LSONews.com
LoneOStar Outdoor News
June 24, 2022
Page 21
TEXAS SALTWATER FISHING REPORT SABINE LAKE: 82 degrees. Redfish are good in the ICW on rock piles, points and drops on live shrimp under a popping cork and red shad swimbaits. Speckled trout are good on morning glory chartreuse or red shad swimbaits. BOLIVAR: 84 degrees. Redfish are good on live mullet, shrimp and artificials. Speckled trout are fair on live shrimp under a popping cork and croaker. TRINITY BAY: 86 degrees. Speckled trout, redfish and black drum are fair on live shrimp. EAST GALVESTON BAY: 86 degrees. Speckled trout are fair under birds on soft plastics and croaker. Redfish are fair on live shrimp. WEST GALVESTON BAY: 88 degrees. Speckled trout are good on live croaker. Redfish are fair on shrimp. TEXAS CITY: 84 degrees. Speckled trout are fair on free-lined shrimp. Redfish are fair on live shrimp under a popping cork. FREEPORT: 84 degrees. Redfish are good in San Luis Pass on live mullet, croaker and shrimp. Speckled trout are fair on shrimp and live croaker.
EAST MATAGORDA BAY: 84 degrees. Redfish are fair on live shrimp under a popping cork and artificials. Speckled trout are good but small on croaker.
WEST MATAGORDA BAY: 84 degrees. Redfish are good on the Colorado River on artificials and shrimp under a popping cork. Speckled trout are fair on croaker. PORT O’CONNOR: 83 degrees. Speckled trout are good on live croaker. Redfish are slow. Black drum are good on dead shrimp.
ROCKPORT: 82 degrees. Redfish are good on menhaden and drifting with soft plastics. Speckled trout are fair on live shrimp and soft plastics. Black drum are good on dead shrimp. PORT ARANSAS: 84 degrees. Speckled trout are fair to good on croaker. Redfish are fair on shrimp and cut mullet. CORPUS CHRISTI: 83 degrees. Speckled trout are fair to good free-lining croaker. Redfish are fair on cut mullet. BAFFIN BAY: 81 degrees. Speckled trout and redfish are good on croaker and artificials. PORT MANSFIELD: 82 degrees. Speckled trout and redfish are fair on ball tails, paddle tails and top-waters when winds back down. SOUTH PADRE: 82 degrees. Speckled trout and redfish are fair drifting with shrimp and artificials. PORT ISABEL: 82 degrees. Black drum are fair in South Bay on shrimp. Speckled trout and redfish are fair on artificials and soft plastics. —TPWD
Big drum shallow
Brazos bass, sunnies
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out, we are able to see them a lot more than we normally would be able to if there were more water on the flats. They really stick out like a sore thumb when the water is low.” Mendoza has been seeing a lot of drum up shallow around spoils with oyster shell. While fishing with a buddy, Mendoza poled up onto a flat loaded with reds, and his counterpart quickly hooked up. “Then we switched places, and I got on the bow of the boat with my fly rod Ruben Casiano III sight-casted to this large black drum with a soft plastic and he started poling me after he spotted it while wade-fishing near Port Mansfield. Photo from around,” Mendoza said. Ruben Casiano. “We came around a bend and saw a hefty black drum with its tail out of the water, so I decided to cast to it. That fish wanted no part of my offering, but soon we had another drum in front of us. This fish acted about the same as the first one and didn’t strike my fly.” The pair then spotted a third oversized black drum nearby. “The fish was broadside, which usually gives a fly angler the highest percentage shot of getting bit, as it allows you to manipulate how the fly crosses in front of the fish,” Mendoza elaborated. “On my second cast I was able to put the fly right where it needed to be, and the fish couldn’t refuse the easy snack.” Mendoza hooked and battled the drum, before landing and releasing it. “I don’t get to target these big drum that often, because they are really only easy to sight cast to when the tides are low like they are,” Mendoza said. “It was a blast.” Ruben Casiano III was wade-fishing out of Port Mansfield with his dad, when he came across a black drum with its back sticking out of the water along the perimeter of a grass bed near the edge of a gut. “I thought it was going to be a huge redfish, but as I stalked closer, I could tell that it was a big drum,” Casiano said. “The size of its back was impressive.” Casiano pitched a soft plastic right in front of the drum’s nose, and then felt a thump. “From there, the fight was on,” he explained. “It was like battling a slow and steady, hard-pulling tank.” It took Casiano and his dad a few tries, but they were finally able to get the drum’s head in the net in order to land it for a photo before releasing it. “That was the first fish that I caught that morning,” he said. “Talk about a great way to kick off the day!”
The Brazos River below Lake Whitney attracts kayakers aiming for a variety of species. Photo by Jerry Hamon.
fly-fish, he can spend a little bit of time at the beginning of a trip to show you how. And he can give you a lesson in paddling a kayak. During a day on the river you have the option of fishing from your kayak or wading. “The gravel bars are good for wading,” Hamon said. “Sometimes wading can deliver more hook-ups than staying in the boat.” Julia Bell loves to fly-fish and has fished all over the world with her husband, Cody. Recently the two of them were on the Brazos below the dam, and while wading a gravel bar she spotted a big carp. In an effort to hook up with that fish, a big largemouth bass shot out of the shallows and nailed her fly — a chartreuse/yellow/silver Dutch Baughman, a classic bream-imitation fly. “I was using a 5-weight rod that had a 12-pound test tippet (leader),” she said. “That bass put up a good fight and it took me about five minutes to land her. She weighed about 6 pounds. It looked like she had just come off of a spawning bed. In the 2 1/2 feet of water I was fishing I could see her when she ate my fly. The spot-and-stalk is a good way to catch
fish on this river.” Hamon said he had a female fly angler out who weighed about 85 pounds, and she hooked up with and caught a smallmouth buffalo that weighed about 40 pounds. Better yet, she landed the monster on a 4-weight rod. Hamon’s best largemouth bass on this river weighed 8 1/2 pounds. It hit a Stealth Bomber top-water fly. Some of the best flies to use for catching sunfish on the river are small No. 10 foam spiders, black woolly buggers and little cork-bodied poppers with rubber legs. For bass, he’ll use some sort of frog imitation, and larger 2/0 streamers and poppers. Hamon said sunfish are among the most abundant fish in the river, and he recommends a 2-weight fly rod for them. A 5 to 7 weight is best for the heavier fish like largemouth and smallmouth bass. “The best time to be fishing the river is when they aren’t releasing a whole lot of water at the dam,” the guide said. “With a low flow the water will be very clear, setting up a perfect day of fishing.”
