Ft. Anahuac Park - 11/8/09

Jason and I debated for a while whether or not to fish today. The weather was pretty bad, there was a 50% chance of rain, wind was bad from the east, and the tides are supposed to be really high. With all that said, we decided to go anyway.

Picking a spot for today wasn't easy, but I've wanted to check out how things are at Anahuac for a while and with the strong east winds, I figured the pocket would at least give us a little bit of protection. I wasn't quite right on that.

We put in about 6:20 and cruised north into the Anahuac pocket, barely off the shoreline. Jason quickly picked up 2 reds. I was blanked. Didn't seem like it was going to be my day.

Here's Jason's red #1:

And here's his red #2:

These were both rat reds, but were really fat. Looked like they'd been eating well.

At one point, I got ahead of Jason and into the back of the pocket. I was racing there to get out of the wind. Nothing worse for me than crappy weather and fish not biting. At least this way I would be out of the crappy weather.

When I got there, I saw some redfish swirls. I tossed everything in my arsenal at them, but didn't get even one bite.

Jason cruises up and on his first cast nails a nice slot red. Then he tells me he also picked up a flounder. No photo of either, I wasn't around for the flounder and wasn't close enough to get a pic of the red.

We continued along the back shoreline of the Anahuac pocket and I came to an inlet. I got my kayak jammed in some grass and cast to the shoreline. Something instantly hit it, but I was a little slow and missed.

Shortly after, I cast to where the channel dumped into the pocket and my cork got slammed. Finally got the smell of skunk off me. Caught on gulp shrimp (bone jack) under popping cork.

At rat red about 16 inches, but at least I caught something.

We cruised on around to the very far corner of the pocket. I thought I saw another redfish swirl, so I tossed my cork in there. It went under and after a few minutes I was rewarded with the first slot red of the day:

He went 22 inches. I thought the white coloration of him was pretty neat. Looks like he grew up without sunshine.

We continued on into the far corner. Once we got there, we found out that it snaked around a little bit.

Jason went to the right to check out how far it snaked around, I just tossed my cork back out in the middle when it went under again. I was a little slow on the hookset though and it got off.

Tossed my cork back out there and a few minutes later, it got hit again. After a long and tricky fight where the fish dragged me deep into some tall grass, where large alligators live, I finally got it to the boat. Turned out to be a 25 inch red and my biggest of the day:

Met back up with Jason and explained what I'd seen. Basically that the larger reds were not on the shoreline and were a little off of it.

We started coming up the other side of the pocket and Jason tossed his cork out there, when all of the sudden he got slammed. He finally got it in. Turned out to be a nice 22 inch red:

To the net:

The fish:

The remains of Jason's hook:

This red was fat and bent Jason's hook quite impressively.

We continued along this shoreline but it seemed we were out of the zone. I thought about moving back, but then thought about that wind and quickly decided against it.

Ahead of us, I had noticed some birds working. There was a powerboat nearby and I figured that they would surely take advantage and motor over to the birds so I wasn't going to try for it. But after about 10 minutes, the boat never moved. Finally Jason and I decided we'd try to make the crossing to go after the birds.

We got there and the birds were still working. The boat either hadn't seen them or didn't care. We both cast into them at the same time.

Jason pulled aboard a trout, but I was wrestling with a demon much stronger. Finally got my limit of reds. This one went 22 inches:

As soon as I got this red released, I cast back out there. I quickly pulled in a couple of trout:

Jason had also gotten a couple of trout.

We cruised on through the birds and they dispersed. We went over to the channel area where I have had pretty good luck before, and caught a couple of fish along the way. I picked several more trout and another rat red. No luck on the other side of the channel today, so we decided to head back to where we had found the birds.

Soon enough, we found more birds. We cast up under these birds and picked up a few more trout:

Here's Jason's:

Soon I realized that I was at 8 trout for the day. 2 more would make a trout limit and a red limit for the day for me. I was getting pretty excited. I caught another 2 in short order.

Here's number 10:

Now I had a trout limit and a red limit for the day. This was an awesome day, but the birds were still working, so we decided to continue.

We chased the birds around for another hour or so and I picked up another 10 trout. It was a lot of work by kayak, but it paid off. Double trout limit for the day and all were keepers (caught only 3 small ones the entire day):

Here's #20

The bite stopped after that. Just shut down like a light switch. Neither of us could buy a bite and didn't see any birds working either.

Total for the day:
5 reds including 3 keepers. 23 trout including 20 keepers. Jason got 5 reds, of which 2 were keepers, 21 trout, of which 19 were keepers, and 1 flounder. So, Jason got the slam and almost 2 limits of trout, I got a limit of reds and two limits of trout. Baits used for me today were a gulp shrimp (bone jack) under a popping cork for the first 4 reds. The last red and a lot of trout were caught on a saltwater assassin (pumpkinseed/chartreuse). Also caught several trout on a pearl/chartreuse sea devil. Didn't seem like it mattered too much to the trout what the bait was. In fact, I wouldn't recommend sticking your toes in the water at times like these.

Today was a great day to be fishing. The fish were biting like crazy and despite my initial reservations and pessimism, this turned out to be one of the better days this year. It was a very crappy day to be on the water in the kayak. Winds were about 15 mph early, strengthening to about 20-25 later on. The water was rough, choppy, and generally unpleasant to be in. Of course, when chasing birds around there were many times we'd have to paddle straight into that wind and that sucked.

Temperatures today weren't too bad. It was about 59 degrees when we put in and about 75 when we took out. Water temp is 71.1 degrees. Not sure about the bottom structure here, but I think it's a depression in the surrounding flats. I've caught plenty of trout here before, but they've all been smaller. This is the first time I've ever seen a large quantity of keeper trout here. Water tasted fresh because of all the runoff, but there must have been a salt layer underneath to keep all those trout around. The tide was pretty high when we started, but was hard outgoing the entire time and was to normal levels when we left. Supposed to get pretty high tonight. About 3 feet above normal. Also, an approaching front, so we may have caught the pressure drop too.

Rick