Lessons Learned

The past few weeks have been prime summertime conditions for night time jetty fishing and morning surf fishing. However, the relentless winds of early June and early July made it difficult to fish in either place. I have learned that a southwest wind is not conducive to good water color at the Texas City Dike on the channel side. With the wind blowing at a moderate speed from the south though, I took a chance and went for it. I arrived in time for a rising tide and stained water with six to eight inches of visibility. Another thing I’ve learned about night fishing is that the best bite occurs when the lights have been on for at least an hour. This gives the bait time to congregate in the light. So after an hour, I had a lot of freshly hatched shad filling up the edges of the light. As usual the trout were not far behind. The action was slow at first. When the tide started moving better, the bite was nonstop. From 2 a.m. to 4:30 a.m., I caught and released over fifty speckled trout all on artificial lures. I kept five small fish and the rest were released to fight another day. The largest one was twenty-two inches and looked to be full of eggs. The most effective lure was a Down South four and a half inch swim bait in the purple reign color. They seemed to hit anything that imitated a shad. In the video you will see trout approaching the shad near the rocks early. Then later you will see the trout pushing them off the rocks into the light and busting into the schools in a feeding frenzy. It was really cool to see and even more fun to catch and release them.

The next week I had a light south southwest wind which I have learned is good for night fishing the gulf side of the Surfside Jetty. The gulf side is protected from this wind direction and allows for some cleaner water. As long as the tide is coming in while the lights are up, I have had some success. I set up my lights at midnight and planned to fish the incoming tide. The tide would be high at 5:30 in the morning. After an hour, the bait started to slowly trickle into the bright lights. A few shad, some glass minnows and a lot of shrimp and finger mullet were the attracted menu for the evening. Again, the bite was slow until about 2:30 a.m. From then until 5:15 a.m., the bite was stupid good! I was using a Down South Super Model swim bait in the white ice color on an eighth-ounce jig head. Keeping the bait high in the water column was the ticket. An erratic retrieve seemed to be the best. It mimicked the stop and start of the minnows and mullet. I pinched the barb down on the jig head so I could shake the trout off at the base of the rocks. This allowed for a better survival rate upon release. One of the better trout I caught that night was another twenty-two inch fish. You will see the strike and see I used the net to land it for a photo opportunity. That night I kept five smaller fish for my friend who is having a fish fry. I think the smaller fish taste better and the larger fish are our brood stock that we should all let go. This is especially necessary after the freeze and fish kills we had last winter. I think the release them over twenty-inch movement has gained a lot of momentum up and down the Texas coast. I hope it will pay off in the future of our fishery.

The next week I went back to the Surfside Jetty for another nighttime adventure. The winds were even lighter out of the south southwest, and I planned to fish the incoming tide and move to the surf that morning for some wade fishing. The tide was dead low at around midnight and the next high was forecast for nine-thirty that morning. At midnight I set my lights up on the gulf side which was still, glassy and trout green. To my amazement, there was not a single bit of bait showing up in my lights. We were on the back side of a full moon which usually is not a good situation for fishing. The tide was dead slack and the only fish hitting my lure were the ribbon fish on just about every cast. Around three a.m., I noticed the other lights on the jetty were shut down and gone. There was only one light set up near the end, and it was on the channel side. I assumed that side would be holding dirty water from all the runoff coming out of the inter coastal waterway. The southwest wind would also make the water more off color. I stopped for a moment and watched the person fishing that side bring in a nice size trout and then another. I grabbed my tripod with my lights still going and carried them to the channel side of the jetty. To my surprise, as soon as the lights hit the water, I saw mullet and shrimp scattering. After five minutes, I began to see and hear the familiar sound of trout sucking down the shrimp and baitfish. In my first ten casts, I caught four trout, and the action continued until my generator ran out of gas. The final count was around twenty five to thirty trout in the last few hours of darkness.

