Seine Net, A Fishing Legend - Capt. Paul Braly

I love to go fishing with Paul Braly Sr., who earned the nickname "Seine Net", and also happens to be my Dad. My grandfather taught him how to become a great surf fisherman, and if you are caught fishing behind him, you'll understand how he got the nickname, because he hardly leaves any fish for those around him to catch, since he normally snags them all.

My dad grew up on the Gulf beach, fishing mainly with bait, and maybe a speck rig every once in awhile, but doesn't care much about bait these days, when it comes to stocking a cooler full of fish and then call it a day. I make certain to stay close behind him when we are wading together down the same shoreline, so that I might have a chance of landing a fish.

On Saturday it was really foggy, but we still managed to navigate safely to our fish hold. We tied on some Pink Hologram Devil Eyes with TruLock 1/16 oz jigs and got underway down our shoreline. A few minutes into our wade we started poppin some 18-20" trout and the 'ole seine net next to me doubled up on a pig. The fish hit three times before inhaling the fishing lure and after a couple of minutes we had a 7 pounder for a quick photo shoot and release.

Working our way up the shore, we got a few more in the 2 pound range before an airboat buzzed the shoreline and skipped into a lake that lied ahead. That was our sign to move on, since the action stopped immediately after that. About 8:15, we hit our next stop and half the fog had lifted by then so we could relax a bit and not have to worry about another boat running into us in the thick fog.

This time I was the one to get the first strike and I thought I had outdone Dad's fish for a bit, but discovered I had hooked into a redfish. That was the beginning of a fishing frenzy that netted us 11 more redfish between us with just 20 casts. The redfish wore us out and we hadn?t even waded more than 50 yards.

My brother was coming in from Irving for Christmas and always wants fish for the occasion, so we ended up keeping 6 redfish and 5 trout, even though we released the 7 pound trout, earlier. We don't keep many fish on our normal fishing trips but my brother was going to get his favorite this year.

I?ve never seen any other soft plastic give that kind of results, since we each only used that one lure, all morning. You can go through a lot of lures with 5-6 redfish back to back per person. Dad and I would have stayed on the water later than 9:30am, if we knew we were getting back just in time to get a list of household chores lined up for us to do.