Well, we're back. In retrospect we should have gone a little earlier, but work/life got in the way of trying to plan a 5 person fishing trip, so we picked a birthday weekend and booked it. As it was, we had a blast, but it was 100+ every day of the trip which made the fishing and the camping a little tough.
First and foremost we stopped at Whataburger for a most glorious lunch. I was so weak in the knees at the mere sight of the A-Frame that I almost fainted.
We introduced a North Carolina boy to the glory of Whataburger as well...
But the perfect lunch is a #5 with jalapenos, no tomato.
We camped at Platter Flats COE park between Durant, OK and Denison, TX. Great little park, tucked away from the main crowd. Nice little swimming beach made it easy to sit in the water and drink beer all night long.
Most of my striper fishing has been limited to chasing topwater fish, but several members of our group were novice fishermen, so we went the baitfishing route for this trip.
At 4:30 am on Saturday we headed to Catfish Bay Marina and loaded up with our guide
James Allen of Bluewater Striper Guide Service. We were excited when we heard that bait had been easier to find the last few days, but that the fishing had slowed down (just a week earlier he had full limits before 8:00 a.m.).
But, with high hopes and a cooler full of beer we headed out into the darkness.
As the sun started coming up we were in place and were showing fish on the graph.
We caught several smaller fish right off the bat, but were plagued by hordes of small channel cats. Dirty little bait thieves. This was the biggest of the day. Most were in the 6-8" range.
From 8:00-11:00 all the boats seemed to be in a desert. The only people catching fish were fishing topwaters and all the stripers we saw caught were sub-10". Water temps were hovering around 92 and the fish just turned off...
But in a boring spell of the day I thought I'd give a little shout out to the Howdy Club. Consider it a little free advertising...
We got a call on the radio around 11:00 that a partner guide had found some aggressive fish and we slid on over. We anchored up and caught 22 fish in the next hour before we ran out of bait. The biggest fish was just shy of 10#
but most were in the 4-7# range.
We ended up with 25 fish in the box, a very slow day by most standards, but the last hour was fantastic with as many as four fish on at the same time. We should have boated a few more, but some of our guys let line get in the prop, got their lines tangled and simply missed fish.
(and a mini shoutout to SaltyAggie93 as well, I'm wearing the Gig 'Em/Hook 'em tourney shirt!!)
The guide worked hard, the beer was cold and occasionally the fish participated.
We've already decided that we're heading back next year and we're booking in mid-late May to prevent the heatstroke that the fish and the fisherman seemed to be fighting.
All in all it was a helluva trip and I'm looking forward to the 2010 trip!
