Headed down to Galveston for a quick after work outing this afternoon. Surf was dead calm but pretty sandy. Decided to launch near Woody's and see what was out there.
The surf was full of little trout, smacks, and ladyfish. Bait was EVERYWHERE. I caught fish on 1/4 oz. gold spoons and 1/2 oz. Tsunami lipless cranks. I replaced the hook on the spoons with a #4 red Gamakatsu EWG treble.
Paddled out and immediately hooked up on small trout:
I probably got my limit out there but they all were between 15" and 17". The smacks were putting on a show out past the third bar. They were clearing the water by 8 ft. rocketing up from beneath the big schools of mullet and pogies.
I had a mishap that involved a large pelican, a spoon, and my braided line (don't worry, they're all okay) and ended up having to cut 30-40 yards of line off. After cutting that much line off my little Sol I was casting all the way down to my mono backing. I thought to myself, "Now that I'm running low on line I'll hook into a monster." I hurled the spoon as far as I could past a school of mullet and as soon as it hit the water line started peeling off the reel. Go figure. It stripped off 15 yards of line really quick and I had no choice but to clamp down on the drag and start cranking before I got spooled. I was able to gain some ground and finally ended up getting the fish to the boat. It was a nice spanish mack about 23-24" and thick in the shoulders.
And then there were trout...
And more trout...
I've determined this is the Mona Lisa of trout pictures -- the eye of the trout sort of follows you around the room.
Pretty cool for an after work outing. Lots and lots of activity out there today. If the water were just a little clearer it could have been crazy.
You can see the schools of bait in this picture. This was a relatively small school. They would just roam around and end up joining up with another group and in no time there would be a line of bait 75 yards long heading down the beach:
