Here is another great post from Jim Jacobus.
A Day on the Water With Jay Watkins!
“A Lifetime of Lessons Learned”
As I shared in my last post … I have been fishing the Texas gulf coast for a while now. From Galveston’s West Bay all of the way to Port Mansfield and the waters south of there. I have been fortunate to fish with some of the best of the best guides along that coast as well. With all due respect to Dave Posey, Dan Poffenberger and others, I would have to say that our day on the water with jay Watkins was something special!
Not that Jay was any more fun or knowledgeable than the others but because he opened up a whole new world of fishing to us! Up until now, the majority of my fishing has been done from the boat, with bait. It was just last summer that we made the move from the comfort and security of fishing with live bait to chunking artificials. Add to that the purchase of a new Majek Illusion that could take us places we had never been before and we were primed for a whole new world of opportunities. Jay opened those doors as we booked him for our first ever saltwater wadefishing trip!
Having bought all of the prerequisite wadefishing equipment (a lot of which was a waste of money I learned after fishing with jay) we met Jay at the launch at Goose Island and headed out for our adventure and lesson #1 began immediately as he navigated his way to our fishing spot almost 100% by GPS! Because it was dark? Nope! Because of the dense fog we encountered on the late December morning. Watching Jay use his Garmin to navigate the soup was a good lesson for me as we have the same GPS and encounter the same stuff from time to time.
Our first spot was a series of shell reefs with a number of deeper guts that held the promise of trout Jay had been on for a few weeks. We eased in to the spot where we would anchor up and pile out of the boat (I saw on the GPS he had been here a number of times before!) to catch our first fish of the day! Lesson #2 began immediately as we didn’t anchor up nor did we pile out of the boat. Why? Not enough bait fish moving and flipping about for Mr. Watkins. To him, it didn’t look good. To me, it looked like a lot of the water I had fished on a number of occasions. Could there have been fish there? Maybe. Were there a lot of fish there? Probably not based on Jay’s observations so we moved on!
A short run through the soup put us on a shoreline with entrances and drains to limitless back lakes and sloughs that ran for miles. As we slowly ran down the shoreline looking for signs that fish were present I learned Lesson #3! Jay’s head looked like it was on a swivel or like one of those “bobble head” dolls you get at the Astros games! He looked left toward the shoreline, ahead to the water in front of us, to the right at the water off shore and then back through the same progression over and over again. His vision and awareness of the water we were in was amazing. He seemed to see every little nuance of every inch of the acres of water around us and then … there they were! A pod of redfish “pushing water” right up against the shoreline.
Pile out, spread out, move in on ‘em and Lesson #4 took place. After about 20 minutes with nothing but one hook up on a little “rat red” and we were back in the boat looking for better water. One of the biggest mistakes I make is hanging around water (promising and not so promising) for way too long instead of looking elsewhere. Not Jay! It was off to something that held greater potential for his taste! So … off we went!
This time we hit a mid bay reef and with the tide being low it was easy to spot. We anchored off the edge of the reef and piled out! Walking down one side of the reef we were casting across the top of it and off into the deep water on the other side. Nothing so far but Jay was quickly moving for the end of the reef and some bait he saw flipping. Lesson #5 (and it isn’t even 9am yet!) came from what he called “local knowledge” that the end of this particular reef was more productive than the middle of it! And of course … they were there! For the next 45 minutes we caught trout after trout until we had loaded our stringers with ½ limits!
Lesson #6 … we could have easily put 10 fish apiece in the boat from that one spot but Jay believes, and we concur, that doing so isn’t being a good steward of the resource! If you feel differently I am not going to argue with you because it is your legal right to take a full limit with you if you can. For us, it was take enough for a good meal or two and move on!
There were many more lessons to be learned that day but I will save those for another post. To say the least, we had a great time and I learned a lot that has opened up a lot of new possibilities for me and my family to enjoy what Mother Nature has to offer. I loved the fishing (and catching), I loved the time with Jay and I loved being outdoors but most of all I loved the learning! I have long believed, and shared with audiences worldwide the following … “as long as we are learning, we are living. The moment we stop learning is the moment we start to die”! Boy, did I feel alive that day! Thanks Jay!
