Estes high water level

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Ron Mc
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Estes high water level

Post by Ron Mc »

Steve, Lou and I were out for two days, Sat and Sun 10/5-6. Met Tombo in his pedal cat, and TexasJim in his motor skiff on Saturday.
Water levels were a foot over predicted tides, and we made it out on falling tide both mornings - big drops on paper, but didn't make significant current at the cuts.
10-kt NE wind both mornings, which aimed our boats to the very top of Trout Bayou and the 100-year cut.

After our drive from SA Saturday, we arrived to see the remnant of a pretty sunrise.
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we launched about 7:30 at Palm Harbor - never seen quite this much water on the bulkhead.
(when I compared it to other October photos of the bulkhead, the water level was 4 inches higher than I've ever seen it)
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We tried first at Little Cut, but there was way too much water to find bottom anywhere around the 60-year cut, so we turned up Traylor toward the 100-year cut.
Tom and Jim both met us at Little Cut - Jim pulled a trout out of the grass at Little Cut.
Tombo had a really good morning on Talley Is. shore and sloughs, including some trout and a slot red.
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The NE wind was giving us perfect drifts parallel to Talley shore, we found fish close to the shore and also farther out from shore, starting a drift right about the first duck blind inside the cut.
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I got a couple of three respectible 18" rats in the morning, also some smaller.
There were a lot of motors around, and redfish were hitting light like tourist trout - I've never seen it before.
My best TSL color with the spooky fish was Coastal Gold
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Our SA trio Saturday, Stevo brought in the only meat, with a 22" slot red, and he always brings good beer to share.
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We also found a beautiful hard sand beach on Talley - a cove in this high tide - to park for our lunch.
Here's Lou's rigged Emotion Fisherman 14
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Stayed the night at Rahi Motel, which is a pretty decent fishing shack with good kayak parking - absolutely nothing provided there - bring all your own kitchen tools and sundries. We've stayed here before, and it's good enough for 2 or 3 worn out fishermen, as long as they bring their kitchen boxes and TP - and good wi-fi, which Lou needed to work in the evening.
Sat evening meal, Mexican seafood at Los Comales, and floated out on fishbowl margaritas.

Sunday, with only 6 blocks to drive, we made it out at dark thirty, and were paddling as soon as there was enough light to see Sandy Point.
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The photo taken just past Sandy Point doesn't do this sunrise justice.
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We headed straight to the 100-yr cut - Lou and I paddled in, while Steve tucked into nearby Talley sloughs - he saw redfish there, but couldn't turn any.
In the cut, arrived to see a big trout with her back out of the water slashing mullet.
Lou pulled a trout from the grassy side of the cut.
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In the cut, had two dozen trout strikes on every lure I threw, but couldn't hook a single fish. Even had a topwater explosion on a YoZuri pencil lure and didn't hook on the two trebles.
A father and his son staked a Dargel in the beautiful skinny grass on the inside of the cut, and were casting into the cut catching trout on live shrimp.

As soon as there was enough wind to drift, Lou and I began drifts from the duck blind, and Steve came out of the sloughs to join us.
I missed a good red, brought him to the boat and he came unhooked.
The three of us set up this drift a couple more times.
Somewhere between the duck blind and next point on Talley shore, I got into both trout and lizardfish thick.
Can't count the dinks, and had 3 tails bitten off Grasswalkers by lizardfish.
My first keeper trout, 16"
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I'd also get a 17
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and some really respectible undersized trout - even though this fish is on Birthday Suit, this day, Golden Roach was my best Grasswalker color, especially over slightly deeper grass with slightly off-color water.
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Right after lunch and beer-thirty on the same hardpack bottom cove, I got a small redfish as soon as I paddled out to the wind seam and set my drift sock.
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Steve and Lou both headed upwind to the duck blind to start their drifts.
Just about the time I was nearing Sandy Point, south end of Talley Is., I heard on the radio that Lou was hooked up. Found out later he had switched to cocahoe on 1/8-oz jighead. I paddled up the west side into Estes Cove hoping to set up a drift, but there was too much water everywhere.

Lou's fish would be a 25" red, but the fish hauled Lou most of a mile along Traylor shore, with Steve following and taking video on his phone.
I saw Steve's videos, and you can see the fish pulling the kayak faster than the wind ripples.
Maybe he'll youtube the video for us and I can post a link - it was a hoot.
So I was first back to Palm Harbor, and moved the truck to load.
Somehow Steve came in with Lou's stringer and had to show the fish we had talked about on the radio.
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We know why this man is smiling
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Lou's first ever slot redfish
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Last edited by Ron Mc on Fri Oct 18, 2019 6:48 am, edited 6 times in total.
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JW FunGuy
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Re: Estes high water level

Post by JW FunGuy »

Great report (as usual) Ron. Thanks!
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Re: Estes high water level

Post by SteveRetrieve »

Excellent read thank you!


