OUTDOORS
I had crossed the bridge over the Mission River on Highway 257 dozens of times on my to Aransas Pass to fish Corpus and Redfish Bays. I always vowed that some winter when trout and Redfish migrated from Copano Bay to find warmer water, I was going to fish the river. But it never seemed to happen until recently.
For years, I heard brief reports of the great winter fishing in the river but a new acquantance, who had fished the river for over 20 years, told me about huge catches of trout and reds in the Mission.
So after the recent cold front dropped the air temperature into the thirties, my wife Beth and I launched our 16foot skiff at a ramp about a mile below the bridge. Acting on a tip that a friend had given me, we motored about a mile up river to the remnants of an old wooden dam. The water was much deeper around the old dam.
My electric trolling motor’s battery had died so I tied up the boat to some brush near the dam. While I was doing this, Beth began to catch trout. She caught four fish before I could even get started. They were a little below the 15-inch minimum but a great encouragement for us. We had now caught fish on the Mission.
Since we had no trolling motor, we began to troll slowly down the river toward the bridge with our outboard motor. Our speed seemed a bit too fast but soon nice trout ate my plastic minnow. Beth netted the big, beautiful, silver and black spotted trout.
Fishing a new area takes patience to find fish. Fish are not everywhere. Certain spots are productive time after time and others are dead. Maybe the tide flow is a little bit different on a curve in a river. Perhaps a log on the bottom makes a good ambush spot for bait fish to be ambushed. In a new area, [i.e. a new river] trolling is a good way to locate fish. Lots of distance can be covered in a short amount of time.
Shortly after passing under the bridge, I hooked another good fish. Then three more. Beth had lost her touch. But on the way back up the river near the boat ramp, she caught our number six keeper.
Three trout each is the bag limit. We were happy campers as we loaded the boat and headed for Aransas Pass.
Beth had enjoyed fishing the river. No waves or strong winds. Lots of wildlife: ospreys, pelicans and a spike buck had added to our first morning. So she consented. to return the next morning. We didn’t catch our limit but we did put four large trout in the ice box.
We had returned to Martindale that afternoon but we were eager to get back to the river.
The next week, we were on the Mission again. Unlike our first two trips, the parking lot was empty.
Fishing started off slow.
”Maybe we didn’t get the memo about no fish,” Beth lamented.
”Hang on, don’t give up. Things will change,” I said.
And they did. We finally caught three keepers upriver near our deep hole. We then moved down river toward the bay and caught only one undersized trout for about two hours of fishing. Our plan was to leave at noon.
”Let’s go back to where we caught the three earlier,” I said. We flew under the bridge, past the ramp and back to our deeper area. Soon three more nice trout were on ice. One of the basic rules of fishing is not leave an area where you are catching fish.
We hope the fishing holds for several more weeks. If winter turns into summer, the trout will soon be back in the bay.
