6-9-18, 1st lights trip and 1st tournament!

[Chubs]

Had a busy day on Saturday. I wanted to go to the MDLR meet and greet and fish in the lures tournament he was hosting. The time frame was 7am - 2pm. Meet up at the Churchill bayou launch. I figured might as well get some night fishing in while I'm at it.
I went over to the west side of Christmas bay launch (I posted about those lights in my scouting trip). Launched around 4:30 I'd say which didn't give me as much time as I'd have liked. Got to the canal and saw there were even more lights than my scouting has revealed! Awesome.
Hit up the 1st overhead light and immediately felt a strike on my spec rig (store bought, had little 1/16 oz jighead with 1.5" paddle tails on it). No hook up but I tossed a few more times and was rewarded with a good drag peeling fight that took me into someone's dock. Reeled in a red and then realized the challenges of night fishing, I couldn't see him!!! Flipped on my light and then fumbled for my net while the red fish sighed at me. Eventually I netted him...
Was a 18" rat so I told him "have another slice of pie fatty" and tossed him back in the water. Well sort of, I gently placed him in but I couldn't see so I put him upside down. Put my net up, inspected my lure (he bent it...), fixed it, then looked around and saw him floating belly up... Uh oh. I guess he was so depressed I didn't keep him that he was going to do himself in. I went over to him and tried to grab him, flipped him over and that snapped him out of it and off he went!

I kept fishing the same light for a bit but no more action so I moved on. Got to the next and was having no more bites. Next and no bites so I swapped to a single doa glow shrimp. The fish wanted that even less... I made it all the way to the end of the canal with little nibbles here and there but no hook ups, so swapped back to the spec rig and had to head back to get to the tourney.

Worked my way back and worked each light. Got to the middle at an underwater green, worked the spec rig with a bit of a slow retrieve and pop it every so often, SLAM! got hooked up! Reeled in a nice keeper flounder, about 18", 2 lbs.

And that was out for the night fishing,I had to get on the road so I could get to the MDLR lures tourney. I'll save that post for later though

In the mean time, here is my 1st keeper night fish!

He asked me to keep him so he could be filled with boudin stuffing...

I think I have to learn a different retrieve technique for night, kept getting short strikes, but then again maybe the fish just weren't there that night.

[kickingback]

Good report Chubs! Thanks for sharing!

[mwatson71]

Glad your first night trip was a success.

[TxAquatics]

Nice action, I also wanted to make the MDLR lures tour. Just couldn't. Let us know how it went!! Was this night adventure lights 2 or 3? I'm also contemplating my first night outung.

[Chubs]

This was Spot #3. Pretty nice little spot. I went there based on suggestions to fish middle areas during times of slack tide.

DO NOT GO STIRGHT TO THE LIGHTS FROM THE LAUNCH!!! You'll get caught in 3" water with shell all over the place go straight out and then loop back around to stay at least deep enough to float.

Oh ya, don't fish with sandals like I did in the picture too

It's seemed to be decent enough and I had no wind and practically no current. I was very very slowly being pulled back out to the bay while I was in the channel, but I can't say if that was due to the 5mph wind or what..

And looks like I used the "Killer Shad Rig" in chartreuse.

[Chubs]

About time I finish my report.

So after my night trip, I packed up and headed to the Christmas bay launch at Churchill bayou. I met mark (MDLR fishing) and also nick (TX RX angler). The lot was full as anything so they offered for me to park behind them. I wasn't sure what the police might have said though if they spotted my car parking in someone else's, so to avoid the ticket, I ended up finding a space I could squeeze into.

Dropped off my lure for the entry fee and then launched. Those kayak wheels sure are handy. I unloaded at my leisure and then carted myself over to the water. Then took my wheels back to the truck and launched. I think I found a way on how to stow the wheels on the yak and take them with me for next time so that's even better.

Onto the fishing part of this report. In short it sucked

I got a few bites on a chartreuse gulp swimming mullet but no hook ups. There were just so many people. I'd say 50 at least in the tourney. And I made the mistake of launching late and following them all lol.

I went towards Churchill bayou. So many people out there and so many yakers. It was quite a sight but most people were doing just as good as me.

I was spooking tons of bait when I'd go into little ponds. If guess they were drums or croakers of some sort. None of them wanted my offerings though.

I looped around the top of the islands and we saw a freaking blacktop shark in the water coming past us! Fin sticking out of the water just like jaws LOL.

I made it over to almost titalum tatulum and found some yakers with reds on stringers! They were working the banks and having some success, in essence using the same chartreuse lures as me. The one guy had seen his 1st tailing red and you could just tell how happy he was. Made me happy to they said they were having to work real hard for their fish. I tried to mooch their area for awhile but only got an interesting video of a crab doing something I've never seen before. Saw some blow ups but never could get a bite.

It kept going till I heard thunder. Headed back in with nothing to show for my 7 hour excursion but I've got some pics to share along with an interesting crab video I took. I'll post them up when I'm near a computer. Also I'll post up my path took since I think it's fun to share when I catch nothing

The event was fun even though I caught no fish. Glad my morning flounder came through for me at least. Was real nice to meet so many fellow yakers and MDLR and nick, and congrats to the two winners.

The sad thing is there was so many folks there and I'm the only one to write a report (other than the you tubers)... Sigh...

[Chubs]

Supplemental info

Here is the path I took of no fish. Started at Churchill launch and made my way to the north island chain.

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Saw the shark somewhere up at that northern pass.

I was going to loop around back on the north side of the island back to launch and hit up a few more spots, but I started hearing a lot of thunder around 12/ 1 so took the shortest path back.


Here was the weather from the day

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Here was some cool bird I saw who wasn't too appreciative of me interrupting his meal

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Oh, here is the video of a crazy crab. I have no idea what he was doing. Apologies for the bad video but I took it with my cell phone and am no youtube expert
https://youtu.be/6fdJXYn_54o

[kickingback]

You missed some great fishing spots there Chubs! The line in red is a great route and gets you into some good marsh. Take a look at the area in Google Earth. The red line is a good path down John Wayne Cut there and the yellow circled area is where there is a great drain convergence and I always catch fish there. Check my old reports. I posted my route as well.

[Chubs]

You missed some great fishing spots there Chubs! The line in red is a great route and gets you into some good marsh. Take a look at the area in Google Earth. The red line is a good path down John Wayne Cut there and the yellow circled area is where there is a great drain convergence and I always catch fish there. Check my old reports. I posted my route as well.

Well call me crazy, but I figured everyone else was going there, so I went a place I figured nobody else would. Sure enough not many other people went my way... And now I know why

Oh you know what, I was also trying to win the tournament by getting a grand slam since it was longest total length of the big 3. I figured the hardest thing to land would be a flounder. So I checked GE and looked for the pock marked cuts which per one of my previous posts people we saying that would be flounder hideouts. I figured I'd catch a spec early in the morning along the Christmas bay area shoreline, catch a flounder in those pockmarked areas, and shouldn't have had any trouble with a red. There was some method to my madness but unfortunately it didn't pay off.