Cast and Blast and Blast and Blast....

After a great week in Rockport last week, I headed down to Baffin on Friday for another Cast and Blast trip with Capt. Aubrey Black.

Getting pretty used to the routine by now, I'm feeling a little more comfortable guiding in Baffin and dove hunting as well. My black lab, Kelly, is too. She's a lot of fun to hunt with and just can't get enough of the retrieve, of course.

After a big norther blew through on Friday, we all hoped that the wind would lay for our fishing trip to the Nine Mile Hole on Saturday morning.

Of course, Mother Nature did not cooperate, so we headed out across the Laguna Salada to the South Shoreline of Baffin, around Penascal Point and toward the Land Cut. Protected water was hard to find, but the trip was just a little wooley in a couple of places. After an hour's boat ride, we entered the Nine Mile Hole.

Windy and rainy, the fishing was challenging, but we did manage to catch 10 trout and 2 reds in the few hours we had to fish. Capt. Aubrey Black's group did a little better with 4 reds, two black drum and two trout.

Heading to the boat ramp, we got back around 12:30pm. After a little breather back at the house, we loaded up and headed to the dove field around 3:00pm.

Lush, green pastures and good flights of dove greeted us for the rest of the afternoon, with great comaraderie and lots of dove shot.

Kelly had a great time retrieving for everyone, she even took some time out to smell the butterflies....


The next day, another blast of rain greeted us at the boat ramp, so we all decided to hunt again instead of fishing.

The morning turned out to be beautiful for hunting with another great time in the dove field before calling it a day and going home....

Fly Fishing in Baffin Bay!

Learning and Fly Fishing Baffin Bay

May 20-21, 2009

What an interesting trip I just took to Baffin Bay. Capt. Aubrey Black, (seen in the photo to the left....), takes great pride in his home waters. He has gratiously agreed to "teach" me how to manuever the treacherous rocks of Baffin.

So, on Wednesday and Thursday, we roamed the waters of Baffin Bay with Aubrey trying to help me and my GPS get a handle on the layout of the waters there.

Besides the wonders of that bay system, Aubrey, his wife Karen and I caught so many fish on Wednesday, our arms were tired! We wandered into the shallowest waters of the bay and found unmolested fish, both big reds and trout. Then, Aubrey poled me down a long and beautiful crystal clear shoreline and I got to fly cast to a hundred redfish in 6" of water. I only caught about 10, should have caught at least 20, but it was so much fun, it was hard to get too serious on the fishing!

Then, yesterday we took my Curlew again and found some new water, caught about as many trout as three people could catch in Alazon Bay and marked more rocks on the GPS.

I am really looking forward to fishing more in Baffin, taking some clients down there to feast their eyes on some of the best fly water in Texas, and doing some cast and blast trips with Capt. Aubrey Black, the best guide in Baffin. His forte and claim to fame is trophy trout, (one of his clients, the day BEFORE I got there, caught a 10.4 pound, 31" trout!), but I can tell that his secret love is shallow water sightcasting for redfish and trout! He can even pole a skiff!

Here are a few more photos from our trip.