Posted By Kris/ In Castaway Lodge Fishing / Monday, April 12, 2010

Another Milestone, Spring Benchmarks

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On The Island

We reached a milestone in the back lakes this Spring with the first arrival of slot “Pony Drum” there on Saturday. I haven’t seen them at all thus far even on a few stretches of outside beaches I might travel. This is a sure sign we are heading for stabilized water levels and warming temperatures. I’d say they are probably running about 3 weeks to a month on the late side. Seeing these flat burning bruisers hump up and churn clear waters into brown put a big smile on my face like meeting an old friend.

Black Drum are fast movers, they will push into the shallows on rising water and remain until the first sign of a water drop. When that happens, they will completely abandoned the shallows for outside beaches or possibly the depths of deeper back lakes. Mixing Redfish action with the unrelenting pull of slot Drum makes for an awesome day.

On The Chain & Upper SAB

Capt. Steve Boldt reported explosive Redfish action along with a few Trout with our guests from Southwest Airlines wade fishing artificial lures Friday. Gusting East wind knocked the Trout bite down pretty good according to Steve. On Tuesday, he had located solid Trout action with Gulp Shrimp under a MidCoast Products Inticer over shell flats reefs in SAB. That was all for naught as the latest cold front thrashed the waters. “After a number of pretty good grinds on Trout, I could tell it just wasn’t happening. Pretty confident upper bay Redfish would be in a feeding frenzy called for a quick regroup. Sure enough, with water falling out of the upper Delta marshes, we intercepted numerous Redfish pushing the upper end of the slot with full limits coming in short order. That was a day saver to say the least”.

Back To The Back Country
(Thursday-Saturday)
As North winds raged on Thursday, I saw Matagorda Island flood as higher water levels in the bay made a big push into the marsh for the first time since late winter. Fishing a rising water pattern there on a gusting north wind is a specialty. It’s a pattern that hasn’t really had a chance to emerge this spring due to lower water levels. As the Island flooded Thursday, my second look at a stretch of extreme shallows found the fish playing a familiar game. What had been a barren stretch of lakes came alive with fish pushing shallower and foraging.

Our guests from Schlumberger had their hands full with Redfish pushing the upper boundaries of the slot. As the north winds let up over night, water momentum drained the bays again and waters receded from the back marsh. Broken schools of foraging Redfish retreated to deeper swales and depressions setting the stage for a special day with Jerry S and guest. Working concentrations of fish in pools got the day started. Mid-day, Redfish slowly eased onto shallow flats foraging along grass lines. Pinpoint casting to deeper mud pockets in the pools and larger edges of grass lines on the flats yielded limits to 26.5”.

For us and everyone I talked to, Saturday proved to be somewhat of a challenge. With Carlos Cantu and family it didn’t take long to figure out we were in “lock down” mode. At one point we were casting to fish pretty much shoulder to shoulder covering a 30 yard area that would not feed. Time and again we witnessed mixed concentrations of Black Drum and Redfish with lockjaw. We managed to limit out on fish to 26” along with three Drum but it took every ounce of experience I had and some luck to get it done. Days like this are characterized by a lot of misses and hook pulls.

Capt. Kris Kelley
Castaway Lodge, Inc.
109 W. Austin
Seadrift, TX 77983
1-888-618-4868 Office
361-785-4487 Fax
361-648-3474 Cell
 

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