Every year, a good friend living in Atlanta and I go for a week of fishing. One year in the States and the next in Canada. Last year we went to a fly-in Bass Lake near Blind River, so this year we were looking for a location where we had a chance at one of our life long ambitions...a double digit largemouth.
We considered Mexico but a four day trip looked like a $3000 plus proposition...ouch ! Some more online research led us to Lake Falcon in Texas which lies on the Texas-Mexico border. In fact we had to get both a Texas and Mexican fishing license, both online of course. Our plan is for me to fly to Atlanta where my buddy would pick me up with his boat in tow and make the two day drive to Zapata, Texas and Lake Falcon.
The next order of business was to get back online and search for a guide. Falcon is a big lake and we need a day or two of coaching before setting out on our own. I emailed several guides before selecting one. My criteria was simple, "while we would like to catch lots of Bass our number one priority was BIG Bass". We selected a guide and he suggested we come down the first week of March for spawn or just into post spawn.
We asked him for suggestions for accomodation and he hooked us up with a motel right on the water for $65 per night.
Next I found a website for a tackle store in Zapata (subsequently I found a second one) that had an excellent fishing report and started to monitor it daily to find out where they were getting them, shallow, deep etc and what they were using. This helped me stock my tackle bag. I also asked our guide for suggestions. It got me very excited when he told me to leave my spinning gear at home and don't spool up with anything less than 25 lb fourocarbon or 65 lb braid. The excitement built as I looked at the pictures of the HOGS on the fishing report.
I decided to take 6 rod/reel outfits individually selected for the type of fishing we were going to do. I mostly fish smallmouth so I'm glad I did some foreplanning to get the big baits that would be needed down there, I suppose I could have waited and bought them down there but I don't like leaving things to chance. In fact there were some baits that I couldn't find up here but my buddy in Atlanta had no problem at all.
I checked Air Canada's baggage regulations to see if I would have to pay a premium for my 7.5 foot rod case and thankfully found that there is a waiver for some types of sporting equipment and fishing rod cases was one of them. They do suggest that you call and register it with them a few days before your flight.
Since I'm using aeroplan miles for my flight to Atlanta the total cost of this trip should be less than $1000 so I'm pretty happy about that.
I'll be writing another Blog when I return on March 7 to let you know how we did. Hopefully I'll be doing some bragging.
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