Captain Rick Hammon of Bay Flats Lodge put this guest on a solid red while attending an employee rewards fishing retreat September, 2012.
With the everyday hustle and bustle associated with our daily lives, many of us all too often fall victim to the common drudge we have come to know as the standard way of life. Large corporations and organizations impact our lives in ways we never truly notice. They also have influence over us in ways others could never imagine. Take a minute to think of how your job affects you, or how your parents’ job affects them. We are raised to base our lives around work. When we were young, we learned it a good thing for us to have our homework finished before going out to enjoy the outdoors with our other young friends. In the same way, many of us adults still value this belief. We do not think it strange to base our life around work, following strict guidelines and long days spent away from the places that we live and the people that we love. We generally answer to authority, and place work as a priority over that of our leisure time.
Today’s advanced technologies have played a significant role in our mindset of the 21st century. Everything is bigger and faster over that from years past. The computer you buy this year can process information twice as fast over that of the one you bought last year. The new vehicle you drive can now get you where you are going in a shorter period of time because it outperforms your previous one in horsepower, torque, and fuel efficiency. And today, if you so desire, you can even fulfill the majority of your shopping responsibilities very rapidly via the Internet, allowing you to spend more time doing that which seems to be so very important to you – work.
I recently recognized a necessity for slowing things down a bit, specifically surrounding our clients’ ambitions for targeting San Antonio Bay’s summer time trout action. We find so many times that people who venture to the Lodge, especially for the sole purpose of taking advantage of its laid-back atmosphere and all else it has to offer, arrive while still fully under the influence of life-in-the-fast-lane. This is quite understandable given the nature of the times we happen to live in, but being convicted of an FUI offense (Fishing while Under this Influence) can be hazardous to your health, and repeat offenders can, and will, certainly realize a definite and negative impact to their daily bag. The summer time trout can be a peculiar, if not downright finicky, specimen.
On those occasional cooler mornings when the thermometer reads only 80-degrees or so, trout can be ambushed on the flats as they warm themselves in the approaching daytime sunlight. But on those warmer mornings that are so much more typical of our Texas summer months trout will continually traverse the various water columns available to them throughout the course of the day, zigzagging side to side and laterally and horizontally in their search of that ever comfortable, and a bit cooler, water temperature. It is for this reason that it is so very important to remember to tighten the reigns a bit on your advancement as you happen upon the bite. Once the bite does begin to occur, you are going to catch them. But you simply have to stay in one place to do it – do not move. Because the fish are constantly on the move, their paths will crisscross with yours. When you continue to move you are simply reducing your odds for success in doing so. Keep in mind that the trout are not (have not been) living-out the same hectic lifestyle you may have become accustom to, so don’t be afraid to stop and smell the roses once in a while, especially in such a serene and beautifully quiet environment as that which has been offered up by Mother Nature herself in the form of our native Texas bay shores. Who knows, you might just discover you like fishin’ in the slow lane!
www.BayFlatsLodge.com
1-888-677-4868
Seadrift, Texas overlooking San Antonio Bay
What a nice looking red, while fishing with Bay Flats Lodge Guide Harold Dworaczyk in the back country with live bait, September 2012.
Guide Cooper Hartmann placed 1st in the heaviest stringer while fishing a corporate customer appreciation event at Bay Flats Lodge.
Captain Chris Martin’s dog Sadie from last season “Redhead down”.
