By Capt. Mike Williams
When I worked for MirrOlure, I waded the back end of east bay from the late seventies to the early nineties. In that time period, we had two major freezes; the first freeze was in the winter of 1983, and then again in the winter 1989. The low in Galveston on Christmas night 1983 was 14 degrees and the air temperature stayed below freezing for more than a week. The lows for the 1989 freeze were 19 degrees on December 22, 14 degrees on December 23, and 23 degrees on December 24. Just before these two major freezes, Galveston East Bay was at its pinnacle as far as wade fishing for big trout with MirrOlures. In the mid-eighties, I was working and testing a lot with the color black. The 51MR808 “widow maker” that I designed and field tested was already on line and already had a proven track record in east bay as a trophy trout taker. When I first started with MirrOlure as a field tester, I designed three different lures made from the colors from tooth brush handles; clear hot orange, clear hot pink and clear hot chartreuse. One day, in the fall of 1984, I was waaay back in the back of east bay field testing different color patterns in the color black. I took a 51MR CF, which is an all clear chartreuse lure …
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… and my special field test spray paint and sprayed the top of the lure black, then sprayed the belly a hot marine orange. I field tested this lure for about a year and found it worked very well in the entire Galveston bay complex, but seemed to excel in East bay and Trinity bay. I sent my field test report on this color pattern to MirrOlure and told them to make it. The lure came on line and was numbered 51MR750 and is still in the starting line up on the MirrOlure charts. I designed many color patterns in the eighties, some of the color patterns worked our bay systems and others did not in my field tests. If the lure did not work, I did not throw it, and if I did not throw it, MirrOlure for the most part did not make it.
(This article published 2/9/2015)
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I have used guides all over florida and am an avid tarpon fisherman. The marketed “tarpon” trip is a shark trip in reality with tarpon as a by catch. The boat has to 30 years old, heavy reels and ragged out equipment, no comfortable seating at all, captain putting my sandwich in the bait cooler with stinking menhadden! One if the most over sold c rated guide trips I have ever taken! No other rod options for other possible fish…just bad boat management overall.
Hi, are you talking about captain mike Williams? We are supposed to fish with him this weekend.
That was not Capt.Mike Williams