Hall's Bayou 9/26/2014

I did get down to Hall's Bayou on Friday and yes I'm late getting a report up.  Been a little busy playing with the granddaughter and also helping you with the weigh-in for a great kids tournament.  More about the kids tournament in another post.

It was a very windy day on Hall's and the water was that tea color that I don't like, but it has been a while since I have been able to take the boat out and get in some fishing.  With that fact alone it was a great day!!!  I never was able to get the bass to bite, or at least bite what I was throwing at them.  I really wanted to see if could get some fish to hit a buzz bait on the bayou, so I fished one from Throw-n-Thunder lures maybe a little longer that I should have.   It is a great buzz bait and makes great sound and has great appearance coming across the water.  I did have a bunch of fish blow up at it,  but none of them took the bait.  I've seen this with top water baits from time to time in the bayou so that doesn't mean a buzz bait won't work on the bayou.  It means it just wasn't the right day for a buzz bait.

So after being a little hardheaded and using the buzz bait too long, I switched to a Throw-n-Thunder lures spinner bait.  This spinner bait was the Rumble Bee color and one that I had picked to be a great color for the bayou.  It didn't take too long to get my first hookup with the spinner bait and with a pretty good fish, but the fish came off.  This was repeated 3-4 more times with a couple other hit scattered in with no hookups.  This told me the fish were being really tentative when hitting and explained why all the blowups and no hookups on the buzz bait.  I was still a little on the hardheaded side and kept throwing the spinner bait.  After all it was drawing strikes and strikes from some good fish so it was only a matter of time before I got a solid hookup right.  Well at least that is what I hoped for but in the end I was wrong.  It took a Gator Gar or something else with sharp teeth decided to take my Rumble Bee away before I gave up on the spinner bait.  It was weird as I was working the bait in on 30lb braid and I felt nothing except all of a sudden I didn't have a bait on the end of the line.  So I'll be ordering a new Rumble Bee come Monday.

Next up to bat came the Santone Lures Rayburn Swim Jig in Acid Perch with and XZone Swammer in Cisco as the trailer.  I also dipped the tail of the Swammer in Spike-It garlic chartreuse as I always do for my jigs.   Well it didn't take this combo long to put a small redfish in the boat.  I would go on having a lot of losses and misses with this combo, but I did put more reds in the boat.  Not sure if I was doing something wrong or if it was just one of those days on the water.  Hey I'm really not complaining as any day fishing is a Good Day!!!   I would have liked to have my strike to catch ratio a little higher but I'll take what I can get.

It was a beautiful morning running down the bayou in the boat and the video turned out so well that I even worked up some new entrance and exit clips from the footage.  Speaking of video, here is the highlight footage from yesterday.  I didn't put too many of the misses, and losses in mostly the catching.   Hope you enjoy.

Until next time, Tight Lines and Take a Kid Fishing!!!

Coming Soon

I know I haven't posted in a while, but the weather has been killing my plans.  Looks like a great weekend for fishing just a head so stay tuned as I try and make it back to Halls Bayou for some Texas Bayou Bassin.

Until next time, Tight Lines and Take a Kid Fishing!!!

Lake Nassua 9/14/2014

Today is my wonderful wife's birthday and normally I'd be spending it with her, but she is visiting her mom and sister.  So I felt like I should be doing something and decided to go check out the catfish hole.  I wasn't disappointed either.  Here is the video so I don't have to do a lot of writing and you don't have to do a lot of reading.

Until next time, Tight Lines and Take a Kid Fishing!!!

Let's Catch Some Catfish

That is exactly what my son, daughter-in-law and I did yesterday morning.   I tell you if you want to put a smile on someone's face that doesn't fish a lot then take them catfish fishing.   Take a look at my daughter-in-law face.  Plus it didn't hurt that she also whipped up on us boys pretty good on her way to a great day fishing.

We ended up keeping 10 good eater catfish and left them biting because the cooler we took wouldn't hold any more.  Sure there weren't any monster like you see in some of the magazine articles but hey it was Labor Day and the Texas sun had the temps pushing 100 by 11:00am when we pulled up stakes and headed home.   Didn't check the water temp but I can bet it was in the low to mid 90s.   To catch a mess of catfish like this fishing from the bank this time of year you have to be doing something right.

So just how did we do this under these conditions and have smiles on everyone's face?  It is simple, well it is simple if you are in a spot where catfish are hanging out.  We were fishing close to the bank on the deep end on Lake Nassau which is located near the Johnson Space Center south of Houston Texas.   You can find a lot of lakes big and small to catch catfish, but you can't just pull up anywhere in a boat or the bank and start catching fish.  The right spot on your body of water is something you are going to work on to find for yourself.   In this case there are Cypress Trees along the bank and if you know Cypress Trees they have one heck of root system that extends out into the water. Also these trees were shading the water and I'm sure cooling it some in this area.  There is also a aerator system in this lake with one of the outlets near where we were fishing that created a slight current.  A perfect spot for cats to hang out on a hot Texas Labor Day.

Now what were we using for bait and how were we fishing this bait?  The bait of choice was Little Stinker Dip Bait in Chicken Liver favor.  The rig was a Slip Bobber rig that allows you to cast and still get your Dip Bait down within a foot or two of the bottom.  Believe me when I tell you that the old wives tale about catfish being bottom feeders is very false.  Sure you can catch catfish on the bottom but they find your bait by smell and go to the bottom to get it.  If you fish a foot or two off the bottom you will catch a lot more catfish I promise.  So how do you rig a Slip Bobber rig for catfish?  Well let me tell you it is a lot easier to show you than to tell you and that is why I made the video attached below.  I know the video shows up pretty small here on the blog, but you can click the screen Icon on the video to make it larger.

Now I do have to warn you that this rig does not work well drift fishing or in fast moving water.  If there is a slow current you are fine fishing it but you have to have enough slack in your line to allow the sinker to pull the line through the bobber to the bobber stop.  Drift fishing from a boat or anywhere there is a swift current the line won't be able to slide through the bobber and the bobber will be pulled down to the sinker.

If you are in a good area and using a Dip Bait favor the catfish like you will catch them on this rig; just ask my daughter-in-law! You might have to try a couple different dip favors which there are many favors out there and many brands to choose from.  We have found that the Little Stinker works well for us, but I will admit we haven't tried them all so there might be others just as good if not better.  If they are better you had better take a really big cooler to put all your fish in because you will have a bunch.  Oh and find you a shady spot so you can kick back while fishing.  Sometimes there is 15 to 30 minutes or so between feeding runs in the area.  No sense in not kicking back and relaxing a little and sipping on a cool drink while watching your bobber.

Until next time, Tight Lines and Take a Kid Fishing!!