Hooked Up: July 2026
Charles Schneider has served God as a pastor throughout his life and is also as hardcore a trout man as you will ever meet. So happy for him!
El Nino for the big win in Baffin Bay. Hope you guys are enjoying these coastal rains as much as we are in the moisture deprived Coastal Bend. Hopefully someone will come up with a properly designed and operated desal plant in this area before our city government builds the debacle they’ve been proposing and crushes the whole local ecosystem. I’m not kidding when I say that our local government is going to end up being the theme for a Netflix series, what with the horrific management of our local water supply system. Another story for another day.
As much as I fight to keep technology out of my old soul and hands, I am sitting here on the back porch of my little cabin on a spoil island in Baffin Bay. It’s raining really good to the southeast and the island I call home seems to be right on the line where the storm clashes with the angle of the sunset over on the Kenedy ranch. Fishing was pretty rough today with all the rumbles and bolts, but we managed a good dinner of grilled shrimp and sides on the stick burner. With this misting rain in my face, a paper pad wouldn’t survive this back porch attempt at writing, but I guess I’m feeling pretty blessed and inspired to be able to sit in such a place after a very long day and have the opportunity and mechanism available to write my thoughts and share them with people that would almost certainly love to be in my shoes. Life is good on the island!
Everything seems to heat up fast in South Texas. That’s surely welcomed when you are talking about trout crashing a lure, but right now I’m speaking of the blistering heat radiating from the sun and its impact on the next three months of fishing. If you are looking to keep the rod bent, I would highly recommend not being the trout snob that I can be and correctly accused of often.
Years of guiding have taught me many things about fishing, and perhaps even more about people. Every couple of days I get fresh faces on the boat with different skill levels and expectations. Quick decisions and adjusting on the fly to fulfill everyone’s idea of a great day on the water is different with every group of anglers.
Take me for example, I am probably my happiest after a summer morning bite to just stand on a sandbar or shoreline and stalk a big trout the way a blue heron waits patiently for a mullet to swim by. If I do not see my quarry or the opportunity never presents itself, I’m perfectly fine with that because I am as much rewarded by the hunt itself as I am when the actual opportunity arises and I see that gray ghost appear out of nowhere. Now, my clients, almost without question, will not have the patience for that style of fishing that I find so rewarding.
For the next few months our days will almost always be spent in areas where deep water lies adjacent to a flat, sandbar, or shoreline. Any of those scenarios that includes loads of bait will almost always produce a great trout bite. Regardless of the four solunar feed periods that happen every 24 hours, that magic hour of the sunrise will give you what you’re looking for. That bite usually plays out by 9:30 or so. However, a solunar feed period stacked on top of it can certainly prolong it.
When folks hire me for a full day of fishing, that’s exactly what they get. Coming to the dock because we caught a limit of three trout per person in the first 30 minutes is not in my vocabulary. So, what do we do the rest of the day after the trout bite plays out? For the other trout snobs like me we find the deepest and coolest structure that has active bait. More often, though, we’ll end up on a skinny flat stalking whatever shows up first – usually redfish.
Now, having said that, we will likely catch a few more trout, and possibly even some long ones that like to hang around the reds, picking up a few scraps here and there that the reds scare up and send their way. Watching fish eat your lure in the shallows during this type of hunt will give you a whole other level of love for the sport if you have not yet experienced it. Now is the time!
Remember the Buffalo! -Capt David Rowsey
