Fishing In Real Life

South West Texas and the Nueces River in January


It was January 2nd here in 2012, and it was a beautiful day.  The sun was out, the wind was calm.  The temperature was in the upper 30’s when we decided to take the Coosa’s out for a little bit of fishing.  Camp Wood, Texas is about 30-40 minutes from my new house and we didn’t have all-day to fish, so the less time we would spend on the road the more time we had to fish. 

We launched our Cooksey Park on the Nueces River in Camp Wood at about 9:00 am. By the time we launched, it was warming up and we were already taking off out jackets.  Like I said, it really was a beautiful day, but the river might have been even prettier than the sky!  I don’t know if I have ever seen such clear water.  You could see the bottom of the river at its deepest point, well over 20 feet.  I was so enthralled with what I was watching below me, that I didn’t even care to start casting for a while.  I was just paddling around watching 2-5lb catfish swim around below me.  It was awesome, but I didn’t see any bass.  They might have been there hiding in the grass, but I wasn’t sure.

We paddled around there for a few hours, making probably a total of 30 casts a piece with no fish caught.  I spent more time exploring and enjoying the scenery.  I love this area of the world.  Here are a few pictures of what I saw:

  

After a couple hours of mostly paddling and enjoying the sights, we took out and decided to fish downstream from the park.  The water was shallower and flowed there, but was just as clear.  Thank goodness the Coosa’s are light, because we had to carry the boats a few times to get them in the water.  When we were in our boats, we could see catfish, carp, and yes BASS swimming everywhere.  Who woulda thought that I would be sight fishing in early January?  The only unfortunate part about the clarity of the water was that the fish could see us well before we could see them.  The only way to catch a fish was to cast well beyond where you could see in the water.  We did manage to land bass there!  I caught this one on a 4 inch fluke rigged on a ¼ oz. Draggin’ Head (Confidence Baits). 

P.S.  – I do not encourage anyone to ever go out on the water without a PFD.  I know I am not wearing mine here because we were taking our Kayaks in and out constantly and fishing shallow water.  I should have been wearing it still.