Salt and I reunited the band and hit the marsh Saturday. With both of our bhotes out of comish, our gracious buddy lent us his gheenoe while he was out of town. I'll go against my normal wordy TR format and just add some commentary to the pics we took. If I do a full write up of this trip it'd reach Encyclopedia Britannica status so here's the brief synopsis of our epic trip filled with feisty cold water reds.
'Twas a crisp morning and the tide was falling as a light fog hung over the water.
Per usual, Salt polled first so I took to the bow. We worked our way into a back creek and immediately started seeing activity. Swirl on bank + lucky backcast = hooked up! But it was cold and in my excitement that morning I didn't stretch my line before stripping it off my reel so I got a nasty knot in my fly line that worked it's way up into my guides as the fish made a run (lesson here, stretch your lines folks). No worries, as old classmates at TAMU and former coworkers Salt and I are no strangers to teamwork under pressure. He grabs my fly line and starts hand lining the fish whilst I start undoing the knot with the cold stumps I call my fingers. by some miracle, we get it worked out and land the first fish of the morning, thus officially christening my new reel.
Beuno bye!
I then pry the push pole from Salt's hands and he hops on the bow. We work our way further into the creek and he sees a fish push off the bank and drops his fly right into its wheelhouse. I don't think he stripped the fly, just let the craft fur do it's thang and the fish obliged.
Huzzah!
I convinced Salt to stay on the bow since I think he was only on the bow for about 5 minutes before catching that fish. We eased up into an creek crossing where the current was moving pretty good and Salt laid a cast into one of the eddies. He was rewarded with a raton
Back on the bow, I hooked a really solid red right next to the boat. He was so close I had to trout set him and as he ran, I tried hitting him a couple more times to make sure the hook was set in there good, but I guess I did so a little too hard and broke my leader right above the tippet knot. I then proceeded to blow a strip set on a fish working along a grass bank that came up and sipped my fly near the surface, awesome eat though. The next fish we saw was up working in the grass up close. I tried my best Cajun plop but ended up making abad cast and the fish spooked out. Luckily though, he was aggressive and impervious to my screw ups so I was able to feed him as he was running away.
If you like the manthigh seen here, you're in luck there's more to come.
Salt hopped back on the bow and we decided to move back towards the front of the marsh to a bigger pond, figuring the fish would be moving out with the falling tide. Our guess was correct bc not long into out track, we see a school of around 10 fish pushing down a bank. After settling down from some buck fever and a slight miscue on my part that got Salt's fly wrapped around the push pole, Salt hooked up noting how much harder the fish fought in that big open pond vs the tight back creeks.
We farted around that lake, chasing schools and picking off singles along the way. At one point we ended up pulling the hook and losing like 3 fish in a row before realizing that the hook was beaked over. We caught fish though and had some awesome eats.
Fatty
Face full
Mas man thigh
Corner pocket and shameless plug for my Muy Wow Crustacean fly.
We ended up moving and as we were working our way out we came across some really picky reds working around some shell patches that wouldn't touch a shrimp fly. I'm guessing we could've probably tied on a crab fly and started hooking up but we were both satisfied and decided to just call it since we were on someone else's boat and dodging the shell became priority.
All in all it was an awesome day. Fish were caught, $100 conversations were had, laughs were aplenty and the beers flowed. I gotta mention that I've fished with Salt several times and for whatever reason, I've always had bad luck when it came to reds. Pulled hooks, picky fish, broken lines and blown shots have plagued me so it felt good to shake the monkey off my back on this trip even though at times it looked like that trend would continue. I credit us being on a neutral boat but mostly I credit it to my decision the night before to shave what I have dubbed "The Marshstache" that you see in the pics. Sometimes you just gotta shake things up and create your own luck.
Damnit, this post still ended up pretty long, but there were just so many noteworthy moments so suck it.
