# Best trip ever



## Sunbeam (Feb 24, 2009)

Just thinking. Now that Mother Nature has cut me down to size and I no longer fish, (excluding a few bluegill from my lake) I reminisce a lot for the the good old days.
I was just thinking what was the best single day fishing trip that I can remember.
What was the circumstance, the place, with whom and what was the catch.
So I ask you 2coolers the same. One single day trip. What was your best?

I'll start by saying of the thousands of days I have fished around the world I still remember my first day on Lake Rotorua on the north Island of New Zealand.
I was "harling", the Kiwi term for trolling slowly stern first into the wind. It is about a slow as you could keep a boat moving in a straight line. No trolling motors in the country in 1983.
Used a medium fly rod with a floating line. A ten foot 4 pound leader and a single barbless hook with a white hair streamer.
I had borrowed two rigs from the camp owner. I had Aida my Indonesian movie star GF with me.
We rented a 14 foot boat with a 91/2 Evinrude.
We went out slowly until we found where the sand bottom suddenly dropped off to deep water as instructed.
We played out all of the fly line plus 10 to 15 yards of backing.
Honestly I was flying blind and hope to catch at least one keeper trout. (rainbow that was over 18 inches)
We just got started when my rod suddenly tried to get out of the boat . As I grabbed the rod I saw Aida holding her rod up and bent double. Two trout were a long way out over the bow doing back flips. Man could that fish pull. 
I held my rod up and started coaching Aida. She had fished in the Sunda Straits with me a lot so she knew the drill but that single action fly reel was her first experience with such a contraption.
Eventually we get her fish to the boat and netted.
Then I started on mine. It had all the backing plus the 90 ft fly line off the reel. Eventually I got it in the net. We measured both fish at 23 inches. We kept one for our Kiwi tea tree smoker. So I had fulfilled the goal, Little did I know the day had just started. Everytime we got the lines out and harled across the drop off we got a double hook up. And those first fish turned out to be some of the smallest. We lost count at about thirty fish when we came in for lunch. I was so amazed that I drove to the local tackle shop and spent about $700 kiwi dollars on rods, reels and terminal tackle.
We went back out the evening and got another twenty fish.
We stayed in NZ for three weeks in December, their early spring. Left on Christmas eve.
Fished every major lake on the north island. Easily caught and released 500 trout. I did not keep over the two fish per person one day limit. The one time was when we fished with my diving super's brother. He was the local game warden in his part time job. He had a big family and wanted a big bunch of fish. So if the game warden bends the rules who am I to argue.
I went back three years in a row but never topped that first day.


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## bigfost (Oct 11, 2004)

It's impossible for me to pick one absolutely best trip, but a surf trip the legendary Shadslinger and I had a few years ago will always be among the best.

He had beat me to the beach by about an hour, and when I drove up, he and a casual bystander had already caught two or three bull reds. After I got baits in the water, Loy and I proceeded to catch one red after another all day. At one point, I had to go over and catch one of his fish because his hand had cramped into a claw and he couldn't handle the rod. I started with four rods and pretty quickly put up all but one because I couldn't keep up with more. By the time we'd both had enough, we had each caught about 20 reds each and were bone tired.

He had an interesting experience when he stopped at the store in Sabine Pass on the way home, but hopefully he'll tell that story.


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## shadslinger (Aug 21, 2005)

Lol! I would put that trip as the best surf fishing I ever had.
The bull reds would not stop, all of them in the 38â€ to 43â€ range and fighting hard.
Having to call Bigfost over to uncurl my hand was bad enough Iâ€™ll leave the other story untold.
It was a heck of day battling bull reds Iâ€™ll never forget it.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


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## tbone2374 (Feb 27, 2010)

Eased over to an unmentioned lake, close to The Woodlands, early, early, one morning, for some topwater action. The heat of summer... July 4th! Over to the back side of the lake, where heavy vegetation, 4 or 5 foot, down, left only a few openings in the mat. Third cast, and a big'un took my Torpedo, down with an inhale, and no splash.Fought him and 5 lbs. of grass, back to the shoreline. 9.8 PB â€¦ mounted on the wall!


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## Captn C (May 21, 2004)

Wow...the best...I could do a top 5 but not sure which one would best number one.

