Ashton McKinley has been begging her dad, Chris, to take her wade-fishing. The 8 year old has caught numerous speckled trout, redfish and flounder from a boat, but has been wanting to try her hand at wading, knowing that it was her father’s preferred way to cover the flats.
She recently made a morning trip with her dad in East Matagorda Bay, and caught her first redfish while standing in the water. In fact, she ended up out-fishing her father.
McKinley said she got up before the sun, put on her waders and was ready to jump out of the boat and stalk some redfish in the shallow water when they arrived at the first spot at sunrise.
“The water was clean, the wind was calm, and there were baitfish everywhere,” she said. “We were wading a sand flat at the mouth of a cove along the south shoreline, and the water was barely above my knees. I was throwing a soft plastic and it wasn’t long before I got my first bite.”
McKinley made a long cast and was bouncing the soft plastic jig along the bottom when she felt a hard thump. She set the hook and drag started to peel off her reel.
“My dad had already caught a small redfish, and I couldn’t let him catch more fish than me, so I was excited when this fish hit,” she said. “It ran around me for a while, and we were finally able to net it. The redfish was about 23 inches long.”
Shortly after, the youngster caught another redfish in the same size range.
“I actually fell down in the water at one point,” McKinley said. “I was fighting the fish and it made a big run. Somehow I lost my balance, and ended up falling. But I got back up and landed it.”
McKinley said she really enjoyed standing in the water with the fish that she was pursuing.
“It was so much different from fishing in the boat,” she said. “The best part of the trip was catching more fish than my dad, and then reminding him the rest of the day that he got beat by an 8 year old.”
