by Captain Kyle Tomek
Picture yourself as a mature speckled trout basking in the shallows of a barren East Matagorda Bay mud flat. At last, beams of light penetrate wintry clouds and are warming an insulating mud bottom, energizing your lethargic attitude.
You move through the waters of the mud flat looking for a familiar landmark; you soon come across that mud patch abutting a shell pad where you’ve spent some good times in your life, eating your fill of big shrimp and finger mullet by the hundreds.
You take up your favored feeding spot right where the mud meets the shell bed, watching the water above you for signs of a meal. You spot a delicious looking six inch mullet at two o’ clock and get ready to spring into action.
Before the mullet even knows what happened, you’re drifting back to the bottom feasting on your first catch of the season.
Soon after, a wobbling, wounded-looking mullet pierces the water’s surface, several feet away. Vibrant in color, the four inch bait fish gently dances, flaunting its dazzling body as it sinks leisurely through the water column.
Your spotted body jumps back into attack mode and seals the wounded mullet’s fate. Only this time the mullet fought back.
With a violent shake of your head you manage to get the mullet out of your mouth, but you find yourself pulled towards to the surface by a force you can’t see – the struggle quickly tires you out, beaten by a Boga in your lip.
“10 pounds!” is yelled by a man bundled up beneath layers of outerwear.
Two other men approach, admiringly looking you over. Is that a camera flash you see?
Then it’s over as quickly as it began and you’re back in the water, free but utterly exhausted.
As you swim away, you hear a voice in the distance exclaiming “That’s a Corky Fat Boy For You.” Are they talking about you? You haven’t even started to bulk up for the year; but you resolve to look closer at your prey next time around.
If trophy trout could have these feelings, they would know someone’s dream had come true.
Once word of James Wallace’s record breaking speckled trout got out with the fishing reports, fishermen immediately adopted Wallace’s saltwater fishing lures of choice: Corky slow sinking soft baits. With a size roughly that of a topwater and imitating the wobbly motion of a broken-back, a Corky with a slow retrieve in the winter is nearly irresistible to a big speck.
“When James Wallace caught that monster, things really took off for us,” reports Paul Brown, founder of B&L Corky. “People were flooding in and bought us out of every Corky we had in no time flat.” After all this time, this family owned Houston shop still finds Corky saltwater fishing lures one of their biggest sellers.
One of the many experts who counts himself as a Corky fan is Port Mansfield guide Captain Mike McBride. These are one his favorite lures for specks on Texas’ lower coast and along with a unique retrieval style, work wonders for this angler.
“Corkys are worked differently across the coast, but I try to pop the knot off, when I’m working Corky’s while trying to keep up with the slack.” Contrary to the popular belief of working Corky’s “slower than slow”, McBride works his soft baits aggressively. “The whole attraction of working an original Corky is unpredictable movements with the irresistible pause,” states McBride.
Matagorda trophy trout guide Captain Jesse Arsola tells us that he has a specific technique for working Corkys saltwater fishing lures.
“When trout are aggressive they will nail anything; but when you have to work for them to bite, technique really comes into play.”
“If I use a Corky, I’m usually using a counting system. I keep track of how long it takes the lure to hit bottom, then I vary the amount of time I allow my Corky to sink before I pull out the slack. From there, it’s just a matter of identifying what count you tend to get bites on. This is a really easy way to figure out just where in the water column the trout are feeding.”
Clear Lake tournament angler Captain John Havens prefers the Corky Devil in white, chartreuse or gold and uses a more or less standard retrieve.
“All you have to do is to make sure you keep in constant contact with the lure so you can tell when you have even the littlest nibble,” Havens says. He lifts the rod and gives it one or two twitches before letting his lure fall, the only variation this expert angler uses in his retrieve.