By Ed Snyder/Outdoors
It all started with a close encounter with a Dolphin. It was my final day of a fishing trip and after some strenuous fishing action for speckled sea trout, I decided to take a break to enjoy a more relaxing day photographing some outdoor scenes for my photo file. Standing on “the wall” at 8:00 am, I spotted a dolphin moving in fast, chasing something. As the powerful creature rolled near me its curious eye locked with mine, which reminded me of a rather chilly scene from the movie “Jaws”. But what really caught my eye was the reason why the dolphin was swimming in so close to the shoreline…Trout…BIG TROUT!!

I reacted by trading my camera for a fishing rod, and by 9:00 am, and five casts later, I had four specks from 18 to 22 inches tethered to a float stringer. So, deciding to swap some camera work for a possible Texas limit of Speckled Trout seemed to be a good decision. But little did I know that those six more specks needed to fill my 10 trout limit would initiate a marathon of casting before speck #10 would finally be caught and tethered.

Pearl Saltwater Assassin twister tails rigged in tandem with chartreuse 1/8th oz ’big eye’ jig-heads were my chosen soft plastic lures, but when the specks stopped hitting, I changed to bone-white, which proved to be the right choice as casts #245 and #246 produced my 5th and 6th specks for the float stringer. But then the tide changed!

I was fishing the point position on “the wall” which is located inside the San Luis Pass RV park, on the Freeport side of the Pass, across from Galveston Island. A private island camping area, which was formed by Hurricane Alicia in 1983, the park is accessible only to those who lease an RV site, or rent a waterfront cabin in the park before crossing over the island’s bridge through a security gate.

Speckled trout and flounder were abundant for boaters, but had been sporadic for shore casters, such as myself, which was mainly due to the Autumn chilled waters of San Luis Pass and Cold Pass surrounding the island. But with five days of warming sunshine and southeast winds, the shallow waters began heating up with the bait fish moving in closer. The Dolphin took notice of these changes and quickly moved in to feed.

The tide had been going out with clear blue waters riffling an eddy situation with bait crowding the edges of the tidal rift. The trout seemed to be holding just under these schools of bait fish, which included shad, finger mullet, and bull mullet, with some shrimp skittering about the surface. By casting my lures over the mullet and allowing them to drift under the bait-pods where the specks were holding, this would usually entice a ’bump’ or strike. But when the tide changed to incoming the trout quickly moved out to the sandbar in front of “the wall’ and seemed to settle on the bay-side drop-offs of the sandbar. This required casting greater distances to allow my baits to drift along the edges of the sandbar where the specks were waiting in ambush. A silver spoon was called for here, with its ability to cast longer distances to provide flashes which mimic that of the bait fish they were feeding on.

About this time fishing amigo, Gary from Katy TX, arrived to check out the action. Our greetings included, “Catching any? “Yup!” Where they hitting? “In the mouth! “What on?” White and chartreuse twister tails! “TWISTER WHAT!” Here, use these, I hurriedly pointed out referring to my open tackle pack!

After the greetings were interfaced with what was going on, Gary began long casting twister tails to catch a speckled trout. This would take him on a ’humbling’ journey of learning how to ’net’ my fish, as casts #1216, #1364, and #1578 produced my 7th, 8th, and 9th speck to the stringer. But my endeavor of loading up #10 for my Texas limit would elude me, taking us well into the night, past cast #2252 and #2486 that hooked-up with undersized specks of 14 inches, and cast #2786 that landed another throwback. So I stubbornly held on to the goal of catching that legal limit of trout.

In Texas, the daily creel limit for speckled trout is ten (10) at 15 inches minimum, with only one speck over 25″ allowed per day. My trout were all legal sized of 15 to 22″ healthy, fat reps to a good speck run, and were really giving good accounts of their fighting abilities. And my use of a 6 ft medium/light Castaway rod and Shakespeare spinning reel spooled with 12 lb test Berkley high impact mono assured me of enjoying those speckled trout battles without any undue tackle incidents.

Averaging four to five casts per minute, these were hard casts that required energetic whipping of the rod to get the 12 lb test mono to carry the 1/8th oz jigs and plastic twister tails out past the sandbar, which was about 35 to 40 yards to our front. The fishing pattern was to allow the tandem rigs to drift with the tide just under the surface along the edges of the sandbar, where the specks seemed to be holding.

One thing that kept us entertained during the long hours of casting was the San Luis Park’s mascot ’Ready Freddie’, a great blue heron that kept winging from angler to angler looking for fish handouts. It was a absolute wonder to me that Freddie didn’t weigh 200 lbs for all the handouts that were gullied down his long neck. An amazing bird with a very amazing talent.

After enjoying an ’awesome’ San Luis Pass sunset, the nightlights clicked on as 8:30 pm arrived with the tide changing to outgoing. I’d been casting for almost twelve hours now, almost non-stop, except for a dinner break of ham sandwiches and Dr. Pepper (compliments of Gary). We continued to whip the wind with our casting sticks, me looking for #10, and Gary looking for his first speck. Although Gary had been casting the same baits alongside my casts, his were for the most part being ignored, except for an undersized rat red of about 16 inches, Gary’s casting evolved into a desperate mission of sorts to avoid being ’skunked’.

Then at 9:00 pm, while making my 2800th cast of the day, a strong ’thump’ had me setting my hooks into a good speck, and as Gary netted the trout, it quickly became my 10th speck, a fine 19 incher, FINALLY tethered to the float stringer.

And all it took was 12 long hours of rigorously casting Saltwater Assassins- Berkley Gulps- MirrOlures- and Mr Twister soft plastics and a Johnson spoon 2800 times to finally achieve my goal.

Never has the idea of REST been so coveted a reward then when I strung that beautiful speckled trout specimen to claim my Texas limit. But as Gary made his #2812th cast, he finally hooked a keeper speck, and as far as I know is still counting casts to achieve his final tally of ten. As for me, well, I took my gnarled and cramped fingers with wrecked, aching arm and crashed, dreaming only of that glaring, curious eye of a cruising Dolphin as it rolled to check me out. DaDum, DaDum DaDum!!!

This Ed Snyder/Outdoors report is sponsored by FishingWorld.com, The Beach Triton, Miss Nancy’s Bait Camp, and www.CrystalBeachLocalNews.com.