I had a good customer with three of his family out offshore in December...late 1990's...fishing was slow that day...the Red Snapper limit was 5 I think. Lane and Beeline was 10 I think. 

We were fishing in 93 feet of water near a rig...close but not really fishing the rig. When I found the bite...it was one big time. We had our limit of Red Snapper and to be honest was guesstamating how many we had in the box. 

When we got back to our dock...we had 20 Red Snapper and 96 Lane Snapper up to 5lbs! There a few triggerfish and kingfish in thr photo too. We nearly ran out of dock to take the picture!


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## edjman (Aug 13, 2013)

For me it’s a tie between a day in the sand three years ago catching bull reds from sunrise to sunset landing about 30 between the two of us and an afternoon with the ducktracker reaper catching about 60 white bass in the 18+ in. range along with a few black bass and goo. Those big whites are curiously strong fighters... I caught them for weeks but nothing beat that day
GOOD TIMES


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## tommy261 (May 3, 2006)

*Best day*

Had one of my best days solo...ended up with 5 bass at 37.15lbs....probably never beat it, but I am gonna give it h*ll.


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## Captn C (May 21, 2004)

One more of my top 5; we moved to Texas from the mount Virginia in 1974 and shortly after moving to Houston went to Padre Island to try some fishings. 

We had our Zebco 33's and 6 foot spinning rods...yes dad liked that style handle over the traditional pistol grip. We also had...no clue what we were doing! 

Dad and I waded out into a near slick calm clear green surf throwing silver soons. We started catching these long purple-ish, black spotted fish with yellow in their mouth. 

We had caught rainbows up into the mid 20" class all the time in a river in Virginia but these things were HUGE compared to the Rainbow Trout we had caught back home. 

A park ranger pulled up in a truck and watched my dad land the biggest one he caught. He commented on his PA..."MAN! That's a big fish!" He was the one who clued us in on the fact that we were catching monster Speckled Trout! 

We never measured the three largest (I really wish we had) but in the pictures these trout had heads as long as our head. From the tip of the lip to the back of the gill plate was the same length as a human head! 

Years later after we found out more about bay fishing, we figured out dad and I had caught our once in a life time Speckled Trout that first day fishing the surf! We figured the two largest were 30+" with one more that most likely was just under 30". 

Talk about a blind hog finding an acorn!


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## tommy261 (May 3, 2006)

*On the fly*

My other....9.23lber on my flyrod which got the waterboy flyrod record


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## fishinganimal (Mar 30, 2006)

It was 1981 in Eagle Valley Reservoir Nevada with my brother and cousins. Late December we set up camp tent camping. Got there late and it was cold. Could not hardy sleep from the normal excitement of what tomorrow holds. Got up at 2AM and got the fire going. At daylight got the 14' John down to the water. Three adults and my 5yr old cousin. Throwing Cast Masters with light spinning gear catching Trout just about every cast. Competition to see who could catch the most in a row. Couldn't stop fishing for a second or the eyes would freeze up. Little cousin got frustrated and while pouting with lure dangling over the edge of the boat managed to catch the biggest Trout of the day. Fresh Trout over the fire that afternoon. Rinse and repeat the following day. Unreal fishery. Spot lighted some of the biggest JackRabbits you have ever seen that night.


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## dbullard1 (Jun 29, 2016)

Way to many to choose. Maybe Lake Houston the winter after my dad passed away drifting by my self with six rods at and I catch my biggest Blue Cat to date 51.5lbs. On dads rod and reel. Yeah I still tear up. 
Could be numbers of others lots of great trips with family and friends not always catching but always treasured.


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## photofishin (Aug 7, 2009)

I grew up in Ohio and my family spent many a summer at Miller Lake on the Bruce Peninsula between Lake Huron and Georgian Bay (Ontario CA). In 1998 I was back living in Ohio and had just purchased a new Nitro 18ft bassboat. I called my uncle Bob to see if I could find out about cabin rentals at Miller Lake and he invited me to go with him and my uncle Tom (now passed). We dragged my boat up there and to my knowledge, it was the first bassboat that lake had ever seen. (also first depth finder) We caught smallmouth bass on topwaters in the morning and crawfish colored crank baits during the day, while also catching walleye and pike. We averaged 75-100 smallmouth a piece per day that averaged 2-5lbs. One of the days we took my boat to a series of lakes called Boat Lake. It didn't have a real ramp...just a slanted bank. It was the first motorized both ever on that lake. We caught pike all day long on buzzbaits. This still rates as one of the best fishing weeks of my life.


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## 82dodge (Jun 21, 2016)

In 1974 I spent the summer as a fishing guide in western Alaska. Plenty of unbelievable fishing days. There were days I just got wore out from catching so many fish. The owners had recently bought the lodge and wanted to know more about what was in the area. For a couple of days the float plane pilot and I roamed the area in the lodge's Cessna 185 on floats. We went to many of the various lakes (some weren't even named) and rivers, landed and wrote down what we caught. Water was so clear in many of the rivers you could see the king salmon migrating up from the air.


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## GT11 (Jan 1, 2013)

Just like most of you guys, I've had days were you could do no wrong on the water but there is one that I consider the best and it was with my dad.

A little back story, dad grew up when things were tough and catching or killing game was the difference between eating or not sometimes. If the fish are biting, he wants to keep everything and freeze what he can't eat for hard times. He has done well in his life but still falls back on that old mentality.

I took him to big lake the day after Christmas a couple years back and we planned to fish that afternoon and the next morning. We arrived around two and found the water ripping out of the marsh into salt ditch. We pulled into a cut and hammered the reds for hours, keeping our 5 a piece and releasing the rest. I filleted them back at the dock and had a massive amount to take home.

The next morning I wanted to catch specs and they bite from first light until around 9 am that time of year. As we are going to bed, he says "we aren't getting up before daylight are we?" Well, I told him that I guess not, we will get up at 6 am. At 6 am he gets up, goes outside and says there is frost on the boat and that it was cold, then asked "we aren't fishing until it warms up, right?" Once again, I said, I guess not.

By the time it was warm enough, it was 9 am and the morning trout bite was done. Not wanting to get skunked, we headed back to the salt ditch and the reds were waiting again. As I was reeling in the first one, I said that I planned to throw him back. Dad's replay was, "maybe we can keep a few..."

I put the first one in the ice chest and we continue to hammer them. After the 8th one hit the ice chest, he looked in and said "I think we have enough". That was the first time in my 50 plus years I ever heard him say that before we had a limit. I knew that I had finally fulfilled my wish of putting him on enough game that he felt it was enough!


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## kowasake (Mar 24, 2016)

Cedar Bayou in the 90's. Wading an incoming tide with my son, his best friend and my nephew who were all about 12 years old. Wife was on the bank. Full limits of 20"+ trout. We had pic taken at Goose Island with fish on the bragging board with fish doubled up. Finished up with dinner at the boiling pot. I don't know which I enjoyed more, catching the fish or watching the boys. They were wound up like slinky's on a steep grade of stairs.


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## texasGG (Mar 12, 2007)

My single best trip was many years ago fishing with my Dad, we had decided we wanted to learn more about catching big trophy sized Blue cat so we contacted Jackie Kennedy "jackieblue" and set up a trip. My Dad was not a fan at all of paying someone to fish but after a week of explaining that it cost more going by ourselves trip after trip not catching anything, experimenting, and really guessing what to do than it will learning on one trip and then go and be able to start actually catching some good fish. We met Jackie and explained to him that we were way more interested in learning the "how to" than actually catching anything. He was great, he was and is so full of information, and shared so much with us and we caught a ton of fish. My Dad caught a 40 something pound blue within 20 minutes of putting our lines in the water and it went on from there. But I will never forget the look on my Dads face while he was holding that first big fish. He had never caught a catfish over 10 lbs before that. My Dad and Jackie exchanged story after story all day long, it was a special, wonderful day on the water. All the way home my Dad was saying we should have called Jackie years ago, then, he would say, "Can you imagine how many fish we would have been catching all these years if we would have just called him sooner". The picture is my Dad and Jackie with that first fish.. Good memories my friend...


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## markbrumbaugh (Jul 13, 2010)

*Hatchet lake lodge*

Gotta be pulling in one after another Northern Pike 45 inches in Saskatchewan.


