Mother Lagoon in Full Bloom

LISTEN: (4 Min, 15 Sec)

 

SEPTEMBER AND OCTOBER are by far my favorite months out of the year, especially for fishing. It’s as if Mother Lagoon and her wildlife have been saving up all year to display their beauty. During this time, anglers can pursue redfish a few different ways here on the Lower Laguna Madre. The bull red run happens here as well as many of the jetties/inlets along the Texas coast, and the flats come to life when the water temperature drops a few degrees from the prime-time summer months.

Throwing topwaters in about 12” of water can provide the best fun an angler can dream of. Working a “walk the dog” style lure when there is a nice ripple on the water’s surface will grab the attention of a brute redfish. Same as throwing jigheads while drifting the flats, aiming your casts towards sandy potholes scattered amongst the grass where those fish are waiting for baits to swim by is the ticket. One of the most exhilarating feelings while fishing is to see a large push of water waking behind your topwater as you work it. That’s when you know it’s about to go down! My favorite topwater lures to use are the tried-and-true Shimano Current Sniper and the DOA Lures PT-7. 

The Shimano Current Sniper comes in a variety of sizes and is my absolute favorite. I’ve caught everything from 30” speckled trout, to snook, to over slot redfish, to aggressive mangrove snapper on this piece of fish candy. I most frequently use the 95mm or 110mm size while using my Shimano Teramar XX 7’6” medium fast action rod and Vanford 2500HG reel. Don’t be afraid to throw a larger topwater. You might not get the most blowups or bites, but when you do, it will be one worth taking a picture of. I usually go back and forth from the smaller 90mm to the 110mm size unless they are clearly interested in a certain one. This lure walks with ease and produces the perfect amount of ruckus. On breezy days, the seagrass collects making the treble hooks on this lure not an issue, but on the calm days when the grass is more dispersed, snagging grass can become more frequent. Some folks switch out the treble hooks for circle hooks to prevent this problem, but I’ll usually switch over to a DOA PT-7 topwater. While this lure might look a little goofy, it is completely weedless, and fish just love it. The best thing about this lure is that you can bomb it further away from the boat than any other topwater I’ve ever used. And when fishing the shallow flats, the further you cast, the likelihood of hooking a fish that hasn’t been spooked by the boat yet increases. 

The fall bull red run the past two years here on South Padre Island has happened mid to end of October. When this starts to occur, using bottom rigs with the appropriate weight is the name of the game. This is when the Humminbird Solix 12 Gen 3 comes into major use. The Side Imaging and Down Imaging shows us exactly where those fish are stacked up in the water column, letting us know what gear to use to put baits in their face. Not only is the jetty a wonderful place to target for redfish this time of year, but schools of tarpon, snook, jack crevalle, mangrove snapper, etc. will also be there. This is the time of year when the larger migratory tarpon are making their move back south to the Yucatan. Last year in September when the conditions were right to head offshore a few miles, we would check out some underwater wreckage where schools of ling would pop up to check out the boat. If one of those gets on the hook, there is no doubt we are keeping one to share with the family for dinner. 

As the temperatures slowly start to drop a couple of degrees here and there, make sure to get out and see Mother Lagoon in full bloom. Until next time.

 

Email Kelly Groce at ContactUs@fishgame.com

 

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