September 2012

PRODUCTIVE

PLACES & PATTERNS Kevin Cochran introduces his latest book.

BOATS CAN

BURN! Joe Richard’s thoughts on fire safety.

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LESS CAN BE

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ABOUT THE COVER Longtime TSFMag reader Beau Blackard scored a 28-inch personal-best Port O’Connor speck recently on an early morning wade. Beau tricked her with a tiny MirrOprop “slushbait” that he credits Capt. Kevin Cochran for encouraging him to trust when the big ones are feeding shallow.

EDITOR AND PuBLISHER Everett Johnson Everett@tsfmag.com vICE PRESIDENT PRODuCTION & ADvERTISING DIRECTOR Pam Johnson Pam@tsfmag.com Office: 361-785-3420 Cell: 361-550-9918

CONTENTS

NATIONAL SALES REPRESENTATIvE Bart Manganiello Bartalm@optonline.net

SEPTEMBER 2012 VOL 22 NO 5

FEATURES

08 Diminishing Returns Mike McBride 14 Introducing Productive Places and...

Kevin Cochran 20 The Passing of the Greatest Generation Billy Sandifer 24 The Tran Sport SvT-24 Martin Strarup 30 Launch This!

Chuck uzzle 34 Danger Afoot, Over-Rated and...

Joe Doggett 38 Burning Down the Boat Joe Richard

PRODuCTION COORDINATOR Donna Boyd Donna@tsfmag.com

20

DEPARTMENTS

48

23 44 46 48 50 52 56 58 60 64 68 72

Coastal Birding Let’s Ask The Pro Boat Maintenance Tips Fly Fishing TPWD Field Notes Kayak Fishing According to Scott Youth Fishing Texas Nearshore & Offshore Kayak Fishing Chronicles Extreme Kayak Fishing & Sharks...

Fishy Facts

Billy Sandifer Jay Watkins Chris Mapp Casey Smartt Adriana Leiva Scott Null Scott Sommerlatte Marcos Garza Mike Jennings Cade Simpson Eric Ozolins Stephanie Boyd

WHAT OUR GUIDES Dickie Colburn Mickey Eastman Bink Grimes Shellie Gray David Rowsey Capt. Tricia Ernest Cisneros

REGULARS

98

4 | September 2012

04 76 92 96 98

Editorial New Tackle & Gear Fishing Reports and Forecasts Catch of the Month Gulf Coast Kitchen

CIRCuLATION SuBSCRIPTION – PRODuCT SALES Linda Curry Cir@tsfmag.com ADDRESS CHANGED? Email Store@tsfmag.com DESIGN & LAYOuT Stephanie Boyd stephanie@tsfmag.com Texas Saltwater Fishing Magazine is published monthly.

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HAVE TO SAY

78 Dickie Colburn’s Sabine Scene 80 Mickey on Galveston 82 The view from Matagorda 84 Mid-Coast Bays with the Grays 86 Hooked up with Rowsey 88 Capt. Tricia’s Port Mansfield Report 90 South Padre Fishing Scene

REGIONAL SALES REPRESENTATIvE Patti Elkins Patti@tsfmag.com Office: 361-785-3420 Cell: 361-649-2265

82

PRINTED IN THE USA. Texas Saltwater Fishing Magazine (ISSN 1935-9586) is published monthly by Texas Saltwater Fishing Magazine, Inc., 58 Fisherman’s Lane, Seadrift, Texas 77983 l P. O. Box 429, Seadrift, TX 77983 © Copyright 1990 All rights reserved. Positively nothing in this publication may be reprinted or reproduced. *views expressed by Texas Saltwater Fishing Magazine contributors do not necessarily express the views of Texas Saltwater Fishing Magazine.

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EDITORIAL I WILL GLADLY ACCEPT

THE CHANGE

6 | September 2012

Lots of hardcore anglers will say September is not their favorite transition month and all that – just another month of summer.

The change in the weather will come slowly, summer lingering but eventually giving way to autumn. In my mind this is a good thing. And even if it comes slowly, I am “up to here” with dog days.

We will still have some scorchers, hopefully not too many. The beauty of September though is the array of activities for the avid outdoorsman and this is the change that excites me. Apart from bay fishing possibly continuing to be generally slow in the early going, look at everything else we can get out and do.

The general dove season opens September 1 for North and Central Zones. The special whitewing season in South Texas gets under way September 1st and 2nd and again on the 8th and 9th. Teal season cranks up on the 15th and continues through the 30th. And somewhere long about that time we should see our first cool breezes from the North Country.

‘Tis the season of cast and blast. Being nearly equally addicted to angling and wingshooting – I am ready. Somebody please shout Amen!

The autumnal equinox will occur on September 22. Straight from the Latin, equinox means equal night. It also means that with continually shorter periods of daylight the water will begin cooling. How ‘bout another Amen! Oh – Somehow I forgot to mention that South Zone dove kicks off on September 21, the day before the equinox.

If all goes according to plan, Pam and I will begin the month wading the shallows of the Lower Laguna near Port Mansfield at dawn and busting whitewings in the afternoon. I am dying for her to sight-cast an arm-long trout and September should be full of opportunity. Might even try to squeeze in another day or two down at Port Isabel with Capt. Ernest Cisneros for snook.

Mid-month we will flip-flop, shooting teal at daybreak and hitting the Matagorda Island marsh for reds later. Tripletail action in Matagorda Bay and along nearshore weedlines will continue to taunt us and of course there is always a run down the beach to chase the bulls. The joy of merely seeing migrating tarpon rolling and hounding bait would be reward enough. A few fat surf trout would not hurt my feelings.