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## jackieblue (Jun 13, 2006)

Great trips come along from time to time but the one with texasGG and his dad will always be one for the books for me.


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## Sunbeam (Feb 24, 2009)

Hey Jackieblue. Long time no see. Still guiding?
What is happening at the lake at Fairfield?


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## texcajun (Feb 22, 2009)

2 days stand out for me. A lot of you guys witnessed one of them. January 10, 2010 below LL dam. Was out there in a kayak with a bunch of you trying to catch white bass. You guys were tearing up the whites and I couldn't get a bite. Decided to slow way down and started catching crappie. And I kept on catching crappie. As I recall it was me and Mattsfishin catching darn near all of them. I ended up with one over a limit and one white bass. What made it one of the best days was it was the first and last time I ever limited out on crappie. All caught on a 1/8oz lead head jig with 2.5" chartreuse sassy shad. Gofish2day provided the picture below, thanks Karl!

Second day was back in my Navy days. I was fishing brackish water in Back Bay, Virginia with 2 other buddies out of 12' john boat. I got fed up with the fact that it was overcrowded so I asked to be dumped out at an island and I decided to wade. I had a pistol gripped rod with an old Shimano BMP-251 reel and a package of Mann's Grape Jelly worms. I proceeded to land bass after bass with not one of 'em being less than 4lbs, biggest was close to 8lbs. I was stringing so I could show my buddies when they got back and had 'em tied to a belt loop. There were about 6 or seven on the stringer when I had just landed another one. When I went to string the one I just landed, I noticed the string swimming away, so with the rod in my teeth, the fish held high, I'm dunking myself trying to get hold of that dang stringer. 2 fellas pass by in a bass boat and see this whole spectacle. I guess they watched me melt down before they approached. They complimented me on the fish I was hanging onto and I told em about the lost stringer. They handed me a stringer and wished me better luck. 
I fished for another hour and managed to string 4 more bass that were over 4lbs each, but none as big as the largest that swam away with my stringer. When my buddies showed back up I asked how they had done. They said they had only caught one and they didn't know what it was. Said it fought like heck and it was in the bottom of the boat. They were afraid to touch it. Turned out to be a choupique. I laughed at em. They sked how I had done and I held up my 5. They danged near fell out of the boat. Told 'em about the runaway stringer and I'm not sure they believed me, but no matter. It was a heckuva fishing trip.


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## Sunbeam (Feb 24, 2009)

That great bass story reminds me of a day many years ago on Livingston. The lake was about three years old. Most of the first stocked bass were in the three to four pound class. A seven pounder from the old oxbows was possible but rare.
I had returned a party back to Browders and was running back toward Kickapoo. The then new 100 hp Black Max had the Skeeter flying on calm water.
I was watching the Heath kit flasher to see when I would cross Wolf Creek. At that point I would turn to the right and cross to the east side to avoid some heavy timber ahead.
When I crossed Wolf creek I note that there was two signals on the dial. One at the same depth as both sides of the creek and one that dipped down then back up as it should as I crossed the creek. It took me a minute or so to think about what I had seen.
Could that be some suspended white bass in the creek channel? Worth a second look.
So I did a big u-turn and idled back across the creek very slowly. There was a strong signal of suspended fish.
I tied on a cheap chrome wobble spoon and using that new fangled trolling motor I eased back over the creek channel and dropped the spoon.
Bam! A heck of a strike. I finally got it against the boat. A huge LMB.
So I creep back over the creek and drop the spoon. Bam! Another big bass.
I repeated the same action until I had seven of those monsters in the boat around my feet. I had visions of the headline in our local paper.
It was starting to get dark and a light breeze was overcoming that little Motorguide so i got on the upwind side of the creek and eased over the anchor and drifted back over the creek. They were gone! I threw the spoon a while then changed to a Bomber and a worm. Nothing.
In the next year I bet I made 50 trips around that flooded creek channel and never caught a bass over three pounds.
Why those huge fish were suspended there and where they went has been a mystery ever since.
A good friend of mine who was a full time fireman and part time taxidermist in Shreveport took those seven carefully wrapped and frozen bass, added three more from T-bend and mounted all on a sheet of plywood using a gold chain snap stringer.
They used it in the guides booth at the Houston boat show for quite a few years.
The seven fish weighed 42 pounds even.


