Today I had the pleasure of fishing with a group from Houston Texas. I told them it is not normally good twenty four to forty eight hours after a cool front but they were in town and said they wanted to go fishing. I picked them up from the log cabins this morning as safe light and we headed south to some shallow water bays where we been catching some nice speckled trout. We had a stiff northeast wind blowing at about twenty to twenty five and the water clarity was not good. I really didn’t think we were going to catch anything but never the less they wanted to go fishing. Well to start off with you have to have the right attitude to fish on a day like today and I tried to prepare them by letting them know that if we found a few fish we were not going to slam them like you would on a day that had perfect conditions. They were easy to talk to and we were all on board with the fact that we were not going to get on a bite that was one after the other as fast as the line hit the water kind of day. Well with that established we arrive at the first spot and just like I thought it would be the water was dirty and the waves were so high you couldn’t even see the cork if it were to go down so we headed back into the marsh in some smaller bayous to try to get out of the wind a little more. You have to keep in mind the further you go back into the marsh to get out of the wind the shallower it gets because of the north wind blowing all the water out of the duck ponds. We just so happen to find that happy medium at a place where we had enough water to hold some speckled trout and was out the wind enough to do some good old southern style trout fishing on a cold and windy day. The water was about four feet deep where we was and believe it or not was not really that dirty and guess what, the old hole was holding some speckled trout and they were hungry. I can tell you it was not as fast as you threw the line but we were catching some nice trout and the bite was plenty good enough not to move the boat. We sat right there and box up sixty five beautiful trout, way more then I ever thought we were going to catch all day trying many of the spots I knew to try on a day like today. The trout bite slowed down at about nine o’clock in the morning so we were happy with the fish we had on ice and moved the boat to another location where I thought we might find some red fish. Well it was slow at first not getting many bites as the tide was slowing down to a crawl. I told the guys to just be relax that the tide was fixing to change. We were fishing a incoming tide all morning but the tide was changing about ten thirty this morning and was fixing to start falling. It was like flipping a switch on the wall because when the tide was falling strong enough to start bringing some bait out of the marsh that is when we starting getting some bites on some nice red fish. Well as the tide got lower and lower during the midday hours the red fish seem to get thicker and thicker. We ended up catching a box of some of the nicest red fish I ever seen come out of the duck ponds and pipe line canals we were fishing near. Well like I always say if you don’t go you don’t know. Who would have ever thought we would have caught a box of fish like we did on a day like today with all the wind and dirty water. I told the folks that was fishing with me today not to expect this kind of trip a catch on a day like today with the bad conditions we had all the time. Every now and then you end of catching some fish on these cold and windy days but you for sure don’t do it all the time. I wanted to take them out to the barrier islands where we been catching some bull reds to experience what it would be like to catch some of the big bull reds but is was just to rough to cross Barataria Bay. After making that decision not to try and cross the large open body of water we decided to come on in back to the log cabins and start cleaning up the fish we had. It was a long day on the water but well worth it considering the fish we caught. Everybody gathered around the fish cleaning station I have back at the cabins and helped me clean the speckled trout and red fish we had in the ice chest. That was a big help to me as we ended up with several bags of meat for them to take back home to Houston. I let them use my fry-daddy so they could fry some of the speckled trout we caught for dinner tonight and one of the guys was lighting up the BB pit to grill up some of those red fish. There is nothing like eating the fish you caught in the morning for dinner that night. Something about eating anything you harvest out of the outdoors for dinner the night you got it makes it all worth while. Build memories with family and friends is something you can not put a price on, no matter where you go or what you are doing. That is something I always say that will last a life time.
