June 16th, 2012

Kelly and I launched this morning from our Bunce's Pass Launch at 7:00am. As usual, it was windy as hell, but we had a great high tide topping out at 2.2 feet, so we were able to get pretty far back into the mangroves to get a break from the wind. 

Early on, we each had a few small blowups on our topwater plugs but no hookups. We eventually retired the topwater and started throwing gold spoons and jerkbaits. I had my first good chance at a fish on a gold spoon, with a nice red following it up to the boat and taking two good hits at it before turning away. 

A short time later, Kelly was doing some exploring and found a school of lower slot redfish. He pulled one out of the school on a spook. I came around the corner and took my shot, throwing a big She Dog topwater at the school. There was a red on it as soon as it hit the water. 

The school spooked at that point but we continued to fish the area, seeing a lot of action, but no further hookups.

Toward the end of the time we drifted out over a flat and started blind casting our spoons. Kelly was rewarded with a big pig of a redfish, a rod bending 24" beauty.

We chucked some bait toward the end of the day, but couldn't get anything going there, and finally got off the water after a little contest to see who could catch the first trout.

It was me.

June 3, 2012

I launched this afternoon from the east end of the bridge to Bay Pines into Long Bayou. It was hot and windy with a falling tide.

I started fishing the oyster bars around the bridge, alternating between a weedless shad tail and a flat rap. It looked really fishy, but I didn't get a single bite, so I paddled around to the mangroves below the Cross Bayou Canal and worked them over with the same combo of lures. Eventually I hooked up with a ladyfish, but the water was otherwise quiet back there.

I continued along the mangroves and up into the entrance of the Cross Bayou Canal, finally seeing some action as a gamefish was busting bait flowing out of the canal. I made a few good casts, but there was nothing doing.

I ventured 50 yards up the canal, casting at the mangroves, but it was dead, so I drifted back out and returned to the bridge to fish the now exposed oyster beds. I saw a big red tailing and made a few casts at it with my shad tail, but to no avail. I was wishing for a popping cork and a few dozen shrimp at that point. I finally hooked up with a trout a short time later on a shad tail.


I ended the day by paddling up into the canal toward John's Pass. I stopped at the narrow bird preserve there and threw my topwater over and over and over. I had three blow ups there, but nothing big enough to connect. At that point, a thunderstorm was bearing down on me, so I paddled back to the launch and called it a day.