Fourth of July. Cold beer, hot dogs on the grill, setting off fireworks in the most unconventional ways possible, what more is there to love?

For this Fourth of July, one of my best friends from TCU (Triple) and I headed down to Seadrift, Texas to do some fishing for the weekend. With reports of speckled trout and redfish being above average, we headed down for three days with fly rods in hand.

Upon arriving Seadrift, we immediately noticed poor conditions. The water in the bay looked like chocolate milk with unnoticeable salinity, due to huge amounts of rain over the past month. Although these conditions were horrible to say the least, we kept our hopes up in that we would be fishing out of Port O’Connor for the next couple of days. And no matter what the fishing was going to do, we knew this trip was going to be a blast.

On Friday morning we headed out with one of the local fly fishing guides, and once again the conditions were extremely difficult: high wind, muddy water, a considerable number of boats on the water for the holiday weekend. Hoping to get some shots at redfish on the fly, I stood at the bow of the boat with my Sage Xi3 and Abel Super 8 reel in hand, while Triple skillfully casted a soft plastic in the back. It was not until 11:00 before Triple caught a huge +20 inch speckled trout did we have a fish in the boat. 

At about 11:30, we finally began to see some big reds swimming around the flats: some being +30 inches easily. As we pushed into a deeper section of the flat, we noticed a huge section of nervous water with about 20 redfish tailing. After pulling our way towards the reds, I threw out about a 50 foot cast, and whack…fish on. 

A beautiful 26 inch double-spot redfish (below) was landed, and Triple was able to double up with a fish on his spinning rod (below). The rest of the day turned on fire: over 15 reds landed and over 30 undersized speckled trout. Night fishing in the “chocolate milk” bay also produced two big flounder on soft plastics, and there’s no better way to end the day on that note with two cold Shiner Bocks in hand.

This story of overcoming seemingly tough conditions is going to be all too familiar to any serious fly fisherman, and there is no better feeling on the Fourh of July to overcome the obstacles, remain patient, and to catch the species of fish that will always remain #1 on my list. Although I have caught countless redfish on the fly, this one remains one of the most special in that I shared the memory with a lifelong friend, on the day in which America discovered freedom (allowing all of us to fly-fish).