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The fishing was great on Sunday; there were schools of huge reds all around and all you could hear were mullet getting smashed and running for there lives. Once the sun came out and I put on my Costa Delmar sunglasses everywhere you looked you could see tails and big bronze backs sticking out of the water. A school of big reds caught my eye about fifty yards away and the chase was on. I eased my way over towards them in my stealthy Hobie outback and made a cast with a skitter walk. With a few twitches of my Castaway rod tip they all turned towards my bait like a group of synchronized swimmers. After two more small pops it all broke loose, reds were going nuts trying to kill that skitter walk, they were fighting each other and completely forgot about my bait. I made another cast at them and it looked like some one threw a grenade in the water, red fish were flying everywhere. During all the commotion my skitter walk disappeared and the sleigh ride was underway. I knew it was a good fish when it instantly started taking line off of my Shimano Castaic reel. After a short battle she gave up, I pulled her on board, made a short paddle to the bank, took a measurement (26 ¾”), and took her picture. After the picture I made sure she was in good health and watched her swim away to fight another day.




The next four hours were spent in search of the elusive mustard mouth. I was catching everything from six inch specks to ten pound black drum on Berkley gulp jerk shad. The Berkley ad is true about out fishing live bait because it will catch any fish out there. Finally, I set the hook on a fish and got that wonderful head shake on the end of my line and it was pulling harder than the other specs had been pulling. I knew I finally found the one speck out there that was at least fifteen inches long, and low and behold it was fifteen and a quarter. After a short photo session it was set free to see another day.



After a little more fishing we packed up and started the hour journey to the weigh in at Seaworthy Marine. As always the ride to the weigh in seems like an eternity, especially when you think you have a good stringer. When I heard my name called for the biggest red fish I knew I had a good chance to be in at least the top five. The next thing I remember was hearing my name again for first place, I could not believe it. With the win for Port "A" put me at number one for Texas angler of the year. Now I get to go to the championship and represent all of our Texas fishermen.