Fish Art winners

In the Texas division of Wildlife Forever’s Fish Art Contest, judges at the Texas Freshwater Fisheries Center examined 352 total entries, choosing the top 12. These top 12 works of art will be featured at the Texas Freshwater Fisheries Center and in the 2024 Texas Fish Art Calendar.

The Fish Art Contest is part of an international conservation education program designed to foster youth interest in fish, fisheries and fishing. The program encourages K-12 students to submit original artwork of any fish and an essay or poem (grades 4-12) about the participant’s fish entry, its habitat or efforts to conserve it.

Grades K-3

Mexico Studies, are conducting the study, similar to the Great Red Snapper Count. The Greater Amberjack Count’s goal is to estimate the number of greater amberjack in the U.S. South Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico.

The project could have significant implications for commercial and recreational fishing. According to NOAA Fisheries, greater amberjack in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico are overfished despite a decades-long rebuilding effort. In contrast, the U.S. South Atlantic stock is not overfished.

This summer, the team will continue a wide-scale tagging effort involving two dif- ferent types of tags. According to HRI, the team has tagged a total of 100 AJs since last fall.

Some greater amberjack will be fitted with acoustic tags – electronic transmitters surgically implanted inside a fish’s body cavity. Signals emitted are recorded by an array of underwater acoustic receivers or “listening stations.” A total of 450 acoustic tags will be deployed throughout the U.S. South Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico from North Carolina to Texas. All acoustically tagged greater amberjack will also be tagged with one or two conventional tags.

A total of 750 amberjack will be fitted

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First place winners in each of the four age groups advance to the national level and compete against winners from other states.

Scholarships in the grades 10-12 division are $1,000 for first place, $750 for second place and $500 for third place. Awards in the 4-6 and 7-9 grade levels are $200 for first, $150 for second, $100 for third. In the K-3 division awards are $100 for first, $75 for second, $50 for third.

By Nate Skinner F

Corpus Christi area, but not in the way he now pursues the flats of the Lower Coast. Most of his angling experiences as a young ster and teen were limited to bank and surf fishing. So when he was able to purchase his first boat as an adult, he had to learn how to navigate and successfully find and catch fish along the Laguna Madre and Baffin Bay through trial and error, on his own.

“My dad and grandpa took me fishing as a kid, and they are the reason I initially fell in love with the sport,” Torres said. “My brother is 7 years younger than me, so we started fishing together quite a bit later on when I was a teenager.”

The family didn’t own a boat during his childhood years, so Torres spent most of his time fishing the surf or from local piers.

“During middle school and high school, I spent a lot of my free time fishing the surf and piers with buddies of mine,” he said. “I really didn’t get an opportunity to learn and fish our bays until my late teens when my dad and grandpa ended up getting a boat. We didn’t really know much, but we were out there fishing and learning together.”

After getting an oil field job after high school, Torres decided he wanted his first

“This was an opportunity for my brotherguna Madre and Baffin Bay, and it was an adventure, to say the least,” he explained.

“I bought my first boat during my mid-20s, and we started learning our bays the hard way. We pretty much ran aground nearly every time we went out, hit rocks, and endured other on-the-water hardships regularly. The learning curve was steep, but the challenge was fun and exciting.”

Over the years, Torres became more confident in fishing the Laguna Madre and its surrounding waters.

“I eventually bought a newer boat that ran shallower than my first one, and I really developed a strong bond with my brother as we both became better anglers,” Torres said.

Torres obtained his captain’s license in 2016 after some friends motivated him to do some part-time guiding. Then in 2019, he took a voluntary layoff from his oil field job when the market started to tank.

“My family pushed me to start running more fishing trips since I had more time on my hands, and my business started to take off,” Torres said. “I had no intentions of not returning to the oil field and becoming a full-time fishing guide, but it just sort of happened. Before I knew it I was running several trips each week. I was really