Friday, June 15, 2012

Newbegun Creek in a nor'easter

The weekend weather report was for hard winds from the northeast, so a trip to the beach was out.  I decided to launch my kayak and fish one of the local creeks that I recently fished for the first time.  I had pretty good luck on that trip, so I was hopeful that today would be even better, now that I knew a little something about the fishy spots.

 While I was rigging up my kayak I realized that I had a single small spinnerbait rig (Beetle Spin) on the small rod.  I had left my small spinnerbait box in the garage.  This was not good, because that's the only rod I caught anything on last time.  I elected to launch and fish it until I lost it.  My backup plan was to fish the 8 wt. fly rod using a small green/white Clouser minnow that I'd had some success with recently on White and Yellow Perch.

At about 8:45, I launched straight into a 15-20 MPH northeast wind and paddled away from the shore and around the end of the dock.  After I cleared the dock I turned sideways to the swell and paddled like hell to get into the lee of the point on the opposite side of the mouth of the creek.  While taking a couple of waves over the side of the kayak, I realized that I had left my stakeout pole in the truck.  While it would be an inconvenience, it wasn't a show-stopper because I had an anchor and a drift chute.

Upon reaching the opposite side of the creek and tucking in away from the wind, I was surprised that my first catch was a respectable Croaker.  Quite a surprise to find this fish that I associate with the ocean in this little creek.  I boated the Croaker, but unfortunately he took the tail off of the curlytail grub.  Not a problem, I soon found, as the White Perch were more than happy to attack what was left.

I swapped the grub for a self-tied bucktail on the spinner frame and picked up this small Striped Bass.  Like the two caught in this creek last month, it measured about 10".


Further along the shoreline I kept catching more White Perch.  It's pretty easy to locate them as the bust the top of the water while feeding on minnows.  A little farther up the creek and I hooked a species that I've been chasing locally without much success.  Too bad this little guy was only 8" long, but at least it was a Red Drum.  The fish had an interesting pattern of spots, too.


 

I worked my way up the creek and found this fat little 13" Largemouth Bass hanging out around some old pilings.  He didn't put up much of a fight.


Shortly after this I got hung in a branch around a duck blind and watched my spinnerbait break off just before I was able to reach it.  That was the end of the catching.  The rest of the trip was flailing in vain with the fly rod and reeling in a Redfish Magic while White Perch pecked, and pecked, and pecked.

The next couple of shots are landscape photos.  The first is smoke from a wheat field fire.  I was surprised that they burnt the field with the wind blowing as strong as it was today.


The final photo is a shot I took from shore after I landed in my friends' yard.  The wind picked up about 2 PM and was gusting up to 30 MPH when I made the downwind run across the creek at about 4:30.  The hairiest part was navigating through the areas in the creek that are shoaled up.  Those waves coming in from the river break in those spots.  I was working hard to avoid them on the way back.


Until next time, go fishing!