Another 5:00 am wake up on vacation. I try to convince myself it will be worth it but I’m not so sure. This will be our second early morning wake up on this trip and the first didn’t quite meet expectations. The first being a trip out to the beach on Padre Island to watch the release of baby endangered sea turtles. It sounded fun enough, but due to the large crowd and the distance we were kept at by park rangers, it wasn’t as impressive as I imaged. Hopefully we’ll have a different result this morning as my son and I head out for some kayak fishing with Captain Fil Spencer. I guess we’re waking up this early to beat the pelicans to the fish.

Crab Walking the Lighthouse Lakes

Trip Overview:

Lighthouse Lakes, Corpus Christi TX
June 26, 2016
1/2 day on the water

We met Captain Fil on the road while it was still dark and headed on our way to WhatABurger for a quick breakfast. After picking up breakfast, which happened to beat expectations, we took a quick and very short ferry ride across the channel to Aransas Pass. We saw some porpoise as we crossed but not the red drum we were hoping for. Once across, it was a quick drive to our put-in location on Harbor Island road.

Our fishing destination was a short paddle across a channel used by boats and porpoise to go back and forth between the Corpus Christi bay to Gulf of Mexico. Across the channel are the Lighthouse Lakes. The lakes are an intricate maze of channels and open flats contained by grassy wet lands. Most of the flats are barnacle covered knee deep waters with fishing holes scattered throughout which is the reason we hired Capt. Fil to show us the way.

More Lighthouse Lakes Info

The refrain “It doesn’t get much better than this” repeated in my head as we silently paddled through the reeds at dawn being part of the environment as opposed to the way a motorized craft makes you feel, as a flood of sounds emanates from the reeds produced by birds and who knows what creatures, and as bait fish continually jump out of the water as we pass. We paddled through a series of narrow winding channels and open lakes until we arrive at our fishing destination, two larger lakes with several oyster hatcheries in the center.

Owen was situated with a Tera 12 Ocean Kayak and I was in their Prowler 13. The Tera’s low profile proved easy to paddle and control. My Prowler had a rudder and was much more maneuverable than my own Malibu X-Factor. I can see how in open waters and high winds a rudder can come in handy.

We used seats with pole holders as this keep the poles higher than flush mounted kayak holders reducing the amount of salt water that gets on your gear.

Up in New England we generally fish with artificial lure instead of live bait preferring a more active fishing style so we thought we’d do the same here. The captain set us up with some top water rigs that proved effective. As usual it took a few minutes to get used to the new gear with our casts often going off target, one of which landed in a bush along the waters edge. But just in time for the day’s prime fishing window we got in sync with our gear.

We let the wind blow us across the lake with our legs dangling in the water creating some drag to slow us down. With long casts and slows active retrieves we started pulling in fish as we went. We caught a few sea trout, a lady fish, and slew a red fish. We eventually drifted into an area being fished by a couple of fly fishermen at which point we hopped out of our kayaks to take a break.

It’s advisable when fishing flats in this area to wear shoes that provide ankle protection as it’s easy to get cut up on oysters or barnacles.

The water was quite warm as the typical daily highs were approaching 100 degrees. We gave the temperature no thought though as it was very pleasant standing in the water have our refreshments and watching others fish. After a short break we resumed fishing. With a couple casts over to an oyster crate I hooked a nice 26″ (fisherman’s estimate only) dark red red-drum. This fish put up a good fight pulling out my line several times but I was sure I caught dinner. In what I thought would be its last attempt to escape it swam into the weeds to get loose but I soon had it in my net. Unfortunately for me, as well as dinner, this fish was practiced in the idea of catch and release. As we were admiring it in the net and getting ready to measure it, it flipped itself out of the net to freedom. Oh well, back to fishing.

Line your fish down and through the cheek to allow it to breath and stay alive as you continue to fish.

At this point with our legs over the side of our kayaks and being able to touch the ground we “crab walked” our  kayaks back to where we started, fishing as we went. We continued to land some fish but the prime fishing window was clearly closing. So we decided to call it a day and head out for some lunch on land. Captain Fil was kind enough to share some of his sea trout and fillet our red fish for us which ended up making a fine dinner which we complimented with some local shrimp from Oceans of Seafood’s market.

Overall, a pretty good morning!

And a special thanks to captain Fil! About Cap Fil Spencer