January 28th, 2012

Kelly and I met up at the Rally at 6:30am and drove out to the Cross Bayou Canal. We were launched and paddling off by 7:15am into the cool morning. After two abnormally warm weeks, we were again fishing on the back end of a cold front. It was about 58 degrees at launch. At least the wind cooperated, with calm conditions to start and no more than 5mph at the close of our session.

Our first stop was at the Park Street Bridge, where I picked up a ladyfish and a trout on a Yo-zuri edge lure. Kelly got the skunk off with a ladyfish on the north side of the bridge, then we nodded and paddled upstream.

We picked up a few more ladyfish at the mouth of Joe's creek, then started fishing our way upstream. I had been throwing my Yo-zuri edge the whole time, but after a real rats nest of a wind knot, I switched out to a back-up rod that had one of the new Yo-zuri shrimp tied on -- a birthday gift courtesy of my fishing buddy.

I flipped my first cast over to the mangrove edge and after a twitch, saw the lure disappear into the mouth of snook. A quick fight later, I released a healthy 15 inch snook.

I paddled up ten yards and cast the shrimp back into a pocket in the mangroves, and two twitches later, a snook nailed the lure. This one was a bit bigger, just over 20", and worth of a photo:

After Kelly paddled over to snap the photo, I moved over to the south side of the mangroves and flipped the shrimp over to the mangrove line again. I shit you not, another snook came up and took the lure. Another 15"-er.

The next cast did not catch a snook, nor did the one after that. However, on my third cast I dropped the lure by a partially submerged log and another 15" snook took off with it. Six casts, four snook--nothing short of epic.

Unfortunately, my next 100 or so casts netted nothing but ladyfish. Though the bite had died down considerably, Kelly managed to take a snook in the 15" range on topwater. We did see a few juvenile tarpon rolling again, but no takers.

We gave up on the creek at that point and paddled off to the bayou. It was quiet back there again, not a whole lot of movement, only few mullet jumping, but I had a good feeling. I went the far northeast corner and on my third cast, a big snook in the 30" range took the Yo-zuri shrimp and jumped clear of the water. When it hit the water it made a long run toward a submerged log, but I turned it and had it near the kayak when it made a second run and began pulling me toward the mangroves. I desperately tried to one-hand paddle the kayak back but the snook was too strong and got me up against the mangroves. I tried one last-ditch attempt to horse it out, and the line broke at the line-to-line knot at the leader.

F^@%!

Tough to lose a big snook, even worse to lose a $15 snook-slaying lure.

We took a good 20 minutes to bend the rod on some big ladyfish, then paddled back toward the launch. We stopped at the mouth of the creek to throw a couple, and Kelly had a big hit and a his drag started signing. I thought for sure he'd hooked up with his second snook, but instead, a super FAT trout came to hand. Not a bad way to close the day.