As the darkness began to fade, I loaded up my gear and headed back to my truck. The light glow on the horizon gave way to a beautiful sunrise and dead slick surf conditions. I made my way to the beach entrance and started looking for birds and bait along the shoreline. I drove for about two miles before I saw what I was looking for. The gulls were having a feast on the large shrimp being pushed all the way to the beach by schools of hungry trout. I hopped out of my truck, tied on a trusty topwater lure and stood in ankle deep water casting to the feeding frenzy. My lure hit the water, and after two twitches, it got smashed and the game was on. This scenario happened over and over until the school moved through. Every surf fisherman dreams of this type of set up which usually doesn’t happen very often. When it does happen, it makes it that much sweeter. After a while the action slowed down, so I loaded up and went on the search for more bird and bait action. After driving another mile or so, the scene repeated itself. With each stop heading north, the fish seemed to move further out from shore. The fish moved from the first gut to the second gut as the morning wore on. I also noticed at each stop there was a presence of small black tip sharks lurking near the schools of trout. In the third gut the porpoises were pushing the trout back toward the shore in my direction. That was in my favor and kept the action close. The numbers of shrimp in the surf was amazing, but they seemed to have no chance of survival against the schools of trout. This awesome scenario came to an end as a menacing storm moved down the beach from Galveston in the east. With five small fish in the cooler I loaded up and took the fish to my friend for his fish fry.

The next morning I loaded up the truck and headed back to the beach at Surfside to repeat the previous day’s fun fishing. This time I took my Go Pro to document the action. As I waited for first light on the beach, I could see and hear more wave action that the previous day. The wind was stronger, and the waves were breaking stomach high on the first sandbar. There was a slight chop on the water until mid morning, and then it got semi glassy. As I drove the beach, I noticed no one was catching anything. Not even the anglers using live bait. I was getting close to San Luis pass before I saw the birds working bait beyond the second sandbar. I stopped the truck, grabbed my rod and waded in. As I reached the second gut, I cast my topwater lure as far as I could attempting to reach the bait being pushed to the surface. As long as I got it close to the bait I got a strike. No one was stringing fish that day due to the sharks. I slowly walked each keeper fish to the shore and let them ride the surf to the beach. There were a lot more smaller fish in the schools this morning as I chased the fast moving schools south down the beach. I was playing leap frog in my truck with several other anglers as we tried to keep up with the accelerated pace of the feeding fish. By eight a.m., I had caught five small keepers for my friend’s fish fry. I continued to catch and release more fish as we continued our game of leap frog. As the sun grew higher, the action slowed and the fish seemed to be more lethargic with their bellies full. Another morning of fun surf fishing was in the books.

I love this time of year when the winds lay down and the surf gets right. A night time jetty trip followed by a morning wade in the surf does the soul good. Every time I set up my lights at night or get the opportunity to wade the surf, it is a new learning experience. It seems the situations I encounter always make me either adjust to the situation or figure out another plan to be successful. I think that is what I enjoy most about fishing. Whether it be from a kayak, on the shore from a jetty, or wading the bay or surf, the challenge of figuring out where or how to catch fish makes the game that much more fun. When I was coaching (for 38 years) we had to be able to adjust and adapt to overcome the opponent. Fishing gives me a similar challenge with many variables such as wind, tides, water temperature, water depth, bait, sunlight, and so on.

Life is like that too. Just when I think things are going the way I want them to, life throws me a curve ball. I have to adapt and adjust to cope with what life deals. It is not always easy to figure out. The best book of knowledge I can recommend with the answers to all that life can hand you is the Bible. If there is something you are dealing with and don’t know how to handle it, pick up this book and read the examples of how Jesus dealt with his time on this earth. Read how God’s love for us and his grace gives us hope no matter what our circumstances are. Ephesians 2:8-9 says, “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this is not from yourselves, it is a gift of God – not by works, so that no one can boast.” Take some time to pick it up and read. Proverbs is a great place to start. I love this book as it is filled with wisdom that helps us in our daily lives.

I hope you enjoyed my recollection of my fishing experiences these past few weeks. I have put together a video of images from my last few trips. Enjoy it and feel free to share any of my lessons learned with a friend who likes the outdoors as much as you do.

Thanks for reading my blog and God bless you!

Tim Lumpkin

Legacy-Outdoors.net

Instagram: @tlump10

YouTube Channel: Legacy-outdoors