Just for a moment, put yourself in the shoes (OK, OK - fins) of a big speckled trout. You've been relaxing in a mud flat in the East Matagorda bay. Finally, what you've been waiting for comes to pass; the light starts to peek through winter cloud cover, warming the shallows where you've been waiting out the winter.
You start to move, cruising right along the flat until you see it - your favorite spot to feed. The patch of mud with its shell pad is a familiar landmark and you think back happily about years past when you would happily fill up on all you can eat shrimp and finger mullet. Your stomach immediately starts to grumble as you recall these feasts.
You take up your favored feeding spot right where the mud meets the shell bed, watching the water above you for signs of a meal. You spot a delicious looking six inch mullet at two o' clock and get ready to spring into action.
You leap forward, breaking the surface and return to the bottom slowly, mouth filled with your reward.
Almost as soon as you've swallowed the first mullet, you see a slow moving, wobbly mullet a few feet away. Looks wounded, you think as you watch it's brilliant colors sparkle in the water column as it sinks right towards you.
Without hesitation, you spring at the mullet, quickly catching it in your jaws - that was easy, you think; at least until it starts fighting back!
With a violent shake of your head you manage to get the mullet out of your mouth, but you find yourself pulled towards to the surface by a force you can't see - the struggle quickly tires you out, beaten by a Boga in your lip.
"10 pounds!" is yelled by a man bundled up beneath layers of outerwear.
Two other people come up and look you over approvingly. You think you see the flash of a camera.
Then it's over as quickly as it began and you're back in the water, free but utterly exhausted.
As you swim away, you hear a voice in the distance exclaiming "That's a Corky Fat Boy For You." Are they talking about you? You haven't even started to bulk up for the year; but you resolve to look closer at your prey next time around.
If this is how a trophy trout really understood us when we talked, they'd know that in being tricked by the lure, they were making an angler's dream a reality.
When word broke out that James Wallace broke the state's speckled trout record, an infection had spread across the gulf coast; fishermen turned to an arsenal of Corky's, a slow sinking soft bait, when hunting for the trout of their lifetime. Packing the size of a topwater and the wobble of a broken-back, the tempting attraction of a slow retrieved Corky in winter is just flat out effective for trophy specks.
"When James Wallace caught that monster, things really took off for us," reports Paul Brown, founder of B&L Corky. "People were flooding in and bought us out of every Corky we had in no time flat." After all this time, this family owned Houston shop still finds Corky saltwater fishing lures one of their biggest sellers.
Captain Mike McBride, a fishing guide in Port Mansfield is a man who knows Corkys well and uses these lures along with his own one of a kind retrieve to land speckled trout on the lower Texas coast.
"Corkys are worked differently across the coast, but I try to pop the knot off, when I'm working Corky's while trying to keep up with the slack." Contrary to the popular belief of working Corky's "slower than slow", McBride works his soft baits aggressively. "The whole attraction of working an original Corky is unpredictable movements with the irresistible pause," states McBride.
Matagorda trophy trout guide Captain Jesse Arsola tells us that he has a specific technique for working Corkys saltwater fishing lures.
"When trout are aggressive they will nail anything; but when you have to work for them to bite, technique really comes into play."
"I use a counting system nearly every time I work a Corky. Count how long it takes for the Corky to reach the bottom. Vary how many seconds you let the Corky fall before yanking the slack out of the line. Find out which count you are catching your fish on. This gives major insight in knowing which part of the water column the trout are feeding on best."
Captain John Havens, a tournament angler from Clear Lake, Texas favors chartreuse, white, and gold sided Corky Devil and a rather routine retrieve.
"Make sure to stay in contact with the lure at all times to feel the most subtle of bites." When working a Corky Devil, Havens retrieves with a lift of the rod with one or two twitches before allowing the lure to fall.
You start to move, cruising right along the flat until you see it - your favorite spot to feed. The patch of mud with its shell pad is a familiar landmark and you think back happily about years past when you would happily fill up on all you can eat shrimp and finger mullet. Your stomach immediately starts to grumble as you recall these feasts.
You take up your favored feeding spot right where the mud meets the shell bed, watching the water above you for signs of a meal. You spot a delicious looking six inch mullet at two o' clock and get ready to spring into action.
You leap forward, breaking the surface and return to the bottom slowly, mouth filled with your reward.
Almost as soon as you've swallowed the first mullet, you see a slow moving, wobbly mullet a few feet away. Looks wounded, you think as you watch it's brilliant colors sparkle in the water column as it sinks right towards you.
Without hesitation, you spring at the mullet, quickly catching it in your jaws - that was easy, you think; at least until it starts fighting back!
With a violent shake of your head you manage to get the mullet out of your mouth, but you find yourself pulled towards to the surface by a force you can't see - the struggle quickly tires you out, beaten by a Boga in your lip.
"10 pounds!" is yelled by a man bundled up beneath layers of outerwear.
Two other people come up and look you over approvingly. You think you see the flash of a camera.
Then it's over as quickly as it began and you're back in the water, free but utterly exhausted.
As you swim away, you hear a voice in the distance exclaiming "That's a Corky Fat Boy For You." Are they talking about you? You haven't even started to bulk up for the year; but you resolve to look closer at your prey next time around.
If this is how a trophy trout really understood us when we talked, they'd know that in being tricked by the lure, they were making an angler's dream a reality.
When word broke out that James Wallace broke the state's speckled trout record, an infection had spread across the gulf coast; fishermen turned to an arsenal of Corky's, a slow sinking soft bait, when hunting for the trout of their lifetime. Packing the size of a topwater and the wobble of a broken-back, the tempting attraction of a slow retrieved Corky in winter is just flat out effective for trophy specks.
"When James Wallace caught that monster, things really took off for us," reports Paul Brown, founder of B&L Corky. "People were flooding in and bought us out of every Corky we had in no time flat." After all this time, this family owned Houston shop still finds Corky saltwater fishing lures one of their biggest sellers.
Captain Mike McBride, a fishing guide in Port Mansfield is a man who knows Corkys well and uses these lures along with his own one of a kind retrieve to land speckled trout on the lower Texas coast.
"Corkys are worked differently across the coast, but I try to pop the knot off, when I'm working Corky's while trying to keep up with the slack." Contrary to the popular belief of working Corky's "slower than slow", McBride works his soft baits aggressively. "The whole attraction of working an original Corky is unpredictable movements with the irresistible pause," states McBride.
Matagorda trophy trout guide Captain Jesse Arsola tells us that he has a specific technique for working Corkys saltwater fishing lures.
"When trout are aggressive they will nail anything; but when you have to work for them to bite, technique really comes into play."
"I use a counting system nearly every time I work a Corky. Count how long it takes for the Corky to reach the bottom. Vary how many seconds you let the Corky fall before yanking the slack out of the line. Find out which count you are catching your fish on. This gives major insight in knowing which part of the water column the trout are feeding on best."
Captain John Havens, a tournament angler from Clear Lake, Texas favors chartreuse, white, and gold sided Corky Devil and a rather routine retrieve.
"Make sure to stay in contact with the lure at all times to feel the most subtle of bites." When working a Corky Devil, Havens retrieves with a lift of the rod with one or two twitches before allowing the lure to fall.
About the Author:
Captain Kyle Tomek is a Texas fishing guide who submits featured fishing reports to Texas FishCast. You can submit fishing reports through your Facebook account to Texas FishCast. You can share pictures and videos and tag your fishing buddies for everyone to see.
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