A Texas Drum at Redfish Bay

April 9, 2019: Today I paddled out for the third day in a row, an unbroken string of sunny skies and bearable winds. Yesterday was almost prime, though the water clarity was still off from the last northern. After almost 4 months in Texas, hoping for a chance to sight fish to reds, I finally had a shot. A massive fish lazily drifted towards me, nosing up clouds in the mud. I saw it so far out, I didn’t believe it was a fish. Garbage bag? Log?

There is a fin just left of the arrow here… after my close encounter.

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Then I saw its dorsal fin and a tail kick, oh my God that is a very large fish. Red drum, black drum? Not sure. I could not reach it as the wind was in my face and I couldn’t unroll the long leader I had on, so I waded right, hoping for a crossing shot as it approached me. I made a couple of casts that weren’t close enough, but didn’t spook it. Then she turned directly towards me and dove her nose onto some critter in the mud. I landed my grizzly seaducer a foot to her left, and a little beyond… strip strip past her nose, I can’t see the fly in the mud cloud and I’m shaking at the size of this fish, 20 feet in front of me… strip… the fish sees my fly and lunges at it! OMG, WHEN DO I SET? I did a strip strike but just pulled it away from her and she lunged ahead once again, and I missed again! 😫 ⠀

The damn fish didn’t spook though, and just kept slowly nosing south towards the channel. I took a breath and checked my leader, and wouldn’t you know it, it had a nick in it and broke when I pulled hard. (!) By the time I fixed the leader and was ready to cast again, the opportunity was gone, the fish evaporated somehow. Later, a pod of smaller but still substantial fish, black drum I think, drifted across the same flat, nosing in the mud and I stalked them for most of an hour, changing flies and retrieves. I could not get them to eat though.

Today the wind came up enough to stir up the silt and further degrade visibility. I blind cast across a cut in the flat and got two little reds and a bunch of small trout, but no sight casting shots. Dang.

Here are some assorted images from that trip to Texas, January to April, 2019.