Delta Combo Saves the Day

I had a Jack Crevalle trip planned this past weekend but the Gulf of Mexico kept acting up. High water, wind, rain, clouds. When the guide calls to cancel, you know it’s not good. I have to say though, I really like having a guide that will just call a bad day a bad day so you can save resources to try again another day. So, being Labor Day weekend the dove season was opening on Saturday and I just happened to know that the river was in a fish-able state with clear water and a good current coming through the dike. So my son Chris and I decided to go out to the river and try for whatever might take a streamer and then look for some doves in the PM.

The white bass and stripes were not present but we found gar stacked up in the notch. When you find gar with their nose into the rocks or hanging in the the current its almost certain they will bite. The stagnant water gar that you see coming up to gulp air just make you crazy trying to cast to them when they roll, and they rarely take a fly. These fish were easy. See Chris below.

Chris and I took turns on the “on deck” rock. We would hook up and step back to fight the fish and let the other take over the “casting deck” rock. We caught quite a few big gar, so many we didn’t count. We caught short-nose, long-nose and alligator gar. I tried to get a take on video but didn’t manage it. In the video below you can see what we were doing though, unfortunately the curse of the camera took over and Chris hung a rock instead of a gar.

The fish gave us some great fights, tail walking and skittering like sailfish. We caught them between 6 and 15 lbs. We had great fun.

Here’s another video with a “missed” take:

So now hurricane Gordon is in the Gulf and my guide got a cancellation and gave me a call. So if the weather allows, Chris and I can still get our Jack Crevalle trip in. The hurricane could be a bane or a blessing. The surge of the hurricane can bring in fish which would be a good thing. But if “Gordy” decides to linger, the weather will push us out of the open cancellation date. So we have our fingers crossed.

The dove hunt didn’t go well. We did manage to call some out of the woods and brought down four. We’ll save them up for when we bag some more. Check back for “Jacks are Wild”.