A Day on the Water With Jay Watkins!
“A Lifetime of Lessons Learned”
As I shared in my last post … I have been fishing the Texas gulf coast for a while now. From Galveston’s West Bay all of the way to Port Mansfield and the waters south of there. I have been fortunate to fish with some of the best of the best guides along that coast as well. With all due respect to Dave Posey, Dan Poffenberger and others, I would have to say that our day on the water with jay Watkins was something special!
Not that Jay was any more fun or knowledgeable than the others but because he opened up a whole new world of fishing to us! Up until now, the majority of my fishing has been done from the boat, with bait. It was just last summer that we made the move from the comfort and security of fishing with live bait to chunking artificials. Add to that the purchase of a new Majek Illusion that could take us places we had never been before and we were primed for a whole new world of opportunities. Jay opened those doors as we booked him for our first ever saltwater wadefishing trip!
Having bought all of the prerequisite wadefishing equipment (a lot of which was a waste of money I learned after fishing with jay) we met Jay at the launch at Goose Island and headed out for our adventure and lesson #1 began immediately as he navigated his way to our fishing spot almost 100% by GPS! Because it was dark? Nope! Because of the dense fog we encountered on the late December morning. Watching Jay use his Garmin to navigate the soup was a good lesson for me as we have the same GPS and encounter the same stuff from time to time.
Our first spot was a series of shell reefs with a number of deeper guts that held the promise of trout Jay had been on for a few weeks. We eased in to the spot where we would anchor up and pile out of the boat (I saw on the GPS he had been here a number of times before!) to catch our first fish of the day! Lesson #2 began immediately as we didn’t anchor up nor did we pile out of the boat. Why? Not enough bait fish moving and flipping about for Mr. Watkins. To him, it didn’t look good. To me, it looked like a lot of the water I had fished on a number of occasions. Could there have been fish there? Maybe. Were there a lot of fish there? Probably not based on Jay’s observations so we moved on!
A short run through the soup put us on a shoreline with entrances and drains to limitless back lakes and sloughs that ran for miles. As we slowly ran down the shoreline looking for signs that fish were present I learned Lesson #3! Jay’s head looked like it was on a swivel or like one of those “bobble head” dolls you get at the Astros games! He looked left toward the shoreline, ahead to the water in front of us, to the right at the water off shore and then back through the same progression over and over again. His vision and awareness of the water we were in was amazing. He seemed to see every little nuance of every inch of the acres of water around us and then … there they were! A pod of redfish “pushing water” right up against the shoreline.
Pile out, spread out, move in on ‘em and Lesson #4 took place. After about 20 minutes with nothing but one hook up on a little “rat red” and we were back in the boat looking for better water. One of the biggest mistakes I make is hanging around water (promising and not so promising) for way too long instead of looking elsewhere. Not Jay! It was off to something that held greater potential for his taste! So … off we went!
This time we hit a mid bay reef and with the tide being low it was easy to spot. We anchored off the edge of the reef and piled out! Walking down one side of the reef we were casting across the top of it and off into the deep water on the other side. Nothing so far but Jay was quickly moving for the end of the reef and some bait he saw flipping. Lesson #5 (and it isn’t even 9am yet!) came from what he called “local knowledge” that the end of this particular reef was more productive than the middle of it! And of course … they were there! For the next 45 minutes we caught trout after trout until we had loaded our stringers with ½ limits!
Lesson #6 … we could have easily put 10 fish apiece in the boat from that one spot but Jay believes, and we concur, that doing so isn’t being a good steward of the resource! If you feel differently I am not going to argue with you because it is your legal right to take a full limit with you if you can. For us, it was take enough for a good meal or two and move on!
There were many more lessons to be learned that day but I will save those for another post. To say the least, we had a great time and I learned a lot that has opened up a lot of new possibilities for me and my family to enjoy what Mother Nature has to offer. I loved the fishing (and catching), I loved the time with Jay and I loved being outdoors but most of all I loved the learning! I have long believed, and shared with audiences worldwide the following … “as long as we are learning, we are living. The moment we stop learning is the moment we start to die”! Boy, did I feel alive that day! Thanks Jay!
posted by Kontiki at 5:11 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home