July is one of the hottest months of the year and also hot for some shallow water wade fishing on the coast.  I am thankful for the opportunity to have a career that allows me time off  during the summer so I can spend some quality time with the family and get outdoors with good friends.  Typically, duirng the hot summer months we like to fish very early in the am or late in the afternoon to avoid the heat of the day, but at our new favorite spot the Redfish action is hot right smack at noon and if your brave enough to fight the heat you can hit some Red hot shallow water action.

We do 90% of our wadefishing on the Bay side of Mustang Island with a nice view of the Corpus skyline in the background and the JFK bridge just south of our wade location.  There is a magical endless flat of grass, potholes and one long sand bar that holds fish year round.  All i could think about was last year's trip in july when I stubled upon this never ending sand bar and threw my fast cast in knee deep water to slam my limit of Reds in a matter of an hour.  I knew that returning to that same sand bar was holding a promise that I might have the same luck once again.

My fishing buddy and brother in law love to fish on top with a popping cork and live shrimp, but I prefer to fish light takle on the bottum for Reds with mullet, crab or just dead shrimp.  That day we got a late start around 10am but knew that we were in no hurry to arrive at the fishing spot because we have had recent reports that the Reds were not bitting untlil around noon, we were diapointed to find no live shrimp at the bait stands and only dead shrimp as an option for bait.  All I could think about was heading to the sand bar in hopes of slamming some shallow water Reds.

We arrived to find several boats and dozens of waders already 500 yards off the shore fishing hard, but only two anglers with a Kayak fishing my favorite sand bar, the plan was to start walking slowly towrds the sand bar and hopefully the anglers would work there way out of the way or leave completely, possibly catching a few fish in between.  But, the potholes were empty only a few small hardheads, pearch and one trout would hit our baits.  As we got closer to the sand bar I noticed that we were busting alot of bait fish and some big swirls were popping up and we knew those were possibly Reds or Specks.  As luck would hae the two anglers packed up and left the sand bar, i noticed they were not fishing the bar properly, instead of fishing parralel to the bar they were fishing perpendicular and not covering the bar effeciently. 

On my first cast off the magical sand bar I slammed a nice Red, the fight felt so good since I had not had this feeling in almost a year, i savored every moment and head shake from that nice Red.  I continued to work the bar west to east and a few minutes later I slammed my second red, almost the spitting image of the 1st one I reeled in, once again I took in every second of that fight and took my time bringing him in.  Finally, after moving east about 100 yards I slammed my 3rd and final Red of the afternoon right smack in the middle of the day.  I am proud to say that I released all 3 Reds, i am very much a conservationist and believe in letting them grow to their full potential.  I have two sons and want to be able to bring them to the same spot years from now and hopefully have the same success that I did.  I like to only harvest Reds in the 27 to 28 inch size and even though 21 inches is legal to bring home, I would rather let them grow so one day in the future maybe I can slamm a bigger fish!!!

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