Fishing with Paxton
5-14-23 FISHING WITH PAXTON AT GALVESTON BAY
I drove to Galveston to meet up with my buddy Paxton, he was my first fishing partner on the Montgomery Fishing team. The last time I saw him was at the MISD fishing tournament on Lake Conroe and we were both captains for different teams. I look forward to getting together to fish and catch up.
It was raining all day, but we wanted to fish. We went fishing in Paxton’s boat in Galveston Bay and we caught a couple of small trout, catfish and croaker. At the time we were using a popping cork with shrimp. We threw everything back, but kept the croaker to use for bait.
It was pouring rain and we stopped to fish a ship wreck in 20 feet of water. We huddled under an umbrella to keep from getting so wet. The rain kept coming and dumped on us the entire time we were fishing. It was ok, we still had a great time out on the water doing what we love to do, FISH of course! At the end of the day, we caught 2 bull reds and 2 catfish. THROW IT OUT, POP IT IN, FISH ON!!!
5-21-23 FISHING MATAGORDA – NATURE BAY PARK AND SAN LUIS PASS
Paxton and I wanted to go fishing offshore. My friend, Connor said he would catch us some bait. The night before we met up with him to pickup 65 pounds of chum and bait for the next day. Wow, he caught all that bait on 3 throws with a cast net.
The next morning, we left out of Freeport and headed to Matagorda to hit the oil rigs. We decided to go there because there are a lot of rigs in that area and they are closer in. We went out at Matagorda in Paxton’s 21 ft bay boat and the offshore buoy said the swells were 1 ft, so we knew we were good.
Eight miles out, we arrived at the first rig. Immediately we started freelining big live shad past the oil rigs. Freelining is a method of fishing that presents the bait as natural as possible. On my second throw I hooked up something big, my pole was bending and the fish was diving back and forth, swimming up and down, and darting in and out. I could see the beautiful bright yellow and silver and knew I had a Jack on the line. As I reeled him in closer, all of a sudden, the leader snapped right at the boat. It was a BIG 30-pound Jack Crevalle. The next fish we hooked up was a big stingray and he broke us off at the rig. Fishing 8-10 miles out we caught plenty different small sharks, several were 3 ft Atlantic sharp nose sharks. About an hour later I caught a huge redfish and then the seas started to pick up, swells were 3-5 ft. We fished for a couple more hours and decided to head in and trailer the boat to San Luis Pass.
Connor met Paxton and I at the boat ramp to fish with us. We caught a keeper trout and redfish, but released them back. Fishing wasn’t really good. We decided to call an audible and fish the beach front from the boat. Sitting there patiently, we waited for the fish to come up. They started schooling on the bait. As soon as the bait started jumping is when the redfish moved in. We chased the schools down and were throwing big live mullet freelining and ended up hooking two more bull reds 36-38 inches. Connor caught a bull red on a big top water plug used for catching tuna. It was a great day. We all had fun chasing the schools of bait and fished until dark. THROW IT OUT, POP IT IN, FISH ON!!!
