Fishing the Conditions | Casting Tales

I went to Corpus Christi for the weekend to fish the 4th annual Casting for a Cause Charity Tournament. I spent three days on the water fishing around the Coastal Bend and had a blast. The catching was phenomenal one day and poor the rest. For once it was good when it counted on tournament day. Regardless, the company was great my entire stay.

I arrived in Corpus Christi late Thursday night and went straight to the captain’s meeting for the tournament. I had a great time socializing at the captain’s meeting. I saw some old friends and met quite a few new ones. I made the trek to Corpus without a game plan or fishing partner for the tournament. I planned to play things by ear and wing it. I wasn’t overly concerning about winning the tournament anyways. I was just looking to have a good time.

I met Brandon at the captain’s meeting and he didn’t have a partner as well, so we decided to fish it together. I had never fished with Brandon before this event, but we have a mutual friend so we had talked and messaged each other prior to the tournament. I still didn’t know where I was going to fish Friday morning. Nothing new though. Anyone that knows me knows that I don’t ever decide where I’m going to fish until the night before I head out at the earliest. On many occasions I haven’t made the decision on where I’m headed until I get in my truck and start driving. Some people think I’m indecisive but my indecisiveness is very calculated. I don’t like to decide where I’m going until I get the most accurate image of the conditions.

I am not the type of person that likes to fish spots. I pick areas based on the conditions, i.e., tides, wind speed and direction, water clarity, ect. I asked Brandon about the conditions because he had been fishing the area for a few days leading up to the tournament. I had an area in mind that I want to fish but wasn’t sure if it was going to pay off. Brandon was down for anything and he agreed to fish the area I was considering. Our plan was to fish hard and see how the cards lie.

Well, the conditions lined up perfect for the area we fished and we had a great day on the water. We knew it was going to be a good day on the water when we started the day with almost 13lbs of redfish after about 20 minutes of fishing. We saw tails all morning long and big ones too. We caught all of our fish in less than 1.5′ of water and every fish was spotted before we caught it. We threw weedless, weightless soft-plastics.

We were finished fishing before 10:00am and we caught over 20 redfish on the day most of which were in the 5-7lb range. I also landed one fish that was almost 30″ and weighed over 10 pounds. The weights of the fish were so close we had a tough time trying to decided which fish to keep. Our two biggest reds were 27.25″/7.5lbs and 25.75″/7lbs respectively. Our total weight which included the weight of the basket was 15.39 pounds, which was enough for third place in the kayak division.

I also got on the water Saturday and Sunday but the fishing was slow. We couldn’t find a whole lot of feeding fish and water levels were higher than on Friday. Saturday I fished on a friend’s skiff and we saw well over 100 redfish on the day but we couldn’t get any of them to eat a fly. The frustration started in the wee hours when we found a pod of reds and made a cast into them and hooked a skipjack. It was the first of many signs that it was going to be one of “those days.” On Sunday I met up with two other fly fishermen and it was more of the same only this time we couldn’t see the fish. We found an area were the fish were actively feeding for a couple of hours but we couldn’t see them because the water was high and off-colored. We ran over a bunch of fish but never could get a fly in front of a fish before it was spooked.

I had a great time at the Casting for a Cause tournament and will definitely fish it again next year. The company, food, raffle, and tourney were all good. Over 70 kayakers and 150 boaters fished the tournament. They gave away over $10,000 in prizes in the raffle. They also cooked 125 pounds of crawfish, 75 pounds of shrimp, 50 pounds of sausage and 20 pounds of briskets. The most important stat of them all was over $65,000 was raised to benefit Heroes On The Water (HOW) and the National MS Society. It was a very well run event and thanks to everyone that helped put it together. I can’t imagine the amount of work that went on behind the scenes to put this tournament together.

More photos from the tournament here.

Brandon and I took 3rd on the kayak side (photo courtesy of Joe Adame…