11th Annual Redfish Rodeo

[Ron Mc]

Impossible to detail 5 days kayak-fishing different grass flats and marshes along the Texas coastal bend, so you get the condensed version and good photos.
Josh has hosted this fall event 11 years in a row from his family's digs on Copano Bay.

The big group, 6 to 9 people over the week, were arriving Wednesday night, so for the preliminary day, Josh and his sister Nina drove up the coast to Indianola to explore mud marsh trails, while Lou and I drifted our favorite Estes Flats and waded our favorite tide pass.
The mud marsh. Yes, they were fishing to redfish backs.


Josh and Nina brought home major meat, including a rat from the gullet of a redfish.

Lou and I didn't bring home meat, but got into nonstop fish catching on a falling tide pass.

When the big group arrived Wed night, Josh cooked a feast of Flat Iron Steaks, Crab & Toasted Pecan Risotto, Grilled Shrimp, and Grilled Romaine with Parmesan. Of course, chased with cigars and brews around the firepit.

Thursday, we picked mud marshes up the Aransas River delta in Port Bay. From sunrise, we fished up the bay piers with topwaters.

Nina took the day with a 28+" red, following a sleigh-ride through the marsh

Friday, couldn't be farther from the marsh, a ferry ride to Port Aransas on Mustang barrier island, and our favorite shallow grass lake on East Flats


I scored my trip-fish 24-inch red on a topwater shrimp plug


We dodged Saturday's power boats with a long trek up the coast and a long paddle along the ICW to more mud marshes.


Josh snapped a photo of my orange T160

Josh established himself as the mud marsh king with an early red limit.
We saw dozens of redfish with their backs out of the water, and tough to catch because they were so close together. Twice I cast to a fish, lined a different fish, and they all exploded. I did bring home a good flounder.

Josh made 4 artful fillets from my flounder, and barely offered a skeleton to the waiting pelicans.

Saturday night was Josh's fabled shrimp boil - he gets better at this every year with his own spice blends - and that's saying something.





We knew Sunday would be another strong south blow, a short day, off the water by 11 am, and picked Brown & Root flat because the focused wind down the cut channel is a guaranteed ride home. Lou and I found some wind shelter to drift, Josh joined us with a redfish that he caught twice, jumping out of the boat when his stringer was drifting away.

Stevo came in with a 22" red sight-fished on TSL Grasswalker chicken-on-a-chain


Great times with great friends - fish are gravy.

And yeah, grill-blackened half-shell redfish fillets are da bomb.

[RonG]

Wow, that looks like good times.

[Ron Mc]

Thanks Ron

The outpouring of gratitude for getting invited, superb hosting, making allowances...just never ends.

Our buddy Steve went over the top for us.
A long story, but he hauled down his Oliver travel trailer around his 4-day work week.
Lou and I were styling in it all week, and Steve returned Friday night.
(long story about the Monday errand, including his brother Dennis with his boat in a repair shop there, waiting for a lower unit)
This way, 6 to 9 of us over the week weren't stepping on each other in Josh's cabin, and Josh had room to move in two folding/rolling beds.


Good for Steve, Josh loaded him and Lou with half-shell fillets.
Also, a guide coming in handed Steve a bag of red and black drum fillets.
So taking fish home to MA, maybe she'll let us borrow the trailer again...
...we're junkies for fishing winter glass minnows in the tide passes.

[kyreels]

Great story and pics. Good info on the lures, not familiar with the TSL Grasswalker chicken-on-a-chain, but looked it up and read some. I do like the weedless rigs, and picked up some tips.

There is some equipment on the kayaks I was not familiar with. What is the pole on the front of Stevo's boat?

I do love a good shrimp boil, looks heavily modified but delicious.

[Ron Mc]

Thanks Matt,
My friend Tobin developed the TSL Grasswalker, and I have to confess he keeps me supplied gratis for good internet press with catch photos.


It's a super lure fished on a Trokar 140 swimbait hook.
Weighs 1/4 oz, casts like a bullet, tough enough for lizardfish (note all the teeth marks below).
Neutral density, it dog-walks in the zone, right on top of the grass, with just about any retrieve.
Can't think of a better mullet imitation.
Something else we do - it has a hook slot, where a drop of ProCure will poop in the fish's mouth, just like the natural bait.
Smear the excess ProCure on the exposed hook to mask the taste of us and the steel.


Was joking with Nina how I've turned Japanese. My trip-lure was this prop-tail shrimp, INX Label Supra 65
Tore up topwater specs, and caught my trip-fish red.
Unfortunately, lost it from my wire bite-trace snap after working both trebles out of another redfish's mouth
(came home and ordered more).


Josh and Nina own TKF forum, and Josh posted daily reports will all the stats, the lures he used, GPS paddling trails, and the view from his boat. (I followed with my daily detailed reports).
https://texaskayakfisherman.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=8
Josh posts here as Neumie, with 5 daily reports from Oct 19 through 23.

Steve's boat - that's the stern, and it's an electric power pole to plant him on the flat.

Can't argue with the success of Josh's shrimp boils year after year.
He posted his recipe on TKF.
https://texaskayakfisherman.com/forum/v ... p?t=253598
When his family gets together, they have cook-offs for entertainment.
Both he and Nina cook like chefs.

