Houston anglers Keith and Janice couldn’t be happier with this solid jetty trout, a limit of slot reds, along with numbers of sheepshead and black drum. Most were caught on a hard running tide with live shrimp fished on bottom.
Capt. Robert Sloan photo

Patience and a moving tide will more often than not deliver fish when other anglers are scratching their heads on the way from one “hot” spot to another.

Just recently I had charters two days going when patience and a rolling current won the day, and put limits of slot reds on ice. About a week ago I was out on the water with a man and his wife – Keith and Janice. We hit the jetties at about daylight and caught a few sheepshead and drum in a current that was just barely moving. After about an hour of waiting and fidgeting they ask if we needed to move. I politely suggested that the tide was about to turn and the fishing would most likely pick up. An hour lately I slipped the net under our fifth slot red. The husband looked in the cooler stuffed with redfish, sheepshead, drum and trout to about 6 pounds.

It was a reliable spot on that particular tide. It was a gamble that paid off with smiling faces and return customers.

The next day I had three guys on my boat from La Grange. At daylight, per their request, we started casting Bomber Badonk-A-Donk topwater lures along the Matagorda Island shoreline and caught four trout and numerous small reds. That action played out shortly after daylight, so we made the move to the jetties. Two hours later we had a couple of sheepshead and three drum. It was slow, but again we had managed to get anchored in “THE SPOT” about an hour prior to a strong incoming tide. Once the tide began rolling, we dropped down with sardine baited hooks and proceeded to catch nine slot reds in less than 30 minutes – the fish fry was on. Once again patience and the tide proved to be my ticket to an extended stay at the fish cleaning table.

Kings on the run

May is the month when king mackerel begin showing up at the jetties. When the water temperature hits the magic 70 degree mark, it’s a fact that kings will be here and feeding on baitfish like shad, pogies and ribbonfish.

One of the best places to find and catch early season king mackerel is near the mouth of the Port O’Connor jetties and on down towards Pass Cavallo. One of my go-to king mackerel lures is a Bomber Bug Eye Duster King Rig in silver, blue/silver, chartreuse or pink. These 1-1/2 ounce lures come pre-rigged on No. 6 single strand stainless wire, with three 6/0 saltwater grade hooks. You can take a Bug Eye Duster rig out of the package, tie it to your fishing line, drop it in the water and start trolling. It’s that simple, and kings will climb all over it.

That’s your fresh caught fishing report from Capt. Robert Sloan. For details on fishing with Capt. Robert go to www.luckystrikeguide.com, email – sloan288@aol.com or call 409 782 6796

Indianola Fishing Marina held a “TAKE A KID FISHING TOURNAMENT” Saturday April 18 till Sunday April 19, 2015 for children 16 years of age and under. The winners were:

Haygen Burkett–Most inches caught
Areaca Mendoza–2nd
Kadin Martin–3rd
Antonio Rodriguez–4th
Bella Reed–5th

Best Legal Stringer–Areaca Mendoza
Biggest fish–1st Hudsen Graves
2nd– Kirby Martin
Biggest Stingray–Kadin Martin
Smallest fish– Zea Graves

Biggest Shark–1st — Bayleigh Reed
2nd– Micheal Noel

Biggest Dogfish– Alyssa Rodriguez
Most Fish–Haygen Burkett
Biggest Hard-Head– Alyssa Noel

On Sunday a Toddler Tournament was held, where kids got to fish out of a tank. The winners were:

Most inches–1st Kolt Leiker
2nd– Bryce Sandy
Biggest fish– Bryce Sandy
Most fish– Kolt Leiker

The next “Take a kid Fishing Tournaments will be June 27, 2015 and July 25th. Please check out our FACEBOOK for event info. Also a Cash winning Adult Fishing tournament is scheduled for May 30,2015 For more info call 361-552-5350.

Indianola Take A Kid Fishing Tournament

KIDS FISHING TOURNAMENTS
May 23 in Port O’Connor
King Fisher Beach – 9:00 a.m.
Indianola
June 27 & July 25

Captain Ben Boudreaux of Bay Flats Lodge with happy anglers in San Antonio Bay.

As in any real-world situation, there always seems to be some good associated with every bad.  The local bays in the Seadrift vicinity are still experiencing fresh water in the upper portion of the water column.  As a result, each day of fishing seems to begin at a much slower pace than that which is conducive to this time of the year.  Extremely low tide levels have, at times, constricted standard access to many of the preferred wading targets, and strong NNW winds hovering at 20-25 knots have resulted in shades of muddy and murky water conditions.   The good side to all this bad, in the wake of the large amount of freshwater runoff of late, is that the freshwater is certainly depositing its fair share of the ever-needed and most welcomed mineral-rich sediment, from which the San Antonio Bay system is definitely benefiting from at this time.

Recovery time from the conditions existing now can be more rapid than one may imagine.  NNW blown water can clear promptly in the majority of locations as winds begin their seasonal transition to become S-SSW.  The rich silts provided by the freshwater will quickly drop out of the upper water column as the NNW churn subsides, and the less than 1-ft. water visibility shall heal itself to render the more than 2-ft. gorgeous cleanliness that we, and the fish, are much more accustom to.

Meanwhile, and until Mother Nature realizes a necessity to make her overdue cyclical changes, area anglers will need to remain vigilant in their everyday quest for location of clean, green saltwater.

Given the recent runoff conditions, some of the more successful anglers have been those who have incorporated manual monitoring and tracking activities into their daily fishing routine in the form of sampling of area salinity levels in anticipation of capturing real-time environmental changes.  To do this effectively, anglers must begin each morning with a strategic process-of-elimination.
Targeted areas for this process should be some of the more notable seasonable areas that have effectively produced in the past under favorable conditions (based upon historical data and fishing logs).  To date, however, it has been discovered that an increase in salinity levels is taking place at a painfully slow rate, and resultant of this many anglers are routinely required to cover mass amounts of water acreage during the latter part of each outing.  Extraordinarily long runs in late morning and late afternoon hours have produced saltwater locations near some of the southern most portions of the bay system, but they’re sometimes hard to find.

As an alternative to spending what could potentially become an enormous amount of time trying to find true saltwater, anglers should investigate different methods of catching fish within the existing “fresh” conditions.  The freshwater runoff is only temporary (hopefully), so anglers can try and make the most of the situation by learning to adapt to these brief changes in the environment by fishing within the water column where the fish will be holding during this time.  Freshwater is lighter than saltwater, which means that the “fresh” water will typically be located at the water’s surface, with the saltwater holding at the floor of the bay.  So, one commonly effective method for success in these conditions is for anglers to fish deep for their results.
If you are a live-bait enthusiast, try making substantially increasing the length of your leader that runs between the bottom of your popping cork down to your hook – it’s not uncommon to toss live bait hanging 3-5 feet below the popping cork in these conditions.  If plastic tails are more your thing, try increasing to a ¼-ounce jighead in order to insure your bait will maintain the preferred depth while you are working it across the bottom.  Those are just a couple suggestions that might help in an otherwise desperate freshwater scenario.

Remember to practice CPR when possible on trophy Trout and Reds, “Catch, Photo, and Release”…Guide Chris Martin, Port O’Connor/Seadrift region…www.bayflatslodge.com…888-677-4868