Diane McDonald, wife of wildlife artist Les McDonald, enjoyed landing excellent catches of reds while visiting Bay Flats Lodge and fishing with Captain Harold Dworazyk, August 2012, back lakes with live bait.
Two days last week gave us slight winds out of the north as a result of one of this year’s first cool fronts. Granted, the drop in temperature wasn’t significant enough to mention, but the change in wind direction did offer us an opportunity to fish one of those shorelines that normally gets pounded by southerly winds most of the time. This particular shoreline stretches from east to west, and it is exposed to the open bay system on its south side. When walking away from the bank towards deeper water, the bay floor is quite similar to that of the beachfront of the Gulf of Mexico, but to a much less degree – the tapering from shallow water to deep water along this shore is not rapid at all. But like the beachfront, there are noticeable guts running parallel to shore once you make your way out a good distance away from the bank. The floor itself consists of hard sand, with an occasional spot where it may be semi-soft. For a distance of probably more than three miles there are oyster pads scattered sporadically along the bank in shallow water right up against the marsh grass.
The first day we fished here was the day that the cool front was actually making its way through our area. Now then, before you start to envision us out wading in the midst of a raging cold front, let me give you the weather facts for this day. The morning started out at 77-degrees with extreme cloud cover, an average chance for rain, and there was hardly any wind to speak of at all. The frontal passage began rolling through near mid-day, and the wind shifted to the northeast at about 10-mph. At their high elevation, we could see the clouds begin to move rapidly, but the surface winds never got much faster than 15-mph. The color of the northwest sky alternated between that of dark grey and silver, but I never saw any lightning or heard any thunder, and no rain ever fell where I was located. In fact, I don’t think our town of Seadrift ever saw any rain out of this small system. We hadn’t originally intended to fish today, but due to the calmness of the early morning and the northerly wind of early afternoon, we decided to visit this shoreline in anticipation of some late afternoon fun.
I assumed that the winds of the past 24-hours would make for “good-water” conditions along this shoreline, and as I idled-up to where I wanted to anchor the boat’s power pole, I could tell that my assumption had been correct. The water looked as though it was greenish-brown in color, and it appeared as though this area had been undisturbed by its normal heavy wave action or high winds for a while now. It was nearly 3:00pm as I stepped out of the boat and into the water. As I did so, I noticed the water seemed to be a bit deeper than what I had remembered from past visits to this area. There was an extreme high tide at present, and the water was almost waist-deep right up against the bank. The temperature had already made its way into the 90’s, and the sun was peeking from behind the clouds every few minutes now. I began my wading assault within casting distance of the bank while tossing one of my favorite bone/chrome top water baits directly toward the tall marsh grass along the shore. I could tell that the water that I was walking in had probably been much cooler just an hour, or so, ago. But the water along the bank was now warming quite rapidly, and I was not drawing any attention to my surface walker while working it tight against the grass. I turned my back against the shore and slowly walked some 30-40 yards out to a bit deeper water, all the while casting my top water lure directly out in front of me. Up to this point, I had been retrieving my lure with a steady walk-the-dog retrieve. Upon making my next cast, however, I let the lure sit idle on the surface of the water for a few moments while I applied another dab of sunscreen to my already red nose. As I finished with the sunscreen, I grabbed my rod with my right hand from beneath the clutches of my left arm, and inadvertently moved the fishing line enough so as to make the lure attached to the end of my line move ever so slightly. Well, that’s all it took. When that top water bait jiggled a bit after sitting still in the water for a few minutes, the 4-lb. trout that had been investigating the lure while it sat motionless on the surface simply annihilated it. The water where I was now standing was a little cooler than that of the water up tight against the grass, and the fish had apparently noticed. I stayed that same distance from shore and walked parallel to the bank in both directions for well over an hour. I duplicated the stop-n-start retrieval pattern with my top water bait and summoned the participation of some 8-10 more trout before calling it a day.
Conditions hadn’t changed the next morning, so I was right back in the same place by 7:00am. The water was cool and clean, and the high tide was still with us. I’d placed the boat some 60-yards from shore, and slowly made my way toward the bank while tossing my top water bait parallel to the grass. As I approached the marsh-grassed shoreline, I placed a long cast directly down the shoreline and, again, began a start-n-stop retrieve. I picked-up two red fish quickly while doing this, and then retreated out to a bit deeper water in search of trout as the sun climbed higher into the sky. Later that morning, after moving a mile down the same shoreline, I happened into three more big reds while tossing my surface walker directly atop a couple shell pads in some rather shallow water directly against the bank. But had it not been for my discovery of the effective start-n-stop retrieval pattern, and for my patience to stick with that retrieval pattern, the outcome of those two days would probably have been much different.
It’s hard to beat the Texas Gulf coast, especially the Seadrift and Port O’Connor areas, for trout, red fish, flounder, and a wide variety of other fish species. Let Team Bay Flats show you the fishing trip of a lifetime with an action-packed day out on area waters. Until next time, be courteous while on the water, and remind yourself to always approach wade fishermen while idling slowly, or pass them with good distance. Remember to practice CPR, “Catch, Photo, and Release”, whenever possible on trophy Trout and Reds…Guide Chris Martin, Port O’Connor/Seadrift region.