[kyreels]

Thanks for the post and the detail fishing and feast. I wish I was there.

I personally depart from the celery, orange, and bellpepper formula in the crab boil, but understand from the post the reasons. I like the sausage in the boil, but understand the choice to separate. Its classic versus nouveau. But I go with classic here.

On the subject of lures, I concur with the nouveau. I appreciate your lures and your take on reels to cast them. I think you are far in advance of the southern coastal fishing techniques. I will be trying out some of the techniques posted this spring. I am a fan of your reel postings.

Blacked half shell Redfish, just yearning for that. As we approach the end of the season, gives me something to think about for the future. In my case, we will be out in May for the Redfish in SC. I will be trying out your lures and techniques.

As per libations for the feast, might I suggest some Buffalo Trace or Elijah Craig? I see the Woodford and concur with that. Well done.

[Ron Mc]

Since I'm not the cook, and Josh's cooking doesn't need defending, I'll add the bell peppers and celery become a vehicle for the spice blend - you've never had a better bite of corn-on-the-cob, and you might get in a tussle with me for the last slice of andouille.

By May, we're already getting subtropical beyond the tolerance of men and fish, especially in the sloughs. By August, it's not unusual to explore into a slough and find a large dead trout along with the dead mullet it chased in there. They just couldn't get out before the oxygen did.
There's certainly summer fishing on the windy flats with good tide movement - I can think of some wonderful days between heat-effect squalls wading the barrier island lakes with a fly rod. Offshore also really turns on in the summer doldrums.
But generally, our summer retreat is hill country limestone creeks and cypress tunnels, where it's 15 degrees cooler than the roadside where you parked.

There's 15,000 sq-mi less than 2' deep between the TX coast barrier islands - has to be the best place in the world to own a kayak.
Here's our annual tides, and what happens in that skinny water in summer.

We live for fall bull tides, when everything is happening around tide movement, and it's a rebirth for us.
Last September, Lou, Tony, and I hit stacked snook on Aransas Bay side of Little Cut, crack of dawn, strong falling tide with a reversed wind current creating a bait eddy in the pass.

Those marsh redfish we find with their backs out of the water couldn't get in here to feed just a month before.

October fare for redfish, trout and flounder are 3-4" finger mullet, 1-2" shrimp, and mud minnows (killifish). Redfish are keen on focusing on their target, ignoring what you offer different, and as Josh put in his addendum to my FFR report, "Our group saw well over a hundred redfish with their backs out of the water just slowly perusing the shoreline, but any cast within 10ft of their existence caused them to flee for their lives (rightfully so)."

Glass minnows are just showing up in the fall, and we've become junkies imitating them from October through April. That culminates with a winter Arroyo trip for nite-lite dock fishing. Likewise on winter tides, fish won't get on the too-skinny flats to feed, but will stack in the passes to graze bait draining with the tide.
The trick is often getting a kayak across the skinny flat to the pass - sometimes we walk partway.

Both from the Arroyo dock and winter tide passes, we've disovered specs will hit a larger flashy lure for slashing into a bait ball of glass minnows, but both redfish and snook will only sip the single right-size bait.

Here are some example metal micro-jigs, next to a deep-channel 55-mm rolling bait.

The other thing that happens through the winter here, and that most people fish, are 5-6" mullet on the deeper flats, using suspending Corky's and big topwater dog-walking plugs.

Regards
____________________________

Matt, since you brought up tackle, adding a PS about a very useful rod I debuted this trip.

The Yamaga Blanks Blue Current III 82/B, shown with the hopping snook above, is my go-to salt finesse rod for micro plugs at Arroyo, and has been in tide passes, as well. But it's also a $330 rod, and doesn't have the backbone to keep a redfish from going under the kayak

I added this inexpensive Abu shore micro-jig rod to widen the niche just for that last point, and a $100 rod isn't too great a risk to take out on a kayak.



It landed every significant fish on my trip last week, including my trip-fish 24" red, and did a great job turning it from going under the boat. It throws 3-5-g lures quite well - more distance than I need, and the short soft tip is just right for topwater action.
Josh joked about the length, but it worked very well throwing 1/15 oz finesse jigheads and other light lures in the marsh - much like using a flyrod in close, and no work for long casts drifting the grass flats.

[Paul Roberts]

Sounded like an awesome rodeo, Ron. Yee-ha!!

[Ron Mc]

Thanks Paul,
Even if I didn't catch a fish, the times with friends would make it a great trip.

We responded to some pretty tough wind conditions, every night making the call for the next-morning's destination around the wind prediction. We pooled our experience and had Josh's great resources.
Josh has the whole coast in Google Earth embossed charts that he can sort in traveling binders.

Since college, he's kept up this Google Earth interactive map of kayak launches and wade-fishing spots on the entire (TX) coast.
https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/viewe ... jdG5uojp7k
On TKF he did a 5-thread tutorial on how to use Google Earth for everything from overlaying NOAA navigation charts to keeping a fishing journal, and plotting those paddling trails from recorded GPS.

Since I'm here again, random good photos from the recent trip.