Thursday, June 19, 2008

South Texas Speckled Trout





Early this month, I had a chance to fish with my cousin, Brant Pate, down in South Texas. In typical Capt. Pate, he had us out of bed at 4:30 to meet him at the put in. So with sleep in our eyes, and some haze in our brains from some killer margaritas the night before, Jessica and I headed over from Corpus Christi to Snoopy's Marina. Brant and our captain for the day, Scott, grabbed a tank load croaker and headed out at sunrise on a calm, beautiful Gulf morning. It had been rediculously windy for the several days prior to this outing, but luckily the day we decided to head out in the boat, mother nature co-operated.








Big Trout was the goal, as evidently the big ones are in close this time of year, doing their spawning thing. We used a pretty simple method...a croaker (baitfish) on a big hook...cast out, wait. Pretty relaxing way to fish, really, when you're used to two nymphs under splitshot in Montana winds.







The fishing started pretty slow, but about mid-morning our skipper found a good hole that produced a bunch of fish. Catch and Release doesn't really apply to trout in South Texas, and by the end of the day we had a cooler full of about 24 keeper trout...






We had a few fish at 23" inches or so, which were the biggest. It was a good time, and definitely nice to enjoy the Gulf heat knowing it was still snowing in Big Sky.



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