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TexasJim
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Re: Estes high water level

Post by TexasJim »

Sorry I anchored in the way of your drift. I thought you were anchored to wade. I was using live shrimp and on my third cast, got a 17" trout. Every other cast was a dink trout, dink red or croaker. Ran out of shrimp at 11:30, switched to arties and got lots of hits, but no hook-ups. The high tide in Rockport was predicted to be just after 8 AM. When I left Little Cut, the tide was still flowing thru the cut, but a little slower. So much for the soothsayers! We did have a lot of water!

Glad you guys caught a few keepers. It was a great kayaking weekend for you visitors. TexasJim
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karstopo
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Re: Estes high water level

Post by karstopo »

Nice report, enjoyed the ride.
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Neumie
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Re: Estes high water level

Post by Neumie »

Great report and thanks for all the pictures.
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Ron Mc
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Re: Estes high water level

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TexasJim wrote:Sorry I anchored in the way of your drift. I thought you were anchored to wade. I was using live shrimp and on my third cast, got a 17" trout. Every other cast was a dink trout, dink red or croaker. Ran out of shrimp at 11:30, switched to arties and got lots of hits, but no hook-ups. The high tide in Rockport was predicted to be just after 8 AM. When I left Little Cut, the tide was still flowing thru the cut, but a little slower. So much for the soothsayers! We did have a lot of water!

Glad you guys caught a few keepers. It was a great kayaking weekend for you visitors. TexasJim
Jim, I don't remember anything like that, no worries. We had a great trip, took us Saturday to find the fish, and Sunday to catch them.
It was especially great seeing Lou come into his own.
I think a lot of powerboat fishermen must had a tough Saturday, and very few powerboats or kayaks were out Sunday morning, and that made it almost a weekday.

thanks guys - I'm still firing my camera on low-sequential frames, so I slideshow through and throw most of them away to get the shots I want.
Of course I was delighted to find that big splash with his tail still above the water after the first kick.
____________________________

I've always found the cuts at Estes to match the AP tide prediction pretty closely, within a half-hour or so. 12am high and 2am high were predicted - there was an ENE wind current on the surface coming off Aransas Bay. Both cuts were packed with mullet in the morning.
Imagebut yeah, big water, and a lot of inertia before it would drain -
we just planned to hit the skinniest place we knew - where there was no water last February or April.
We were also lucky a NE wind fishes it really well.
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In February when we tried to get to the 100-yr cut, found ourselves bottoming in oyster, and had to quickly retreat to deeper water.
This trip, we began Saturday looking for this shoal at Little Cut (photos below), but the water was so deep, couldn't find the shoal even probing with a paddle. So we made our retreat upwind to even skinnier water and found fish there. Sunday morning, we were smart enough to head straight to 100-yr cut, and the right depth water for fishing.
This photo was April with an E wind on the Little Cut shoal, but after 24 hours of beating NW wind had drained everything
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this was the Little Cut shoal in February - a total misty day, and we could easily see deep enough to find it
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Last edited by Ron Mc on Tue Oct 08, 2019 6:18 am, edited 3 times in total.
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Re: Estes high water level

Post by Wag »

Nice report. Thanks.
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Re: Estes high water level

Post by Tombo »

Was nice to meet you guys. BTW, the name of my craft is Bluesky 360, truly a slow but comfortable craft. I started out with a topwater with plenty of missed strikes, probably too small of a fish. Finally landed about a 17" trout. The rest of the day I threw my trusty spinner bait. Landed a couple 18-19" Redfish until I connected with you guys and landed a lower slot Redfish. Thank you for the invite.
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Ron Mc
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Re: Estes high water level

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Tom, your boat was absolutely perfect in the 10-kt wind - I see why you prefer to fish light wind now.
Great to meet you - we had a hoot.

btw, that great redfish release splash photo, I deserved a good photo.
The fish and I together broke my favorite 7' ML rod because we both did the two things simultaneously that would break the rod. He sucked the lure in front of my face when I was about to take it out of the water;
he grabbed and turned, I put my thumb on the spool and set with the rod high (my mistake) at the exact moment the fish exploded, which is why the rod exploded.
While it should count as abuse, 13Fishing didn't think that way and gave me a full warranty.