The kink in this planning would of course be the dreaded “H” word – pray that we are spared. Across most of Texas fields and woodlands are still too dry and a tropical system settling over the state would surely help but, nothing ranked in categories, thank you.

So to all who say September is nothing more than another month of summer, I say humbug. September is one of the finest months for Texas sportsmen and I intend to make it a busy one.

Get your dove Mojos whirling and dust off your teal decoys.

Head for the surf and wrestle a bull. Wade shallow and cast at the shadows along the grassbeds. It is going to be a glorious month and I don’t want to hear any of that “transition” baloney as a reason to stay home!

You can always hope to stumble into something – but the best formula for a stack-up is studying the solunar, the tides and local weather.

8 | September 2012

STORY BY MIKE MCBRIDE

Big Bob was fullblooded,

bona fide Native American Indian. We worked together during those traumatic years when I had to choke on a tie and ride a big cluttered desk with a little wooden name block in the corner. I coerced him into the wonders of saltwater wade fishing and we started ditching patent leather for neoprene booties every chance we got. We shared many worthy adventures and several of them branded long-remembered lessons into our brains – good and bad. They were all life’s great adventures and a few recent events resurrected some good old learning curve memories. Some left some

The old green tri-hull tub took us fishing, whether it wanted to or not.

deep scars but we learned much, and one reoccurring theme was the old cliché that says less can be more.

One memorable trip was when we managed to escape our urban chores by about noon and then hurried south towards Galveston’s West Bay. We had a gallon bucket of spicy-fried chicken to fuel our five-gallon bucket of unseasoned anticipation. Despite protesting wheel bearings, and even the allegedly re-wired trailer lights that flashed of Linda Blair in the Exorcist whenever you hit the brakes, we managed to get a hull wet and head that-a-way. We didn’t know much about tides and such back then except for whatever the lying

TSFMAG.com | 9

fishing whether it wanted to or not.

After a little greasy love and percussion-based Wow! Weren’t we something in our rubber encouragement, our boat finally sputtered into the and neoprene waders, billboard ball caps back of a well-known cove, probably because one of and 14-pounds of MirrOlure hats?

James Plaag’s banty rooster reports in the Chronicle said we should. We set the anchor off the lee bank and started sloshing through stingray-infested mud toward the back end. We caught a few small trout on Kelley Wiggler shrimptails and also had the occasional weak but inspiring Jumpin’ Minnow blow-up. Nothing spectacular, more or less average for most of our efforts, but it wasn’t very long before our plugs mysteriously started floating the other way. A big moon-influenced tide started sucking out hard, and all sorts of critters began to pull down from the flooded backwater marsh.

The action got a little better, but curiously, after the water level had dropped about a foot or so, we started hearing some serious mayhem going on behind us. Baitfish began to shower violently on the surface, making those spine-erecting sounds of prey desperately fleeing certain predatory death. Inching ever closer, our little world changed and trout as fat as salmon started whacking our bone Jumpers. It became probably our best catch together, the coveted stack-up we paper charts of the day predicted. We just read the same ole stuff all hope for, where success is just simply handed to you whether you everybody else did and those hard-won lessons about correction know anything or not. The bigger catch, however, was learning about factors and how wind influences tide were still on a fuzzy horizon. predictable fish behavior. Contrary to what all of us who read stuff are What we did know for sure, though, I was the proud owner of an old often conditioned to believe, feeding fish were pushing up into the beater of a tri-hull boat. And, protests aside, it was going to take us

Gimme that low tide stuff!

My only photo of Big Bob, all six feet-ten inches of him. Bob was a dear friend and we shared many a wade-fishing adventure. Cherish your fishing time with friends, and for Heaven’s sake make lots of photos.

10 | September 2012

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bad if you are hanging on. It was always a repair session before any Another example of right fish session, a predictable rinse place-right time…on purpose! and repeat thing, but a-fishing we would always go. The moral is, however, that if you are working on a boat more than you are fishing – It might be a clue that it’s time to upgrade.

Along those same lines had to do with lures in general. Typically, adding more workers to a job will finally reach a saturation point to where they start getting into each other’s way. Back then it was not only cool but mandatory that if you wanted to pretend to be a fisherman, you had to wear a white Styrofoam hat, and it had to be adorned with at least 14 pounds of every number and color MirrOlure ever invented. It got to where you couldn’t make a decision, and we spent more time tying bad knots than fishing. Yes, less can often be more.

In summing up, the tides finally fell down here and we can expect even more in September. Knowing how to look for those stacked-up situations is a major key to an epic trip, and for me it started back then. About those lures? Pardon the already overused pun, but once again…it’s not the arrow but the Indian. Aside from addressing proper speed and depth, we are going to catch fish on what we think we are going to catch them on, so a smaller but more confident box makes sense. As far as our boats go, if we have to tow you (who used to be me) in all the time, try calling Chris’s Marine and enjoy everything working like it’s supposed to and fishing more.

Above all though, the main thing I learned with Big Bob is that sharing adventures is a lot of what we use fishing as the excuse for.

We lost Captain Robert L. Ashley to cancer after chemical exposure during the Gulf War. Cherish time well spent with friends, especially on the water, as it may diminish faster that we would have it. Till then, happy returns!

Mike McBride

Contact

dropping water instead of being pulled down - as is usually preached.

The lower the tide got the more serious they got about it.

Bob and I had just attended a meeting discussing Diminishing Returns in the workplace, so we laughed about the symbolism and, in our pretzel logic, ended up calling the situation just that. The more the water diminished, the higher our returns became. And, continuing to look for those opportunities has become one of my most productive patterns over the years. Gimme that low tide stuff! However, just like most other situations in life, if everything seems to be going too well you have obviously overlooked something. John Wayne said, “Life is hard; it’s harder if you’re stupid.”

