Went out last Thursday afternoon and Friday morning for our yearly cast and blast with my cousin and a couple of buddies from Austin. The only difference this year was that I wouldn't be joining them for the hunt since I planned on hitting SPI with the family for the long weekend.
We hit the water at about 3:00pm since they arrived in Harlingen at about 2pm from their drive from central Texas. I decided to go way south just north of Holly and we jumped off and waded a cove that has been doing well lately. We pulled out several dink trout and rat reds with only 1 keeper trout at 18". I decided to head a bit further north to belly deep water since the day was scorching hot. On our way to that spot we noticed some birds working the middle of the bay and headed straight to them and under them was a big school of reds. As soon as the boat came off of plane we all casted to the edges of the school and after 2 twitches of our Hackberry Hustlers it was fish on with a quadruple hook up. Unfortunatley one of the guys had his line pop so only 3 reds came to the boat. We quickly regrouped and started looking for the school again and it was about 40 yards NE of us. We jumped up on it again and bang another triple. After we boxed the 3 reds the school stopped feeding up on top so we set up a drift in the area where they were working and were able to add 1 more to the box about 20 yards into our drift. We continued drifting for a short while with no more bumps so we decided to head in and throw some half shells on the pit.
Friday morning we hit the water at 6:20am and I decided not to travel so far south, big mistake. We traveled just south of Cullen's and landed a decent trout and lost several nice fish due to bad hooksets or frayed lines. Rest of the morning was pretty much unproductive. We did come up on some reds that were tailing but with zero wind and a bottom that is not wader friendly it was hard to get up on the fish. I was able to push the boat close to one red but but one of our buddies hit him right on the head and probably knocked the poor red out. We kept seeing them tails pop up sporadically but it was just too hard to push a 20' cat hull with 5 guys on it. We did some more running around with not much luck so I am convinced that the fish close to the Arroyo have lock jaw
The highlight of the day was us running out of gas about 1/4 mile from the ramp. I hate fuel tanks that are in the hull. My fuel gauge was marking 1/4 tank but apparently the float isn't properly adjusted
. Big thanks to the guy in the Dargel that pulled us in.
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