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This was mommas birthday weekend and she wanted to go down to the coast. I can't say exactly how many times I asked her but I know it was a lot - "Do you want to do any fishing" and I am certain the answer was always "No". She wanted to rest and do nothing. Absolutely nothing. So I loaded her up and we headed down to Port A. Checked in and she asked me what the fishing was like around here [palm to face]. Long story short, $200 at Academy later, we rigged up with some tackle and headed over to Lake Corpus Christie. Water was stained and not much access around the park so we went to another site above the lake on the Nueces River. Fished there for about 4 hours and managed to catch 3 cutie pies and 2 fun fish on paddle tails. Friday morning found gale force winds and doing nothing way to over stimulating so we loaded up and headed over to Mustang Island State Park. Drove back along the channel on the bay side and stopped when we saw mullet jumping all over the water. We started throwing our paddle tails and letting them sink to the bottom - rest - then rip them one or two times. We caught 9 specs with 3 well within the slot but we released them all as they were asking everyone to release specs in that area for some reason. We also caught an even dozen black drum including a nice 5lber that ended up being dinner that night. I have not done a lot of coastal fishing since the 90's but we did make one very unscientific observation. It seemed that every time we ripped the paddle tail once and got bit we had a spec and every time we ripped more than once and got bit we had a drum. Who knows but it felt that way. Saturday morning was heavy fog and raining so we were back to doing nothing - which lasted until around 10 when momma decided it was time to get out and do something. We went back to Academy to restock on paddle tails and then back to the channel. No mullet breaking this time and we worked the same area pretty hard with no luck. Finally went all the way to the bay opening and around the corner where we finally found some fish. Over the next 2-3 hours we managed 4 specs including a 31" beauty plus a couple dozen small black drum and one red. We again kept one black for dinner. The game warden was out there for a good portion of our time and the first thing he asked me when I caught the big spec was if I was going to release it. Of course I was sir. Never crossed my mind to do otherwise. Momma thought he was going to check our licenses (hers was in the Jeep) but I reminded her that we were in the State Park so I was pretty sure that wasn't his purpose there. Turns out he had a tip on some fishermen that were "exceeding their limits" and he was waiting for them to come back in. Sure enough, about 20 minutes for we spooled up we noticed 5 kayaks coming into the channel. He walked over to the waters edge and asked them to come over to shore. 4 of them turned in but the 5th seemed to hesitate for a bit before turning in as well. Busted. All five of them had at least a dozen specs of various sizes on their stringers as well as a bunch of black drum. I didn't around to hear what the damage was but I know for sure their day did not end well. We headed back home early Sunday morning in the middle of sideways rain that had everyone driving 20mph. On a whim we stopped by the Colorado at La Grange to see what might be biting. Apparently nothing that was interested in what we had to throw so we loaded back up and headed home. As I was putting our new rod/reels in the rack I mention that this was why I had so many of these (and that's my story and I am sticking to it). Picture below shows the various paddle tails we used minus one blue metal flake we ran out of. Be safe, keep your lines tight and have a blessed day.
![paddletails.jpg]()