Behind us, totally unnoticed in the midst of that action adventure movie, the china-blue sky we took for granted suddenly became a bit darker. The wind also changed directions and the anchor rope swung hard ‘round and deposited our boat atop a little sand spit.

Thunder started cracking about the same time we would see the flash, like somebody was backstage shaking a big sheet of metal during a school play. After about 200 yards of mud racing dragging some “Go to Hell” stringers, it was obvious the boat was down hard enough that there was no way off until the tide chart said so. We had to gut it out using life jackets as protection from the cold, pelting paintball-class rain, finally making it home about 0400, barely enough time to pick out another neck tie. “Hear and you forget; see and you remember; do and you understand.” We did that.

One of the worst things was that the chicken got washed out.

Remembering other diminishing return lessons; Bob and I had a few actually fitting the real definition according to Webster’s – basically upholding the theory that the more elements you put into something the more things tend to get in the way. Big Bob and I were total opposites, a classic Mutt and Jeff deal. He was a stainless steel ruler, standing as tall as a tree at six feet-ten inches, paying attention to everything by the ounce as all engineers do, making sure everything was in perfect shape. It may be that your sole purpose in life is simply to serve as a warning to others, but hey, our boat was in shape. Messed up is a shape, isn’t it? That green bathtub of a tri-hull was another great teacher. The more we worked on it the more things seemed to get in the way, but we learned some valuable stuff.

We discovered that blue was up and green was down when sparking trim wires together while underway because the switch had failed. Then also learned a stringer can make a great starter rope when the electric starter goes out, and that starting it in gear isn’t all that

Mike McBride is a full time fishing guide based in Port Mansfield, TX, specializing in wadefishing with artificial lures.

Skinny Water Adventures Phone Email Web

956-746-6041 McTrout@Granderiver.net Skinnywateradventures.com/ Three_MudSkateers.wmv

14 | September 2012

The slender MirrOminnow helped Cassandra Quinn trick this trout. These lures effectively mimic glass minnows and work beautifully in hot, clear water.

STORY BY KEVIN COCHRAN

The excerpt below

comes from my new book, Productive Places and Patterns. About 50,000 words in length, the text documents the patterns I’ve employed to catch fish along windward shorelines, in lakes and coves, around spoil banks and reefs, and in many other types of general locations as well as in specific places. Each of the ten main chapters includes a Google Earth image showing an example of the type of spots to be included in the section. At the end of the book, I include a “List of Truths”, on which I base many of the patterns I’ve discovered and employed productively.

Here’s the introductory chapter:

In the never-ending quest for consistency, coastal lure fishermen do battle with an imaginary, two-faced foe.

We must figure out not only where to fish, but also how best to catch fish, by choosing an appropriate strategy, method and lure for the moment. In essence, we must identify both a productive place and pattern.

The terms place and pattern have complex, multi-faceted meanings, with the concept of place being perhaps the simpler of the two. A place might be defined in the most general sense, through a label such as “shoreline”, “oyster reef” or “beachfront”. It might be given more specific labels and dimensions, and be referred to as “the south shoreline”, “a submerged oyster reef next to a dredged channel” or “the inside edge of the first sand bar off the beachfront”.

One could also refer to a particular part of a bay system or waterway. In this case, a place could be “The King Ranch Shoreline”, TSFMAG.com | 15

“Hannah’s Reef”, or “Bolivar Flats”. Toward the more-detailed end of the place-names road, one might mention parts of a shoreline, reef or beachfront area, and use names like “The Pens”, “Bull Shoals” or “The Car Bodies”.

Finally, referring to places with the highest level of specificity means associating them with GPS coordinates. In the following chapters, many different kinds of references to place will be given, including ones indicated through GPS numbers, with the final goal of identifying general areas and specific locations where defined and described patterns work well.

Patterns are more complicated and multi-dimensional than places.

Theoretically and (more importantly) practically, patterns can be said to apply similarly from place to place. Sometimes, a place is part of a pattern. For instance, a “windward shoreline” can be thought of as both a place and a pattern, since it includes a location reference and a weather element.

The word pattern has about a dozen dictionary definitions. While looking over them and trying to define a fishing pattern, I find several phrases intriguing. Of particular interest are “prescribed route”,

“natural or chance configuration” and “reliable sample of acts or other features”. A fishing pattern is best defined through combining and modifying these other definitions.

In fishing, a pattern might be defined as a “prescribed angling method which properly accounts for the climatic conditions and natural configurations of a place, and which reliably produces strikes from fish on a particular lure or type of lure presented a specific way”. Put more simply, it’s “an effective angling method, lure and presentation for a chosen location and the prevailing conditions of the moment.”

The concept of pattern starts with place, moves to the selection of a general method or strategy (wading vs. boat-fishing), and ends with the precise manner of procedure in either endeavor. Additionally, a fishing pattern involves lure choice(s), and the presentation style(s) employed with the chosen lure(s).

The description of a pattern might be simple and general, indicated through a reference like “wading with soft plastics”, or quite specifically stated, like in this example: “using a trolling motor to keep the boat in deep water windward of the rocks and throwing small topwaters close to the edges of the structures, retrieving the plugs with high speed and lots of erratic movement”.

Aaron Hooper used Employing a trolling motor or drift anchor can be a MirrOprop to catch an important part of a boat-fishing pattern, just as this solid summer the direction and speed of movement can be critical trout. These noisy little “slush baits” parts of wading patterns. The angles of casts and are easy to use and retrieves are usually important in either style of tease fish into a fishing, since the relative positions of anglers and crazy feeding mood fish can be considered to be parts of any pattern. on occasion.

