February 11th, 2012

Last night the rains were long and soaking, and the day called for a steady wind, so Kelly and I sought shelter in the Cross Bayou Canal once again. At sunrise, I could see the back end of the front moving off:

We launched a little after 7:00am, and as usual, we threw a few casts around the Park Street bridge in the hopes of catching a ladyfish and getting the skunk off early. As I approached the bridge, I could see a fish feeding off the closest piling on the far left of the bridge. I threw my new Yo-zuri shrimp there, gave it a few twitches, and got a hard hit and hookup. The fish took off for another piling ten yards away, and I had only a second to pull back and try to pull it away. I don't know if I turned its head or if it changed course toward me, but I was able to avoid the piling, and was awarded in my efforts a short time later with a respectable snook:

Nothing like catching a snook on your first cast to improve a bummer of a day.

A short time later we arrived at Joe's creek and started fishing upstream. We had a nice wind to our back, which made it easy to work the mangrove shoreline without much steering.

Both Kelly and I were placing some nice casts into the mangroves, but nothing was biting. From time to time Kelly would pick up a ladyfish, but I stuck with the Yo-zuri Shrimp, which the ladyfish turn up their noses to. A hundred or so casts later, I was rewarded for my perseverance with a second snook, this one smaller at around 18". Say hello, friend:

We fished all the way up to a fork in the creek. Kelly paddled up the fork to do some prospecting. Here he is up a creek with a paddle:

We weren't able to catch anything else in Joe's creek, so we paddled back down to the canal and drifted downwind while working the mangroves. There were some nice pockets of water along the way, and I was able to catch a small redfish and a big ladyfish, and Kelly caught a few ladyfish and jumped a snook. I was hoping for a trout to complete my first ever slam, but it wasn't to be.

Maybe next time.