Rec and Sports

Fishing time with “Seine Net” – Capt. Paul Braly

My granddad was a great surf fisherman, so it’s no wonder, my Dad, Paul Braly Sr., got the nickname, “Seine Net”. When he is fishing in front of you, that’s what it feels like if you are behind him waiting for leftovers to come your way, and Saturday morning was no different, when I had the pleasure to get to go along fishing with him.

He hardly uses bait anymore when he goes out to catch a “cooler full and you’re done”. Even though he grew up on the Gulf beach, he hardly ever threw any plugs back then except for a speck rig now and then, preferring cut bait instead. Nowadays, I don’t let him get too far out in front since he can clean up the fish in an area, in a quick amount of time.

We navigated safely to our fish hold this Saturday, even though it was really foggy. Fishing with Pink Hologram Devil Eyes with TruLock 1/16 oz jigs, we started wading down the shoreline until we came upon some nice sized trout; they looked to be around 18″-20″. Dad, standing next to me, snagged into a lunker trout. It sucked down that lure, after bumping it three different times and next thing you know we were photographing a 7 pounder before putting him back in the water.

We hit a few more 2 pounders as we were casting our way back up the shore, before the action stopped as an airboat came along and hopped into a lake ahead of us. We headed back to the boat and decided to move on, since that was a pretty good sign that action was over. At our next spot, half the fog lifted since it was about 8:15, so we didn’t have to keep looking for other boats coming up on us.

This time I was the one to get the first strike and I thought I had outdone Dad’s fish for a bit, but discovered I had hooked into a redfish. That was the beginning of a fishing frenzy that netted us 11 more redfish between us with just 20 casts. The redfish wore us out and we hadn?t even waded more than 50 yards.

My brother was coming in from Irving for Christmas and always wants fish for the occasion, so we ended up keeping 6 redfish and 5 trout, even though we released the 7 pound trout, earlier. We don’t keep many fish on our normal fishing trips but my brother was going to get his favorite this year.

The amazing thing is (and I’m not just saying this) we only used one lure each all morning. Try catching 5-6 redfish back to back per person on any other soft plastic and see how many you go thru. We got home around 9:30am just in time for some honey do’s so I guess next time I’ll keep Sr. on the water longer.