To make things even more complicated, a pattern might also be said to involve the weather and/or climatic conditions. Surely, a location can seem vastly different from one day to the next, under widely disparate weather conditions. Without a doubt, some patterns come into play only when certain environmental variables align themselves a particular way.

Most often, the relevant variables include the time of year, time of day, temperature of the air and water, the clarity of the water and the direction and velocity of the wind. The productivity of a pattern is usually dependent on at least some of these variables falling within a specific range.

For instance, to say “windblown shorelines are more productive than leeward ones” is an oversimplification. Though the statement has proven veracity, the extent of its truth at a given moment depends on many other factors. Too much wind blowing into a shoreline with a soft, muddy bottom might render the truth temporarily obsolete.

Seasonal migration patterns and tendencies among the fish can do the same. In warm weather, from spring through early-autumn, windward shorelines with hard, sandy, grassy bottoms produce well, but those same shorelines might be void of fish in the middle of winter.

Consequently, most consistently productive anglers think about specific locations in which to

16 | September 2012

18 | September 2012

During the hot months, wading around structures close to deep water and throwing small topwaters like Super Spook Juniors produces well on a daily basis.

In some of these sites, I once strung and killed trout with which I claimed tournament prizes; in others, I’ve repeatedly measured and released many specimens of impressive sizes. In the following document, I’ve mentioned patterns which work in spots where I caught my first 27-inch inch trout, my first eight pounder and my first 30-incher too.

While creating this book, I took a long, metaphorical boat ride right down the middle of Memory Bay. In each chapter, I embarked from the point furthest south, then steered the craft in a northerly direction.

I hope I captained the tour in an informative and meaningful way.

Kevin Cochran Contact

make their fishing efforts before leaving the dock, taking into account the season, weather conditions, tide level and/ or predicted movements, and past experiences. They make a choice of which pattern to try first by taking these same factors into account, but won’t hesitate to make adjustments to this choice after observing how things look and “feel” out on the water.

Determining which pattern will produce best often means correctly figuring out how the observable variables will affect the best way to thoroughly and effectively work through an area. These variables can include the wind speed and direction, the amount and/or direction of tidal movement, the clarity and temperature of the water and the type of structure and cover elements present. Another component of critical importance is the level of aggressiveness with which the fish are likely to be feeding.

More aggressive fish are likely to be moving around in search of food and willing to cover some distance to take a lure. Less aggressive ones tend to be more stationary, having smaller cones of influence, unlikely to move more than a short distance to strike a passing plug. The level of aggressiveness in the fish can impact several aspects of the pattern, including the optimal speed of movement through the area, which specific targets within the area are holding fish, the type of lure most likely to work, and the best speed and style of presentation for the moment.

In different situations, different variables have greater influence over these pattern elements. Sometimes, the prominent aspect(s) are easy to identify, such as when the weather is extremely hot or cold, excessively windy, or dead calm. In other, less-intense conditions, the most pertinent variable(s) can be much harder to identify. Even so, astute experts always try to figure out what specific environmental variables are most relevant in terms of measurably affecting the feeding mood of the fish and the likelihood of the fish preferring specific locations within the general area to be targeted.

After all, the ultimate goal of any fishing effort is to correctly identify exactly where the fish within one’s casting scope are located, so those fish can be enticed into taking a lure and eventually hooked and landed. Stated another way, the goal of a fishing excursion is to identify specific places which are holding fish and to employ a pattern which results in the catching of those fish.

In the following chapters, I’ll attempt to define and describe some of the most productive places and patterns I’ve found and fished during my decades-long angling journey across the wide, wild coastal waters of Texas. In my time, I’ve visited and tried the fishing in almost every named body of salty water in the Lone Star State, from the stained confines of Coffee Ground Cove to the crystalline shallows behind South Padre Island.

I’ve laid eyes and left boot-prints on countless reefs and points, in the backs of cozy coves and pockets, beside sprawling shorelines and across grass-bearded bars. It’s no stretch to say I’ve caught fish in hundreds of different places. In this text, I’ve provided details about the patterns which have produced best for me over time, and pointed out places in our bays where those patterns come into play. I’ve also listed some other places where I suspect the patterns will work in similar ways.

Kevin Cochran is a full-time fishing guide at Corpus Christi (Padre Island), TX. Kevin is a speckled trout fanatic and has created several books and dvds on the subject.

Kevin’s home waters stretch from Corpus Christi Bay to the Land Cut.

Trout Tracker Guide Service Phone Email Web

361-688-3714 kevxlr8@mygrande.net www.FishBaffinBay.com www.captainkevblogs.com

(Linda Reed photo) Left to right are Mr. Cliff Wilson, his wife Wanda, and Mr. Ralph Wade. Ralph and Ms. Wanda are the last of their generation of PINS anglers.

Jessica Potter’s 6’1” bull shark (C&R), fishing with her father from the 21-Mile beach on PINS. She also landed a 5’3” bull (C&R) on that trip.

20 | September 2012

STORY BY BILLY SANDIFER

My good friend David Prosek sent this of his daughter, April, scoring a double on whiting on her first trip to PINS… must be in the blood.

The silver Dodge

with a camper shell slowly ground to a stop as it approached my Suburban. We greeted each other and then Mr. Cliff Wilson asked, “Billy, have you ever seen the Little Shell as soft and tore up as it is now?” I said, “Yes, Mr. Cliff, I remember behind a tropical depression years ago it was so bad it was nearly impossible to get through.” He said “Yeah, I forget sometimes but it sure is a mess now.” And then he drove off.