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## jackieblue (Jun 13, 2006)

"Hey Jackieblue. Long time no see. Still guiding?
What is happening at the lake at Fairfield?"

Yes, I'm still guiding on Cedar Creek Lake. Beats working for a living. I still manage to catch a few good uns from time to time. 
Fairfield now aka the dead sea at lest for redfish. have to go to Sabine Pass or POC for the red fix.


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## Gofish2day (May 9, 2006)

Great stories and enjoyed reading. I was born South of New Orleans and grew up fishing Red and specs in the marshlands there. Huge huge area to grow up and fish. I canâ€™t really single out a story. Here in Texas, maybe the massive schools of big striped in Lake Livingston about 4yrs ago. Past yrs catching big big stripers on top water below the LL Dam in my Peerow. Huge bull reds at the Jettyâ€™s, all you could Bare to fight on Halloween 2yrs ago with tbone. Did not go last year.

I can say though the story by Texas Cajun stands out below the Dam. That day we hammered the WB boxing 50. Moved over to where Texas Cajun was and proceeded to hammer away and box 50 crappie. My seat is a 90qt ice chest and it was filled. It was hard at first as you had to almost not move the jig on the bottom to catch them. Move the Jig and no crappie. Hard after 2hrs of none stop WB action to slow down to a crawl.


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## CmackR56 (May 30, 2009)

I am a bit apprehensive about telling these stories as most folks will find them to be unbelievable. So here goes, December 18th 1984. I was living on Sam Rayburn at the time and fishing 15 days per month. We'd had a streak of unusually warm weather and I'd been fishing the South end of the Black Forrest and Caney flats. I decided to head to Veach basin and fish the island, as I was nearing the area I saw what appeared to be a while tornado to the right of the island that turned out to be sea gulls. The lake was calm as glass and as far as I know I was the only boat on the lake that day (remember 1984 and winter). It was around 09:00 am as I pulled up to the point about 100 yds SE of the island. Throwing a Bagley Small Fry shad and a Bomber Long A, I proceeded to catch and release 342 largemouth bass between 1 1/2 and 6 pounds in the next 8 hours. I always carried a clicker in the boat in those days and after catching the first 20 fish in as many casts I decided to see just how many I could catch. The best numbers day I've had in 50 years of bass fishing. At one point I caught 39 fish on consecutive casts on the Long A, a truly bizarre day!
Fast forward to March 17th 2003. I'd towed my boat down to lake El Salto on the West coast of Mexico and was camped for 2 weeks on a point South of Ron Speed's lodge. My brother in and I were strictly night fishing and that particular night we'd found good sized fish on long gravel points with mesquite trees and along a bluff that had a 3' wide ledge 12' down, dropping off into 38 feet of water. We'd been working that ledge for nearly two hours and catching a fish between 7-8 1/2 pounds every 10-15 minutes on 1/2 oz. jigs. In bass fishing, it just don't get no better than that! All the while I had one particular point in my mind that I'd broken off a couple of giant fish earlier and after much cajoling I managed to convince Rick, my bro in law to leave these biting fish and go try for a really huge fish. We motored back to that point at around 11:30PM and I slung a Zoom Magnum lizard on a C-rig up into about 8 feet of water and began dragging back down that point, at about 12' I pulled it over a mesquite tree and got thumped hard. After a short hard fight I led her into the net. She was hooked in the base of the tongue with a 5/0 Owner hoof that had cut the artery that leads from the gills to the heart. She was pretty much DOA. I weighed her on an old spring scale that varied between 12 3/4 and 13 pounds. We put her on ice and when I got home and took her to my taxidermist, he looked at the fish and said "that looks way heavier than 12 3/4 pounds" He put her on the digital scales in his shop and she weighed 13.69#. He told me that she'd probably weighed a bit more when first caught.
These are just a couple of tales from many years of dragging a boat all over Mexico and doing things that are no longer safe due to the drug violence there and from the early days at Rayburn, Livingston and Toledo Bend. I'll try to post a pic of the 13.69# For a size comparison I am 6'2" and 350# in that photo.


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