Redfish warm up for hotter months
BRAUNIG LAKE — Fishing guide Manny Martinez was excited looking at the large yellow and orange balls of baitfish and red drum on his Lowrance Fish Finder that stretched a horizontal line across the screen showing an almost solid mass of fish at a depth of 10 to 32 feet.
“There are so many shad and tilapia and schools of 300 to 500 reds. It hasn’t been like this since 1996,” he said while using four downriggers to troll 2½ to 3 miles per hour around Braunig Lake in mid-december.
“I slaughtered them through October, November and early December,” he added.
But this was a cloudy day in mid-december with the water temperature at 65 degrees, and reds usually start getting active feeding around 72 degrees.
Only one line popped off the downrigger — no hookups. We returned to Braunig again on another cool, cloudy day in late February. The fish finder still was showing non-stop masses of baitfish and reds.
Still only one pop-off.
We tried casting topwaters and spoons.
I had two weak hits and no bites before we called it quits again.
Just like the old saying that you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink, you can lead an angler to a veritable barrel full of fish, but you can’t make them bite.
“Even though you can have all the technology — $12,000 to $15,000 worth of Lowrance and a side scanner — and you can see them, they can be finicky,” Martinez said. “A lot of times on cloudy days, these fish love gold plastics, gold spoons, different shapes.
“But we threw the whole tackle box at them. Sometimes they just won’t bite.”
His customers understand it’s called fishing and not catching. When that happens, he will offer a gift certificate or knock something
off for the next trip.
The third time, though — at nearby Calaveras Lake — was the charm. It was a sunny day in early March and, although the water temperature still was only 65 degrees, it wasn’t long before one of the lines zipped off the downrigger and the reel’s drag began running out.
After several minutes or retrieving only to have the drag to release more line again and again, a whopper surfaced and splashed behind the boat — a 31¼ -inch red.
It gulped a Blue Moon, a softplastic lure with a chartreuse tail, from Down South Lures in 14 feet of water near the North Road Bed between the power plant and the power lines. Not long after, a 24-incher joined us on the boat.
“This is one of the best winters I’ve ever had,” Martinez said. “When the lakes heat up more in late March and April, it will be booming through next winter.
“I usually use Hogie’s, Rat-ltraps and gold and silver spoons, but I caught almost every red on plastics this winter.”
He credits the explosive population of gizzard shad and tilapia and the Texas Parks & Wildlife Department’s aggressive stocking program for producing the high numbers of reds.
Redfish, or red drum, is a saltwater species that also thrives in freshwater lakes, such as Braunig and Calaveras — the only two in Texas that are stocked by TPWD.
The department stopped stocking reds at Lake Fairfield State Park east of Waco after 2011.
TPWD began stocking reds at Calaveras in 1984. Since 2010, TPWD has stocked more than 600,000 fingerlings almost every year at Calaveras, with 693,371 in 2019, 610,282 in 2017 and 667,933 in 2016.
At Braunig, TPWD began stocking reds in 1986 and has stocked more than 250,000 almost every year since 2006. In 2019, 352,047 fingerlings were released with 278,792 in 2017 and 282,265 in 2016.
The daily bag limit is three with a minimum length of 20 inches and no maximum length unlike saltwater reds, which top out at 28 inches.
In as little as 2½ years, they grow to keeper size ranging from 21 to 23 inches. Around age 6 or 7, they can top 30 inches.
“It doesn’t take that long at all with all the baitfish. They grow fast,” Martinez said. “It’s an allyou-can-eat buffet.”
Last month’s deep freeze did not hurt the reds because Braunig and Calaveras are cooling lakes for CPS Energy’s power plants, which expel hot water and keep the temperature higher than it normally would be.
“After the freeze, the front of Braunig was 65 degrees and Calaveras was 72-75 in the back as compared to Choke Canyon Reservoir, which was 48 or 49 degrees,” Martinez said.
So far, the COVID-19 pandemic is still boosting business with people wanting to get outdoors and do something, except for when things were shut down in April.
He keeps hand sanitizer on board for clients and sprays down the boat with Lysol after every trip.
“People are real conscious of their health and safety and respectful of others. Except for one guy,” Martinez said. “I used to take people’s temperatures before they got on the boat.
“One man in a group had a temperature of 104 degrees. I canceled the trip.”