A couple of days later we again came across each other and he immediately said, “You know Billy I got to thinking and you’re right. Little Shell was really horrible for a while back in the 1930s.” I laughed and said, “I’ll have to take your word for it Mr. Cliff for I was born in 1947.”

He just kinda grunted and drove off but I guess we’d established who had seniority down the beach. As I stood in the church last Wednesday at his funeral and as I drove down the beach last Friday, I realized that I will probably always be expecting to see that silver Dodge coming my direction when I am down island for the rest of my life.

PINS beach-goers are made up of two distinct groups; regulars and tourists. Historically, the regulars pretty much belonged to one of two groups; shark fishermen and light-tackle fishermen. Today we see a third group evolving. The “BTB” Beyond the Breakers kayak fishermen are a relatively new group quickly growing in number. Mr. Cliff Wilson was the senior PINS fisherman PERIOD. Ms. Wanda, his wife of sixty-three years, told me on the phone yesterday that he started surf fishing on Padre Island with his uncle when he was nine or ten years old and he was 89 when he died so he had been fishing the Padre Island surf for at least 79 years. Wow! That is absolutely mind-boggling.

TSFMAG.com | 21

Hammerhead Conservation: accomplishing a successful release

It is several months now I have been writing of my experiences with hammerhead sharks and the exceptional difficulties inherent in handling and successfully releasing this species, especially from the beach. Their fight-to-the-death reputation is well-earned as they will certainly do just that if you will allow it. Exhaustion coupled with self-destructive thrashing and pounding of their bodies on the sand that dislodges internal organs has been the demise of many. Too much time spent removing hooks and too long photo sessions worsen a bad situation. Merely dragging it to knee-deep where it feebly staggers back out to sea will hardly qualify as a release as death is almost certain. It takes walking them deeper and making sure they have recovered sufficient strength to get it done properly.

Jeff Gipson shared a photo and a tale via email the other day and I have included it verbatim to help others understand the necessity, danger, and importance of proper handling. -Billy

Hammerhead on PINS - June 6, 2009. “Released by walking around in chest deep water, thought he was actually a goner until I bent his tail and it stimulated him and he sprung to life. Shot through the water and did a u-turn on a dime and headed straight at me. He slammed into my chest before I could even move. I fell back under the water trying to get away. I scrambled back to my feet and when I came back up he was gone. Yes, they are that fast!

At first I thought I was being attacked but then realized he was just disoriented and thought he was making a break for offshore and went the wrong direction. Great memory of a great fish!

Glad it’s still swimming. I was there another day or two to make sure he didn’t wash back in. I believe to this day that he made it.” -Jeff Gipson 22 | September 2012

The strong silent type, Mr. Cliff and his fishing partner tended to keep to themselves and let the rest of the world go its own way yet it was always a pleasure to stop and exchange small talk and fishing information with them.

Mr. Cliff served in the Philippines in WWII and then worked for Celanese for thirty-six years. They lived in Bishop and his regular fishing partner of thirty-plus years was Mr. Earl Brown. Mr. Earl died several years back.

Shortly after Mr. Earl died I realized Mr. Cliff wasn’t fishing anymore and I knew that couldn’t be a good thing and was quite concerned about him. Then one day he showed up with his wife, Ms. Wanda, in that silver Dodge with the camper. Ms. Wanda sported a new pair of waders and a bait casting rod and reel. My heart soared.

I told Mr. Cliff how very happy I was to see him and that I’d been worried about him. He said, “Well Billy, Wanda was worried about me too as Earl dying was real hard on me. Then the other day I was laying on the couch watching TV and Wanda came up and kicked one of my feet off the couch and said ‘Cliff Wilson, you get off that couch right now and you go to Corpus Christi and you get me the best brand new pickup, camper, waders and bait casting rig you can find and then me and you are going fishing.’”

Later I asked Ms. Wanda if she had ever fished down there with him before and she said, “Oh yes Billy, I did before our children were born, but having to raise kids kept me from going for years. Then he had Earl for a fishing partner all those years but when Earl died he quit going and I knew all that moping around would kill him and I’m not letting that happen so I’m his new fishing partner.”

And so she has been for all of these years since. How awesome.

They usually stayed one or two nights when they came and they came year ‘round. Regular beach fishermen call it “paying the rent” and we go whether the fish bite or not. I still do.

Mr. Cliff always seemed calm and cool although his family noted he would be startled if someone unexpectedly touched him. I know all about that; it came from serving in WWII just as mine comes from Viet Nam. My favorite story about Cliff Wilson was the day before my pal and I had our run-in with the ghost at the 33-mile beach. Mr. Cliff and Mr. Earl were fishing several rigs for redfish a mile south of us when we came upon the largest school of sharks I’ve ever seen in the surf. A school of approximately forty blacktipped and bull sharks were actively feeding in very shallow water headed toward Mr. Cliff’s and Mr. Earl’s location. Most were four to five foot blacktipped sharks but there were six or seven big bull sharks mixed in with them.

After thinking about it I decided to let them know the sharks were coming their way. As we stepped out of the truck, Mr. Earl was on his knees with a roofing hatchet trying to chop a still-kicking 30-pound jack crevalle into as many pieces as he possibly could. Broken fishing tackle lay scattered about and it was obvious that they had several rigs set out for reds and a school of large jacks had came through and taken every bait at once. Two reels were completely stripped as the jacks had broken the line at the arbor knot.

To be perfectly honest it appeared to me that Mr. Earl was not in the mood for conservation so I left him to his chore and waded out to talk to Mr. Cliff.