Great warranty from 13Fishing - just have to slice off the portion of the blank with model specs, mail it in for full replacement.
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Last edited by Ron Mc on Fri Oct 11, 2019 8:16 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Estes high water level

Post by YakRunabout »

Great report - and congrats on an enjoyable weekend!

Q - what is your technique for embedding the pictures like you do? Are they part of a document that you copy/paste?
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Ron Mc
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Re: Estes high water level

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YakRunabout wrote:Great report - and congrats on an enjoyable weekend!

Q - what is your technique for embedding the pictures like you do? Are they part of a document that you copy/paste?
thanks friend.
I upload my sized photos now to Imgur - here's a screen capture of a single image display showing all the codes
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you can copy and paste BBCode;
or paste Direct Code, highlight it and click image icon on the post a reply argument.

As far as re-sizing photos go, there are a couple of ways to do it, and a couple of reasons to do it. First off, it saves you file space as well as internet bandwidth. People reading on phones don't care, but people reading on computers get a better display if your photo is properly sized. I pick about 1200 pixels wide to show max computer screen resolution, and about 700 pixels tall to help with bulletin board discussion.
You can resize your photo on your computer and save it with a new name so you also keep your original high-resolution file. Or you can resize it after you upload to Imgur using the Edit Image button.

I still have 8000+ photos on photobucket, though I don't upload any new photos there, when they finally got around to a $50/yr subscription, I pay it for bandwidth - what I was willing to pay before they went crazy with greed. I started buying bandwidth from them at $12/yr, let it double twice, and quit my subscription when they raised it to $100. My buddy Jimbo bought the stupid $1000 subscription, but he doesn't store any photos on his computer.
Photobucket is a really good database, and it's much easier for me to find my old sized photos there than to hunt them on my remote hard drives. Again, I don't recommend photobucket to anybody, unless they have a big archive there and want to save it.

another ps - Lou's Emotion Fisherman was a gift from Steve. Steve was using it as a borrow boat, and gave it away to make space for more boats. I helped Lou rig it - probably shows. :mrgreen:
I also teased Lou about letting Steve bring home his redfish - he gave up the karma - karma is important in fishing.
Can't be Santiago if someone else brings your catch home.
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Last edited by Ron Mc on Wed Oct 23, 2019 10:40 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Estes high water level

Post by Ron Mc »

Steve finally uploaded his last video segment of Lou's first ever slot red to an Apple fileserver, I uploaded it raw to youtube, and here it is:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvQjNbt ... e=youtu.be

(still can't figure how to embed)
Steve likes big tackle, but I don't fish bigger than 12-lb inshore, and Lou followed my queue.
Steve likes 45-lb braid and was picking on Lou about it.
I think Lou was also cautious because he broke off another red just before hooking this one.
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Re: Estes high water level

Post by Ron Mc »

my 13Fishing 1-pc 7'1" ML warranty replacement rod is on UPS truck for delivery today.
Not bad, a 10-day turnaround since mailing out the stub section.
The rod on top is my 8-1/2' mag-medium Lami GP86MTC, which will double cast distance and has nice soft tip for light lures.
ImageThe MTC didn't make this trip (see the 9' ML below), but I usually carry a long rod plus a 7' rod. The short rods work better for drift-fishing a grasswalker and sight-fishing accuracy. The long rods give greater cast distance, and the high tip also helps keep weighted lures above the grass.

My back-up rod, which I rigged and fished the rest of the weekend, is the discontinued 3-pc Cabelas Salt Striker 7' medium/fast-taper (TFO blank) that I bought for $50 on closeout.
Before closeout, Cabelas was asking $130 for the rod, TFO Traveler still finished on the same blank sells for $200, and the cheapest Loomis offers is $360.
Okuma and St. Croix also make their travel rod versions.
The 32" tube is easy to stash in a hold, or behind any seat and out of the way on a power boat. It's a killer back-up rod because it's so easy to stash, and fishes 1/4-oz very well.
Compared to a good 1-pc rod, the tip is kind of fast.
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And since I'm showing rod porn, here's my light lure long distance spinning rod. It's nine-freaking-feet-long Lami steelhead ML spinning rod - really a joy to fish and light in hand. It was on this trip casting across the cut.
All my long rods will be on my Arroyo trip in 2 weeks, but this one gets the most use for casting light lures out of sight from the dock.
More accurately, it will be focus-casting to schoolie spec sign at the edge of the lights.
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