It all started from my close encounter with a porpoise.
It was my last day of a week long fishing trip to San Luis Pass and after some rather strenuous fishing for speckled trout, I decided to take a break and enjoy a lazy day of photographing some wildlife for my outdoor photo-file. Standing on “the wall” at 8:45 am I spotted a porpoise moving in fast, chasing something. As the powerful creature rolled pass me its curious eye locked with mine, which reminded me of a rather chilly scene from the movie “Jaws”. But what really caught my eye was the reason why the porpoise was swimming in so close to the shoreline….. Trout…. …..BIG TROUT!!
By 9:am, and five casts later, I had four specks from 18″ to 22″ tethered to a float stringer. So deciding to trade some camera work for a possible Texas limit of Speckled Trout seemed to be a good decision. But little did I know that those six more specks I needed to fill my legal limit would initiate a marathon project of casting before speckled trout #10 was finally caught and counted.
White twister tails rigged in tandem with chartreuse twisters and green 1/8th oz ‘big eye’ jig-heads were my chosen soft plastic lure combos, but with the specks hitting white I soon changed to all-white, which proved to be the right choice as casts #245 and #246 produced my 5th and 6th specks for the float stringer. But then the tide changed!
I was fishing the point position on “the wall” which is located inside the San Luis Pass RV park, on the Freeport side of the Pass, across from Galveston Island. A private island camping area, which was formed by Hurricane Alicia in 1983, the park is accessible only to those who lease an RV site, or rent a waterfront cabin in the park before crossing over the islands bridge through a security gate.
Speckled trout and flounder were abundant for boaters, but had been sporadic for shore casters, such as myself, which was mainly due to the spring chilled waters of San Luis Pass and Cold Pass surrounding the island. But within five days of warming sunshine and southeast winds the shallow waters began heating up with the baitfish moving in closer. The porpoise took notice of these changes and quickly moved in to feed.
The tide had been going out with clear blue waters riffling an eddy situation with bait crowding the edges of the tidal rift. The trout seemed to be holding just under these schools of baitfish, which included shad, finger mullet, and bull mullet, with some shrimp skittering about the surface. By casting my lures over the mullet and allowing them to drift under the bait-pods where the specks were holding, this would usually entice a ‘bump’ or strike. But when the tide changed to incoming the trout quickly moved out to the sandbar in front of “the wall’ and seemed to settle on the bay-side drop-offs of the sandbar. This required casting greater distances to allow my baits to drift along the edges of the sandbar where the specks were holding.
About this time, fishing amigo, Gary Fingleman of Katy TX, arrived to check out the action. Our greetings included, “Catching any? “Yup!” Where they hitting? “In the mouth! ” What on?” White and chartreuse twister tails! “TWISTER WHAT!” Here, use these, I hurriedly pointed out referring to my open tackle pack!
After the greetings were interfaced with what was going on, Gary began a long and extremely painful ordeal of trying to catch a speckled trout. This would take him on a ‘humbling’ journey of learning how to ‘net’ my fish as casts #1216, #1364, and #1578 produced my 7th, 8th, and 9th speck to the stringer. But my endeavor of loading up #10 for my Texas limit would elude me, taking us well into the night, past cast #2252 and #2486 that hooked-up with undersized specks of 14 inches, and cast #2786 that landed another throwback. So I stubbornly held on to the goal of catching that legal limit of trout.
In Texas, the daily creel limit for speckled trout are ten (10) at 15 inches minimum, with only one speck over 25″ allowed per day. My trout were all legal sized of 15 -½” to 22″ healthy, fat reps to a good speck run, and were really giving good accounts of their fighting abilities. And my use of a 6ft medium/light Castaway rod and Shakespeare spinning reel spooled with 12 lb test Berkley high impact mono assured me of enjoying those speckled trout battles without any tackle incidents.
Averaging four to five casts per minute, these were hard casts that required energetic whipping of the rod to get the 12 lb test mono to carry the 1/8th oz jigs and plastic twister tails out past the sandbar, which was about 35 to 40 yards to our front. The fishing pattern was to allow the tandem rigs to drift with the tide just under the surface along the edges of the sandbar, where the specks seemed to be holding.
One thing that kept us entertained during the long hours of casting was the San Luis Parks mascot ‘Ready Freddie’, a great blue heron that kept winging from angler to angler looking for fish handouts It was a absolute wonder to me that Freddie didn’t weigh 200 lbs for all the handouts that were gullied down his long neck. An amazing bird with a very amazing talent.
After enjoying an ‘awesome’ San Luis Pass sunset, the nightlights clicked on as 8:30pm arrived with the tide changing to outgoing. I’ve been casting for almost twelve hours now, almost non-stop, except for a dinner break of ham sandwiches and Dr. Pepper (compliments of Gary). We continued to whip the wind with our casting sticks, me looking for #10, and Gary looking for his first speck. Although Gary had been casting the same baits alongside my casts, his were for the most part being ignored, except for an undersized rat red of about 16 inches, Gary’s casting evolved into a desperate mission of sorts to avoid being ‘skunked’.
Then at 9:pm, while I was making my 2800th cast and retrieve of the day, a strong ‘bump’ had me setting the jig-hook into a heavy trout, and as Gary ‘expertly-netted’ the speck it quickly became my salvation as #10, a fine 19incher, FINALLY was tethered to the float stringer.
Never has the idea of REST been so coveted a reward then when I strung that beautiful speckled trout specimen to claim my Texas limit. But as Gary made his #2812th cast, he finally hooked a keeper speck, and as far as I know Gary is still casting to achieve his tally of ten ….. As for me, well, I took my gnarled and cramped casting fingers, wrecked and aching casting arm, and crashed, dreaming only of that large, glaringly curious eye of a cruising porpoise as it rolled to check me out!
For more info; on San Luis Pass RV Park call 1-800-372-7578-
This Ed Snyder/Outdoors report is sponsored by; LSRPA, The Stump Restaurant & Club, Fishing World.com.By: Ed Snyder / Ed Snyder Outdoors
