SaltyCajun.com - They asked for Bull Reds

On 8-22 I did a trip with Doctor Brown from the Dallas area. He had such a great time some other people in the Dallas area heard about it and wanted a piece of the action. Scott Taylor and 2 of his buddies booked me for 9-8 and expected the same thing. The day started out beautiful.

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We were fishing just after 7. One of my buddies went about 12 miles north of me and we were going to let each other know if anything was going well enough in that area to make it worth a run. On our first stop Scott hooks up but it gets off half way through the fight. There was a lot of bait around but the bite was not there. One boat was way off in the distance picking at some trout. They were not getting a lot and my guess was they had live shrimp. They were too far away to tell. A half hour goes by and we loose another. I bounced and drifted around but the bite was not happening.

It is now 9:00 and I am contemplating a major move. Scott hooks up and the battle is on. Within a minute we have 2 on. The other guy stops fishing so he can video the action. We went from a boring sun baked day on the water to a Chinese fire drill. "Life is Good!"

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Once the pictures are taken and the fish are released we get back casting and immediately we hook up again. That is also landed, photo'd and released. As I am releasing this one we get another one on. I get my buddy on the radio and he was just getting ready to call me to let me know things got heated up where he was. Another friend got on the radio and told me the action just started where he was also. At 9:00 a bell was rung and all the bull reds came to dinner everywhere.

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By 9:30 we had 6 fish and the action never slowed. As the water color changed I would just move over a bit and get right back into the action.

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Scott was the only one that ever caught a redfish and never anything as big as this. Little did he know his trophy was still out there lurking. All of these fish were big and hard fighting but 3 of them were over 30 pounds. The trophy was 45 inches long with a 25 inch girth and tipped the scale at 37 pounds. That is as close as I could get the info for his mounting because about 2 fish after this picture my scale fell apart.

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During this fishing frenzy we had a lot of doubles. One of these was only 31 inches so we put it in the box to put on the grill.

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About 11:30 one of the guys right arm cramps up and he is really having trouble with it and has to stop but not before he lands the one he has on. Do not know what kind of a cramp he had but he was in quite a bit of pain for a short while.

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We had stead non stop action and although I took about 20 pictures it was a lot of catch and release without pictures also.

After a while I noticed this guy slowing down. He was holding his pole and having a much deserved beer just gazing at the shoreline. His cork goes under. His pole starts going off to the left and he is still staring out in space. No he was not drunk just spaced out somewhere. I yell he has a fish on and he turns the opposite way and looks at the beer in his right hand kind of like "Damn this beer is good!" I shouted again trying to get him back into his body or something. Once he came back to the boat he managed to land this beauty.

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We had sharks around getting to our bait and I spent a lot of time rigging lines. I will have to go up to the city to get more supplies soon. I also have to get up there to replace one of my rods that was broken when the customer high sticked it. I kept trying to instruct him but he still wanted to lift the fish and it happened. The fishing was solid for 3 and a half hours and it took it's toll on the guys. The sun and lack of wind was helping the fish not the fishermen.

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About 1:00 we start working our way back to the barn looking for some keeper reds at some of the places along the way. All we found was rat reds and 1 for 2 on flounder. They asked for bull reds and they got a trip to remember. It does not always go this way but this time the fish gods were good to me.

Life is Good!
Fishing is not a matter of life or death. It's more important than that.

CAPT HOOP -- OUR FREEDOM