As I came alongside, Not the highest quality image, Nick Meyer snapped this Mr. Cliff looked over hurriedly. That tiny blue dot in the distance is my Suburban heading into that squall. When my time comes I hope I’m at me with a grin and running headfirst into the storm. Sunsets are too mundane. asked how Earl was

Ashton Underbrink and her first-ever shark. Ashton belongs to the up-and-coming generation of PINS shark anglers.

doing. I chuckled and told him that to be honest I had been afraid to ask. Mr. Cliff laughed and said, “Yeah, I know. That’s why I came out here to get away from him and that hatchet.”

We both roared with laughter and then I told him about the sharks coming their way. He was totally unconcerned and then shocked me by saying that the sharks had already came by once and he wasn’t concerned about them. He and Earl had simply nudged them with the tips of their fishing rods when they got too close. Then he busted out laughing again and said that he was a whole lot more concerned about his fishing partner and that roofing hatchet and the jack crevalle than he was about the sharks.

My family is for the most part made up of people I’ve came to know over the years of fishing down the beach and my customers. The Wilsons have been a part of my family for a very long time. As I sat at his funeral I listened to folks speak of his life, of his unwavering faith and his impeccable morals and ethics and I was proud of him and I hope folks think as much of me when my days come to an end.

I always called the small group of regular surf trout fishermen The Clan. They were very tight-lipped and I was the first new guy they had accepted into their group in many years. Now it’s down to Ms. Wanda, Mr. Ralph Wade and me.

I promised Ms. Wanda I’d take her fishing whenever she wanted and I look forward to it, but I bet both of us keep looking for that silver Dodge.

Ruby-throated Hummingbird - Archilochus colubris The only hummingbird that inhabits the eastern parts of the U.S. Metallic green above with whitish underparts, sides and flanks are dusky green. Male has a brilliant red throat patch that might appear blackish under certain light conditions. Female’s throat is whitish. A close relative, the Black-chinned Hummingbird, lives in the western U. S. Juveniles and females of these two species are almost impossible to tell apart. The migration corridor of both species is through Texas during September. During third week of September I have counted 70+ in my yard. Winters in Mexico and Central America. Flies nonstop from the Coastal Bend to Yucatan.

If we don’t leave any there won’t be any. –Billy Sandifer

Contact

Billy Sandifer Retired after 20+ years of guiding anglers in the Padre surf, Billy Sandifer (“Padre of Padre Island” to friends & admirers) is devoted to conserving the natural wonders of N. Padre Island & teaching all who will heed his lessons to enjoy the beauty of the Padre Island National Seashore responsibly.

Photo by Jimmy Jackson

Phone 361-937-8446 Website www.billysandifer.com

TSFMAG.com | 23

STORY BY MARTIN STRARUP

I remember when Dad

gave me my first boat when I was thirteen. It was a

walk-through windshield 1968 Glastron GT160 tri-hull with a 40 horse Johnson outboard. I terrorized Carancahua Bay for several years with it, learning all of the reefs, sand bars and the path up the Carancahua River. I caught a lot of fish out of that little boat and I certainly was proud of it.

I enjoyed so much those days when Dad would take me out and teach me how to navigate and point out all of the different things that a boater should know. I miss those days but I sure have enjoyed passing what I have learned on to my son.

There have been many boats in my life since then. The transition from the side-mounted consoles to the center consoles was cool to watch happen and, Oh Man, I have seen a lot of different types and styles of hulls come and go. But the other day I was able to run a boat that was nothing like anything I have ever owned or operated.

See my son figures it’s time for him to own his own boat and he has picked a real winner.

It started with discussions back in the winter about a different boat, one that would run super skinny if need be and one that would take the rough water like a deep V-hull does. I laughed and told him that 24 | September 2012

when he finds that boat to let me know.

He found that boat.

In June we went down to Palacios to visit Donny Tran of Tran Sport Boats to talk to him about this new-to-us model, the Tran Sport SVT24. The SVT stands for Split V Tunnel and what that Split V Tunnel does to the chop on a windy day is unbelievable.

Donny took us through the shop where he had a few SVT boats in various stages of construction. He showed us how the boat is built from start to finish and I was very impressed with not only the knowledge but with the meticulous care that is put into every boat his shop produces. My son Sterling had seen enough and was itching to run one on the bay and Donny was happy to accommodate him.

We unloaded at the East Side boat ramp into Tres Palacios Bay and Donny took the boat into the southeast wind, around behind Coon Island into Redfish Bay. He was on top and on plane, and out of habit I cautioned him about the reef that he was heading for. He smiled at me but he didn’t alter his course. I got a tighter grip on a handrail and the boat skimmed over the reef and nothing touched the boat but water.

I have never owned a boat that would do that. He showed us how the boat got up in shallow water, very shallow water, how it would stay

Tran builds a very stable fishing platform – even for guys our size.

on plane at very low speeds and we took up a lot of Donny’s valuable time back in that shallow water. Then we went to deeper water that had a bit of chop on it and tried to make the boat get us wet - and failed. Donny showed us how the SVT hull allowed for fast turns with no sliding and no hint of shearing in a turn. We were impressed.

Back at the shop Sterling and Donny went over the specifications that he would want on a 24’ SVT of his own and they spent a good while going over options and wants and Sterling came away with a quote for his boat. There was only one more thing we wanted to try and that was to take the boat to where we will use it as often as possible; Port Mansfield. So we extended an invitation for Donny to join us on a trip we were taking in July and Donny said that he would like to go and that his boat would go with him. Sterling was ecstatic!

