Wednesday, my wife and mom (she's in town visiting for the baby that we'll have any day) gave me permission to fish a few hours before we went to dinner with some friends. So, I went to the north jetty and looked for some mullet to net. Didn't take too long to catch a handful of 5-8" mullet. In the bucket they go and I started fishing how I know. Everyone here thinks I'm crazy for "freelining" instead of using a trolley rig or slide line as they call them here. And I must be out of my mind for using only one treble hook on 27# or 40# 7strand instead of 3 treble hooks on 90# or more single strand wire! Anyways, I keep on doing my thing, hook the mullet in the tail, let him swim til he's almost dead. Then hook him in the head and snobble til it doesn't look pretty anymore. After about an hour of fishing and seeing several tarpon roll right in front of me I finally felt what I was looking for. As I had the line off the roller of my 302 and rested on my finger, I watched a school of mullet right beside me swimming the rocks and WHAM the line was ripped of my finger and I knew that was one of 2 things. As I freespooled, I looked back where my bait was and saw a big splash. So, my immediate thought was TARPON So, I light him up and hold on as he runs about 50 yards and slows down. Then the fish comes to the surface and starts thrashing around. Surely, this is a tarpon. I've never had a king hit the surface after he started running... So, after that thrash and some good boiling water, he ran another 75ish yards and I turned him. Brought the fish back to the jetty and I was fortunate enough to have a guy offer his help to me. After freespooling and playing the fish away from and around the rocks, we got the king where this guy could grab his tail. SWEET! my first landed Texas king! I'm guessing somewhere in the 15lb range. So, I offer my bait to that guy and head on home to clean it. Here's a few pictures of my Wednesday fish.

So, after cleaning the fish and giving it to some friends of ours I enjoyed a relaxing evening with my wife and mother.

Yesterday my mother-in-law asked if I wanted to go with her to look at a dress she wanted to buy... WHAT?!?! So, needless to say, I chose to go fishing. I got there a little earlier than I had Wednesday and looked around for some mullet again. Found a few and got to fishing. Some old salt kept explaining to me about how many kings he caught and expressed all of his knowledge to me as I was getting everything ready. He was nice enough, I just didn't agree with all of his angling methods (3 large treble hooks in a palm sized bait was my first clue). So, I hooked up my second bait of the day and threw him out. He didn't seem to want to stay in front of me, so I dragged him back towards me some and contemplated hooking him in the head so I could control my bait location a little better since I had seen even more tarpon rolling than the other day. When I got my mullet close to the rocks, I let it sit for a second just to take a look and dang, it looked pretty right there up top, half dead, just strong enough to flick around on top making plenty of commotion, and not straying away from me. Since this is the area where I had seen the tarpon rolling, I left him right there, knowing that the way this bait was acting would produce a strike. I bet it was about 45 seconds later a big brownish green rocket appeared and my mullet was GONE. So, I lit his wick with my 9' spinning rod (foreign to Texas anglers) and let him run. Now, my same old salty pal that wasn't humble started to explain to me how to fight the fish. After a while I finally had to politely say "I appreciate your help, but I've fought one or two before, so let's see if I can't get this done just like I'm trying." He was kind enough to just stay by my side and watch me instead of grabbing my rod and trying to guide me around his slide line rod. After a strong second run (probably around 150 yards) I went to work bringing my fish to the rocks. With the help of this old guy that I had been talking to, we got the fish up on the rocks and subdued. I estimated the fish in the upper 20's, maybe 30 lbs. Here's what this one looked like. What do you guys think it weighed?

Not terribly long, but it was surely a thick king. I think that's where all that fight came from.

Sorry if I got a little long-winded with the story, I just get a little excited about fish!

-------

"History can't be undone, But it can be erased"

http://www.forumpictureprocessor.com/gallery.asp?gallery=876

"History can't be undone, But it can be erased"

Go Noles

Chandler Whelan

i would say 30

         Ben Arnold