during the beginning of June when I went to South Padre, I had the interesting experience of seeing Jack Crevalles, swimming through the first gut and even sometimes the wade gut, really shallow water. I'm fairly young and semi-new to saltwater so at first I didn't know what to make of it, every single day I was there between around 11 and 2, for a good solid hour, between 1 and 5 of them at a time would swim right in front of me every 5 or so minutes. I've never caught one and decided I'd like to try it, so I tied a bit of heavy mono leader on and starting throwing lures at them. That was incredibly frustrating, many, many times, I had a fish turn from where it was swimming, follow the lure a bit and then swim off. I got hooked with one that I couldn't see with a guide but unfortunately the hook came out. I learned later when you see them turn and look at the bait, crank faster, but is that alone what kept me from getting a hook up? I was fairly close to them so in the clear water did they see me and get spooked? I threw Rat-L traps, gold spoons, and swim baits.

HAd a similar experiance with Spanish Mackerel off the jetties once. Saw bait, birds and a fw fish hitting the surface but I couldn't get bit with a standard retrieve. Then I started cranking fast and they would light up the spoon with awesome strikes. Seems the faster retrieve stimulates a fleeing baitfish better and gets their attention. In fishing, all you can do is try different things on different days to see what evokes a strike. Speed, size, color, etc can all make the difference between a bad day, good day or excellent day fishing.