A week before the trip to Port Mansfield Donny let us know that business would not allow him to go make the trip but he most graciously offered to let us take his personal 24’ SVT with us to run, test and to treat as our own. Sterling accepted his generous offer. We were both stoked at the prospect of running this boat in the shallow waters of the lower Laguna Madre and man did Father Time ever slow down the clock; the days and hours crawled until the date of our trip.

The Tran Sport SVT-24 is a beast of a boat at 24 feet-2 inches in length with 102 inch beam. It weighs in at 1920 pounds and is rated up to 300 horsepower.

We arrived in Port around lunch time on a Thursday and everyone was in a hurry to stow gear in the house, rig up our rods and reels, and get the boat into the water. Sterling wanted me to run the boat from the raised console so he could move around the boat and see how the ride was in the different seating areas. I quickly found out that I was going to have to learn to run a boat all over again.

Remembering some tips that Donny had given us I was able to overcome my ignorance of running the SVT hull and the 250HP Suzuki SS Four Stroke. In my defense I had never had a boat that from a slow idle would jump up on plane with no bow rise and that threw me completely off of my game. I said earlier that it was a beast of a boat and it is but it’s as quick and agile as a cat, no pun intended. Seriously when you give that motor throttle you better make sure everyone is holding on or are sitting and secure, and make sure that you’re holding on too; it scoots.

Of course everyone wanted to fish and I just wanted to run the boat, but after a few threats I finally headed to our first spot for the TSFMAG.com | 25

The SVT is engineered and built to eat up chop like it isn’t there.

evening and shut it down. We made several drifts through what is usually a very productive area but only a few fish found their way into the fish box. We made a few moves from shallow to deeper and while two of us were looking for fish, Sterling and I were looking for challenges for the boat - and looking for fish.

Everything on Donnie’s demo boat is neat and functional, just the way it should be.

26 | September 2012

The wind had come up that evening and when Sterling took us back to Port it was dark enough to have to use the running lights. With following seas I can say that the ride was, well, cushy. It just sort of floated at a high rate of speed across the rough water and Sterling said that there was no pulling left or right when the boat caught waves at an angle. He played with the trim tabs putting the bow down and the bow up and while the water was rough the passengers sitting in front of the console said it was a great ride.

We talked about where to go the following morning and then we talked about the boat, discussing what we wanted it to do. I can say for myself that after learning how to run it the SVT does exactly what I expect it to do, even more so. Sterling pointed out a few things that he would want different on his boat and we talked about options that he hadn’t considered. The boat itself is well thought out, well designed, and very well made. Other than a few minor features Sterling wants added to his boat we wouldn’t change a thing.

The Tran Sport SVT-24 drafts between 7 and 8 inches at rest and seems able to run safely in 5 or 6 inches.

The next morning we hit an area that should have been holding fish but after an hour and just a few blow

A beast of a boat: 24’-2” length, 102” beam, 1920 pounds, rated up to 300hp… drafts only eight inches at rest and ran easily through 5-6” shallows for us.

28 | September 2012

the things that he wants on his boat, where he wants them and how he wants them set up is a lot of fun. Little things like raising the console to fit his 6’-4” height and raising the windshield and grab bar so he doesn’t have to stoop too much to get out of the wind. Where to put the gauges, switches and navigation instruments…it’s a hoot.

I can’t wait to write an article someday soon about his boat and have you see pictures of it. I just hope he lets me run it now and then.

Be Safe.

Martin Strarup

Contact

ups no one had managed to hook up with anything that was legal to keep. While the other guys were still in the water I waded back to the boat and took a few pictures of the SVT in the water. Sterling took a few as well from a distance so you get a pretty good idea of how the boat sits in the water with the 8’ Power Pole all the way down.

We ran the boat deep and we ran it shallow over three days. We got up in shallow calm water and we got up in rough deep water.

We ran it fast across calm water and we ran it fast across rough water and the boat never failed to impress everyone aboard. And while the fishing was great, the catching was terrible. I must say though, having Donny’s boat on this trip made up for the lack of action.

Sterling now has that feeling that I have been fortunate to have felt many times in my life. It’s that feeling you get prior to owning a new boat. And Sterling gets to have his boat built from scratch and will be able to have it set up just the way he wants it.

What we have learned from talking to Tran Sport boat owners is that they not only build a good solid product but they also have excellent customer service both before and after a sale. That and knowing the company that will build my son’s boat is only fortyfive minutes away from us is huge in my book. I mean to buy a boat is one thing but to have the builder of that boat nearly in your backyard is priceless.

I’m excited to be part of this experience with my son. Going over

Martin Strarup is a lifelong saltwater enthusiast and outdoorsman.

Martin is also a collector and dealer of vintage fishing tackle and lures, especially those made in Texas.

Email

Trouthunter@swbell.net

Paul fooled this one with a soft plastic under a cork.

30 | September 2012

STORY BY CHUCK UZZLE

The honey-do list

posted on the refrigerator is always a dead giveaway. The longer the list the better the fishing at the moment, and vice versa.

Every now and again it is a must to get off the water and get caught back up on things around my house that have been procrastinated to the point of being ridiculous. You know the fishing is good when you are cutting your grass with the aid of a Q-Beam mounted on your riding mower. Don’t laugh! I know some of you will employ that strategy now that it’s been made public. After all, anything to save a day on the water is always a plus.

As I sat down to make my plans for my day off, the cell phone rang like a reprieve from the governor. The friendly voice on the other end is none other than my buddy Capt. James Trimble and what he has to say is much more attractive than a day on a lawn mower. The opportunity to fish with really good fishermen who are also good friends doesn’t come around often enough so I’m sure that yard work could wait one more day…couldn’t it?

Capt. Trim and his tournament partner Paul Drymala were looking to pattern some redfish for an upcoming event and I couldn’t pass up the chance to get in the boat with these guys. So what else is a guide to do on a day off but go fishing?

