on a fly rod. Speckled trout have one of the best feeling “hits” in all of fishing. Once you learn to recognize the distinctive thump of a
speckled trout, an angler can get addicted. We are starting to see more big trout already due to the newer regulations. I am interested to see how the trout and redfish populations change over the coming few years. Fishing seasons are like anything else, there never seems to be two alike.
I counted thirty trout to hand before I quit fishing yesterday. It was a great day.
Comments