Fail Proof Fishing

03/11/2020

Dinner time!

Notes - All females, no males. Water 64-67. 2.5-3 ft water. Isolated timber.

09/24/2018

A little Redfish action from last week.

07/21/2017

Caught this 5lb beauty today on a Carolina rig in 20ft of water. CPR'd

02/27/2017

The Crappie Spawn is ON!

As a kid growing up, I took a notable passion in fishing, which not to many of my friends had at the time. One place in particular that stands out was a fishing barge on Lake Ray Hubbard in Dallas. It was far from the best fishing spot, but the fishing and life lessons were invaluable. (Side Note: The nice old lady behind the counter that granted access to the fishing barge turned out to be a notorious Dallas bank robber. She dressed up as a cowboy with a 10 gallon hat and was known across the country as, "Cowboy Bob.")

I don't fish off of barges anymore and I definitely don't have the time to spend countless hours on the water. However, every spring for a couple of weeks, when the water temperature reaches 60-65 degrees, I put away the coastal & bass gear in way of fly fishing rod and a crappie real.

I look for protected creeks and sloughs that have heavy brush or flooded timber in about 1-2 ft of water. Typically speaking, protected sloughs or creeks have mud bottoms which hold heat, which in-turn bring in spawning crappie.

I see a lot of people "waiting" for crappie to come to them. Generally speaking, people will cast a couple of minnows in some brush and pop-a-top on an adult beverage of choice (nothing wrong with that at all.) These people get lucky sometimes, but typically don't hit large numbers of fish. I prefer to hunt crappie, not sit around and wait. I will drop a 1/16th or 1/32 jig into the thickest brush until it hits bottom, raise the jig 3-4 inches of the bottom. Hold is steady, then swim it an inch or two to each side. If I don't get a thump within 5-10 seconds, I move to the next little hole in the brush pile. I'll continue this until I've covered every inch of the brush. Crappie are building and protecting their nest's in spring and if your bait isn't in their nest, your chances of getting a bit go down.

An example of this took place yesterday. I pulled up on a tree across the creek from a bank angler who was fishing with minnows. He told me he had caught two crappie all day long using minnows in the middle of a tree. Within my first 20 minutes of fishing, I landed my 6th fish. I ended up with 11 keepers in a couple of hours and left them biting. There had to have been 7 or 8 other guys on the bank and kayaks, with similar results as the bank angler.

Bottom Line:

The more places you drop your bait in a day = better chances of catching fish.

08/01/2016

Cool guy that kept me company while the fishing was slow.

06/30/2016

Last week, I was in Boston with my GF. Got some time one day to do a little wading for stripers. I wasn't disappointed, as I sight casted and landed 3 st*****rs on my fly rod.

06/30/2016

A little late with this, but went down to Port A on 6/18 and had a tough time trying to find fish. I fished around Wilson's Cut and the Lighthouse Lake's. In total, I catch 3 redfish, 1 flounder and about 20 speckled trout.

06/30/2016

Pensacola Speckled trout on the 8wt fly rod.

02/01/2016