Decent Morning

This morning was pretty decent. There was heavy rain before daylight, but once it started getting light the rain  tapered down to a light sprinkle. The day consisted of about a half dozen small stripers and a half dozen or so smallies, with a kicker being a drum. Drum are probably one of my favorite non-game fish that I catch fairly frequently. The drum from the river always have great colors, fight hard and hit the fly with a thump. This will probably be the last trip I make down river this year, the rest of the year I will be up by the dam looking for a big striper.

   

Port Aransas

If your idea of offshore fishing is walking out to the end of the jetty, you might be a redneck. Scott Bridgess

Scott and I made a quick weekend trip down to the coast. We started the first morning off fishing packery channel. The fishing was slow, Scott caught a small jack and I caught a small trout. We then decided to run up to Port Aransas Jetties. There was a lot more activity there with bait being busted on the surface. We caught a couple smacs and got bite off several times. We took a break and went and ate lunch at Virginia's. Had some great seafood and hit the jetties for more fishing. Scott and I both had numerous hard hits that were shortly followed by slack line. We were getting bite off by kings. I hooked up for a few minutes to a nice fish that quickly took me to my backing, but it didn't take long for my 50lb  fluorocarbon leader to get chewed through. We switched over to wire leaders but could not get a bite, the fish were just to line shy. It seemed the best set up for the jetties is a stout 9 or 10 weight with intermediate line. The fish really seemed to like white and blue or white and olive baitfish patterns.

Decent Smac

Mouth full of razor sharp teeth

Watch those fingers

Hooked up momentarily 

The only tarpon we jumped