TLDR Crappy weather, slooow fishing, and I'd do it again tomorrow.
Rather be fishing hit me up because he needed some salt therapy. We picked out a weekend to get together and started keeping an eye on the weather. Unfortunately, as is usually the case in the spring, the weather was not looking conducive to poling a skiff.
We agreed on a beach trip, with the hopes of working in some buggy whip wading, and I roped in some buddies to get a bigger group together since we weren't constrained by skiff capacity. I've had my eye on driving up to lost lake at the mouth of the Brazos for a while, so we set that as our destination. The plan was to meet at Cedar lakes cut on Friday night, camp there, wade fish a little in the morning ,and then drive as far towards lost lake as we could get. I wasn't sure if cedar lakes cut or the mouth of the San Bernard river were still open after Harvey. Information on that part of the coast is pretty scarce compared to Galveston, Freeport, or Matagorda, so we figured we'd just have to find out for ourselves.
As we got closer and closer, the weather got worse and worse. There was a decent little front forecasted to blow in Friday night. We were pretty committed at this point so it was happening come hell or high water (more on that later)
Friday we met up in the evening in Sargent and headed down the beach. The tide was out and we made it down to Cedar lakes cut fairly easily. Unfortunately, the cut was still open after Harvey which prevented us from making it as far up the beach as we planned on. We rounded the corner at the cut and some people were already camped out there. Time for a plan B; a quick gander at google maps satellite view showed a cut through the "dunes" back to cedar lakes. We found a decent sand patch to camp on, unloaded the trucks, and drove back to the surf to wet a line and round up some firewood. The line wetting was not successful but we did find a few decent logs to light a fire.
Eventually we all turned in, some of us in cabs and some of us in tents. At some point, late Friday or in the wee hours of Saturday the storm blew in. The wind was howling and the rain was torrential. I woke up briefly but fell back asleep pretty quickly since I'd gotten properly hydrated while we were sitting around the camp fire.
I woke up Saturday and one of my buddies that was in a tent was now in the cab of my truck. My shoes and a 2x8 I used for cleaning off my feet before getting into my tent cot were gone Odd. I grabbed a flash light and started looking around. Strangely, one of our plastic crates was dragged quite a way away from where we left it. I battled a few thick clouds of mosquitos and finally tracked down my shoes and 2x8. I knew it rained hard, but I didn't think it came down hard enough to cause some flash flooding. I fished out my waders, fly gear, and some mosquito spary and started rigging up while the sun started poking up over the horizon. As everyone got up I got the rest of the story. Turns out the howling wind pushed the tide up on enough to flood our campsite with about 2 or 3 inches of water. The one person that was sleeping on the ground in a tent got a very rude awakening once the flap on his tent gave out. I'm very happy that I was in a tent cot and elevated off the ground.
The forecast was pretty good and we had a nice 2 hours window after sunrise of calm fly fishable weather. We waded, and didn't see much of anything. Explored quite a bit of the marsh and things were very slow. I saw a few glass minnows up shallow and a couple mullet lazing around but no signs of fish actively feeding. It's interesting wading a newly opened natural pass to the gulf. One spot I waded was ankle deep water for a couple hundred feet, and then dropped off into a channel that was chest deep for about 3 feet before sloping back up onto a mud flat. I had to tiptoe to keep from taking one over the top of my waders. We probably could have dredged the deeper channels with flies and scratched out a fish our two with extreme perseverance, but I was not that motivated. (That's the end of the very limited fly fishing part of this report.)
After the wind started picking back up, we headed to cedar lakes cut for some surf fishing. The wind was cranking as the second part of the front moved through, and we got a couple good lightning shows and a little bit of rain. The fish were not cooperative.
We fixed up some lunch, and after striking out all morning, decided to seek some more substantial shelter for the evening. We found a nice spot with some cane stands to give us a windbreak, plenty of firewood and some really large trees washed up for Harvey to shelter us. We set up camp, and fished the rest of afternoon with very limited success. Rounded up a bunch of wood for a big fire, cooked dinner, and settled in for the evening. Saturday night was much less eventful. No rainstorms or flood tides.
We woke up Sunday to a bright bluebird sky and figured it wasn't worth the effort to try and wade fish any. Made a hearty breakfast, packed up, and headed out.
I wish the weather and fishing were better, but it was great meeting rather be fishing! Good dude and solid company. We're going to try again and hopefully can get together with some more fly fishing conducive weather.
