Catching whitings, gafftops, skipjacks in Port Aransas

It’s mid-July and we are all enduring the extreme heat of summer.  My friend, Mile Bailey, called me from his home in Pennsylvania the other day. Their high temperature are about to reach 80 degrees. I need to move to Pennsylvania.

Instead my wife, Beth, and I spent a week at Aransas Pass on the coast. The temperature is constantly 8 to 10 degrees cooler with a sea breeze at Aransas.

Jerry and Cindy Wahl from New Braunfels joined us for two days of fishing, shopping and seafood feasting. I fished alone the day before they arrived to try and locate some fish.  Mostly I caught small speckled trout and small redfish.  But I did catch six whitings.  Whiting usually are caught in the surf but these were in the bay. Whiting don’t get very large but they are super good for the table. Years ago I was at a fish cleaning table in south Louisiana with a good box of speckled trout and several whiting. A Cajun fisherman saw my whitings and tried to trade me two trout for one whiting. I said, “No deal”.

I also brought home a big flounder caught in the Lydia Ann Channel near Port Aransas. One big flounder can make my day.

Since Tuesday brought very low winds Jerry and I fished oil and gas wells in Corpus Christi Bay. The water was green- clear and trout were all around the wells. They ate up our soft plastic baits on ¼ ounce jig heads.  We caught at least 40 trout but only four were keepers (over 15 inches).  We later moved into a shallow grass flat where I caught a big redfish. We had fish left over that night at our fish fry’

Later in the week Bill and Christine Jones joined us for two more days of coastal fun. Bill and I didn’t catch huge numbers of fish but we did catch some good ones. At first light we were casting topwater baits along the shore of the Lydia Ann Channel when a strong fish exploded on my Zara Spook. The fish fought hard and deep.  I thought it was a big speckled trout but it turned out to be a big gafftop catfish. They are bottom feeds and eat primarily natural baits. But this big boy ate the topwater.

In past years I always released gafftops. But two years ago my son Tim’s mother-in-law wanted to go fishing for her birthday.  So my brother, Wayne, and I took Tim’s family of four, his mother-in-law, her son and his wife and two kids to Redfish Bay. We knew lure fishing would not work with that crowd of novices.  So we took cut bait and went after gafftops. We had   three boats and all fished near each other. Every one caught many big gafftops.  They cleaned the fish at their condo and ate gafftops for three meals. Tim said it was better than any trout he had ever eaten.

So Wayne began to keep gafftops and he raved about how good they tasted. So recently I have begun to keep gafftops also. I have to admit that they taste just as good as redfish and trout.  But I wont put them in the flounder class.

Soon after the topwater gafftop incident a massive fish blew up on my Zara Spook. It was a huge skipjack. He was longer than my arm and he put on a spectacular show of power, speed and aerial display. After he was exhausted I released him to fight another day. I felt like saluting such a fish.

Shortly after the skipjack a big redfish crashed Bill’s topwater. He put on a real power show and as he neared the boat I was getting the net ready. Then the hooks popped loose. Bill’s expression said, “Oh well.  You can’t win them all.”

My best fish of the day was taken on a little soft plastic minnow-root beer color.  The moment I set the hook we knew we were on a good fish.  He made several long runs before Bill skipped the net under a speckled trout of almost 23 inches.

Bill later caught a legal redfish and we missed several more reds that were tailing near a small island.  A tailing redfish had his snout in the grass and mud feeding. Often they hit whatever is cast near to them.  It didn’t happen for us but just to see tailing redfish is very exciting. It’s almost like seeing a big whitetail buck in the bush.

At the cleaning table I told a fishing guide about my big skipjack (nicknamed Poor Man’s Tarpon).  He pulled out his phone and showed me a picture of one of his guide friend holding about a 60 pound tarpon - caught in Corpus Bay near Shamrock Island.  Wow! So much for my skipjack.