Fishing weekend with the family

[WadinMoron]

My family rented a house in Jamaica Beach for an extended weekend. My dad and I showed up Thursday evening so we would be close to the guide Friday morning. We were to meet Captain Zane Starr Friday at 5:30 in San Leon. We got a few lines wet that night by the submerged light in front of our dock. Caught a couple croaker and called it a night early. We met Zane and a buddy of ours at Topwater to fish the AADE Saltwater Tournament. Weatherman said wind would be 3-8...it was 20...til 10:30. Absolutely brutal. We did the live croaker soaker thing and got 1 speck and 3 sandies over the first reef. We moved over to a 2nd reef around 11:00 or so and got nothing. We moved to a third reef. It was now 1:00 and all of us were a bit frustrated. I got my line wet first and pulled a speck out within seconds of the bait being in the water. It measured just a tick shy of 24". We drifted this reef for the next hour and pulled in 14 specks including mine. It was funny, there was a specific point of the reef where the specks turned off and the gafftop turned on. I think we hooked up with about 10 gafftop, but didn't want anything to do with them. As soon as they were off the hook, they were back in the water. We called it quits around 2:00. We were all pretty zapped and Capt Zane was just about dead. That guy works his tailend off. He kept up the jokes and great personality the entire time. He turned what could have been a terrible trip into a great one, and it had little to do with the fish we caught. We ended up not turning in any fish because...damn we were tired. We also didn't think the speck would place. I won an American Rodsmith Trout Special rod and my dad won an OceanMaster reel, so we came home with something besides the fish. My dad, my brother, my brother in law, and I all fished off and on the rest of the weekend. We would pull out gulf trout, and specks here and there from all over. We fished the surf, the dock, kayaked into GISP, and waded SLP. All in all I spent roughly 40 hours fihing from Thursday night til Monday morning (when we all finally left for home). Sunday, my wife and I took my daughter to the beach for the first time. She LOVED the waves! She has that salt water in her blood now, takes after her daddy I suppose. It was a great weekend catching fish, drinking beer, and cooking/eating fish. My brother in law had some good success in the surf Saturday morning with Norton Lures tequila (something) colores sand eel with chartreuse tail. He had 2 dink specks, 1 17", and 3 gulf trout. I had some nice success when kayaking GISP Saturday afternoon/evening with a gold spoon. Caught a 21" red and a few dink trout. This pic is from our tournament.

[Gulfcoast13]

Nice read!

[Curmudgeon]

Great story! Sounds like y'all had a blast

[Texfish]

Great read, thanks for sharing.

[Bnett]

Always nice to fish with the fam. good read