It looked really good on paper, two days of neek tide followed by a strong tide.
(this is Port A tide, and AP tide was shift everything about 2 hours to the left)We have never not caught fish in the LHL pass on a falling tide - Steve and I took our growing daughters there to paddle and kidfish
We both had new toys to get to LHL - I haven't tried my Kestrel in the salt, I bought this boat as a wadefishing taxi, and this is a perfect spot for it.
Steve had a new reel with two rods he wanted to get wet.
I saw this tide two weeks ago, even let TexasJim and Tombo know we were coming down.
Jim joined us, but Tom called me the night before, and was fished out, from a great Saturday on LHL with 2 big trout (26+ and 23"), and 2 slot reds - that's a day in anybody's book. Good thing you didn't make this one Tom.
What I expected was cross the channel at LHL and be on fish at first light. The weather men didn't predict this one - we left San Antonio at 3:30a driving through a monsoon that covered 20 counties. On doppler, the whole thing was slowly circling around SA. We finally drove out of it south of 3 Rivers.
Launching at LHL, the predicted 3-kt S wind was more like 10-kt out of the NNE and the sky looked like more was coming.
Here's the only shot I got of Jim, cropped out, of course
But my camera sequential frames also grabbed this one, which really shows the texture of the sky to the NE.
If the morning had a redeeming quality, with a little bit of light rain mixed in and the building N wind, it was actually chilly for most of the morning - June 30.
I don't think Jim likes to wade and while he paddled, and after paddling in for a look, Steve and I paddled back and tried fishing the cut with the wind to our backs.
Those two guys above Steve were also on the concentration of bait, but I don't think they did any better than we did.
The baitfish were exactly where I predicted, heavily concentrated from the pass to just past those next cuts. But instead of a strong outgoing tide, the wind current coming down Aransas Channel was pouring into LHL, creating a strong incoming tide.
We went through everything we had, topwaters, SS3, cocahoes, grasswalkers weighted and unweighted.
When I picked up the flyrod, I began hauling in pinfish, so Steve said that counts as no skunk - doesn't work for me.
Adding insult to injury, a big sow trout made a feeding slash right in front of us.
While we were wading there, we witnessed strong incoming current, the wind finally laid a bit, and the tide finally took over, pulling water out of LHL again.
We gave up on the original plan, and paddled back into LHL, especially exploring the lakes to the south, where Tom found fish yesterday.
Here, paddling about due east, still no sun
No fish sign anywhere, we finally just staked boats and went wading on good hardpack bottom.
Did see pods of finger mullet in the surface ripples, nothing feeding on them, but I began casting my grasswalker across the finger mullet. Finally got a small trout to attack the lure a few times. About 11:30a (beer thirty), the sun finally broke out, and after the implied break, we paddled back to the cut.
You can see how clear the water was in the lakes
Back with the original plan at the pass, this time from the south slope, the tide was doing what we wanted, but all we could get were half-hearted strikes from tourist trout. Of course crossing the channel on the way out, something big was slashing bait in a big way - maybe jacks that came up the channel for my tide.
Loading boats was the only time it got hot.
my T160 has never been able to keep up with Stevo's turbo-fin Revo 16. The Kestrel turns that around - Steve has to work a little extra to keep up with me in my light-fishing wading taxi.
I've also gotten really confident and relaxed with the boat's low initial stability, balancing myself with the thigh straps, and using the thigh straps to lean and turn.
I count the day as a great time. Only Jerry knows this one, but I cracked my skull in a bicycle wreck 3 weeks ago, haven't been able to get in my normal calorie rides. So getting out today, paddling and wading out some energy was just what I wanted - happy even without fish.
There was still a lot of traffic crossing the channel yesterday, as well as power boats running the channel. I noticed something new - about half of the boats would come off plane and wave kayakers across the channel - of course, keep watching for that other half.
She looks pretty darn good I must say! 
