Hooked Up: December 2024

Hooked Up: December 2024
Wayne Brock Jr getting it done in some nasty NE wind. The Soft Dines by Texas Custom Lures were making some magic on 5 – 7.5-pound trout on this “Should we stay or go?” kind of day. All were released to play again.

Dang, time is flying! Seems every time I wake up there is an article due, which means another month has passed. That’s great in summertime when it’s sweltering outside, but I need this clock to slow way down during late fall to have more time to balance quality big-trout fishing with kicking rocks in the Hill Country and West Texas. Blessed to have such tough decisions to make.

December used to be a pretty quiet month with regards to boat traffic and fishing pressure. The more folks that have fallen in love with my longtime obsession of chasing the biggest trout in the bay, it’s only natural that the cat would eventually get out of the bag on what had long been a very quiet time on the bay to work on some big bites. Yep, December was always a sleeper…but not anymore.

My little foray into writing in this wonderful magazine has always been focused on what is taking place in Baffin and the Laguna, and I’m going to continue doing that, but my memory took me on a pleasant journey recently of great things learned and enjoyed in Decembers gone by. There are a lot of things you can gripe about when it comes to aging, but memories like these are not on that list. Indeed, I have been blessed, and I have a few memories I want to share with you.

Baffin and the Upper Laguna have always been my home turf and where I fished on weekdays before and after my day job, back when I had one. On weekends, though, I would venture into any number of bays, often as far north as POC. I had lofty goals as a young man to learn as much water as possible and, not really knowing why I was doing it, it paid off handsomely when I got into tournament fishing.

I learned much about the effects of falling December tides fishing oyster reefs in Copano and Port bays. I also learned about trout corridors in and out of Estes Flats, Redfish Bay, East Flats and dozens of other places most fishermen only motored past.

Another incredible experience was earned in the surf at Cedar Bayou. Not knowing a damn thing about surf fishing, I wandered out there one early December day and was greeted by the most ferocious trout bite I have ever experienced in the surf – even after several hundred good ones since then.

Very late November 2007 (almost December); I had a client begging to cancel a trip as the forecast was cold, wet, and windy. He always fished by himself and didn’t want to spend the money on a bad weather boat ride. I was so confident that the fish would be hunkered in this gut off of a certain spoil island that I told him, “If you don’t have your best big-trout day ever, then the trip is on me.” Looking back, I was crazy to have said that, but I was very confident and, y’all need to keep in mind how many big trout we had in the bay in those days. Anyways, after the first hour I thought I might be donating my services when, finally, the moon got overhead, and we slipped into a feed period. Old-school Fat Boys in white with a chartreuse back was the ticket. For several hours we caught 7- to 8-pounders – the absolute best day of my client’s career.

That same year, the fishing never missed a beat as November faded into December. To tell you how good it was, I had multiple days of 70-plus pound “stringers” when the limit was still 10 fish – all released, of course, and never actually placed on a stringer.

Another December tale I’ve written about in past articles included our good friend Mike McBride as witness – two days back-to-back – my best ten trout each day averaged 85 pounds. Man, Oh Man, those were the days.

This little trip down December’s memory lane is just that, great memories from better days, but I would be remiss to not point out that they are the reason I am so passionate about conserving our trout fishery. You see, it’s not about fulfilling some lifelong mission or accomplishing a long strived-for goal, it’s because I know where we have come from, what our bays are capable of producing, and what we can have again. Conservation is a must if any of y’all younger than forty-five want to witness those kinds of days for yourself. We are finally on the right track. Never let off the gas!

Remember the buffalo. -Capt David Rowsey