To say I was pleasantly surprised when I rolled up at the boat launch is a huge understatement. I parked my truck and walked up to what can best be described as an indigo blue fiberglass rocket ship; otherwise known as a Simmons Custom Boats StingRay. Now for a guy who spends the vast majority of his time in a small aluminum skiff; this was the equivalent of something from NASA - or perhaps even Area 51 in Roswell. The big 300 Mercury hanging off the transom grabbed my attention first and it just got worse from there. This thing looked like it was TSFMAG.com | 31

Capt. Trim’s 300 Merc makes the SCB fly!

going 70mph sitting on the trailer! An absolutely incredible looking machine for sure.

Once in the water the big Mercury roared to life and I should have known I was in trouble right there. The slow idle out of the slip into the channel gave the same feeling as when you make your initial climb on a roller coaster, being helpless to stop the impending speed that is merely seconds away.

With Capt. Trim at the throttle and Paul riding shotgun; I was relegated to sitting on the back deck where I quickly found a place to hang on and pray. The holeshot of this rig was violent and the speed

Capt. Trim with a good one for tournament day.

at which we approached mach whatever was mind blowing. I can remember years ago when we ran bass boats that we thought were fast, this was something else indeed.

A quick glance at the tachometer and then the speed displayed on the GPS boggled my mind, only 4000 RPM and we were running mid-60s and climbing. All this with three guys in the boat and a full load of gear. I think it was around 70mph when I told Trim in rather colorful words that if he didn’t slow down - “I’m gonna punch you in the back of the head.”

Trim and Paul got a huge kick out of that and obliged me by backing out of the throttle to a snail’s pace of 50mph or so.

The SCB was easily the most impressive boat I personally have ever been in and I can certainly see why tournament anglers are drawn to this fantastic ride. The ability to reach incredible speeds is one thing but to also be able to run at modest RPMs and still cruise faster than most boats can only dream is another. Not only does the boat run well, it fishes just

The StingRay looks like something out of NASA or Area 51.

32 | September 2012

Another bronze football.

Chuck Uzzle

Contact

as good, and the stability is ridiculous. Those guys at SCB have it figured out for sure. Hats off to them for building an amazing fishing machine.

Now after we had our version of the Texas Cyclone and Space Mountain rolled into one on the water, we actually got down to the business of fishing. One thing I really enjoy about fishing with another guide or another really good angler is talking about how they would approach certain situations. How they read or interpret different factors or variables on the water is informative and I am always amazed at the things I learn or share with these guys. It’s a real eye-opener at times and that makes the day that much more enjoyable.

The basic technique for the day didn’t involve catching fish so much as it did locating fish. Provoking strikes to let us know fish were in the area and catching a few in order to see what size they were was the main objective. After all, you wouldn’t want to go in there and jaw-jack every fish you may need for tournament day, would you?

Now in order to cover all our options we employed a couple of

different methods to cover as much water as possible. If you don’t know what pattern is working it’s always best for everyone on the boat to try something different in order to find the pattern quicker - and that’s exactly what we did. We threw topwater plugs, soft plastics, and plastics under a cork. The bite was consistent all day on topwater and plastics fished under the cork. We keyed on scattered grass and shrimp or other bait running along the shorelines. The water has been so high for weeks now that the grass along the lake has really become a great ambush point for all the predator species, especially the reds.

As is with most days during summer, the threat of thunderstorm was always present and that kept us moving most of the day which worked out great. Had we not been hastened by constantly outrunning the rain we likely would not have covered as much water, or found as many fish. In the end we established a solid pattern and hopefully by the time this article hits the newsstand Trim and Paul will be spending some of the prize money they won. Even if it doesn’t work out for them in the tournament, the day we spent on the water was certainly a good one.

Spending time with other fishermen in a relaxed atmosphere is what draws us to the sport, keeps us coming back, and helps you better appreciate your opportunities. Now where is that Q-Beam?

Chuck fishes Sabine and Calcasieu Lakes from his home in Orange, TX. His specialties are light tackle and fly fishing for trout, reds, and flounder.

Phone 409-697-6111 Email cuzzle@gt.rr.com Website www.chucksguideservice.net

TSFMAG.com | 33

The fisherman starting a long wade under heavy sun should hydrate first and tote a water bottle.

Marcos Enriquez gets an early start on Mansfield reds but he’s ready for the climbing sun: long sleeves, lightweight face mask (around neck), and fingerless fishing gloves.

34 | September 2012

- Part Two

Wading is a Texas tradition

practiced by thousands of able-bodied coastal anglers each summer. The one-on-one contact makes each fish seem larger than life, and the jolting strike of a big speck or red at the end of a long cast takes the game to a higher level. No question wading is special.

But the “Texas Two-Step” does come with various risks. Some are blown out of proportion while others are quietly and seriously dangerous.

Last month, I focused on sharks and stingrays, the two marquee show-stoppers on the tide.

The actual threat of the “Grayfin Express” is hugely over-rated, but a sizeable shark at close range is a guaranteed heart-stopper. The shark is chasing your fish, not you, but during the energized seconds of splash and crash you sincerely wish you were in the nearest boat. If not somewhere in the Rocky Mountains.

The slashing barb from the “male flounder” is a more realistic danger, but the wader who shuffles, shuffles, shuffles to warn bottomlurking stingrays seldom has a problem. Many soggy old salts have waded for years without being barbed.

Here’s a look at some of the more-realistic threats to the coastal wader: SUN – Over-exposure to intense sun is dangerous, and the wader more so than the boater is apt to be caught unprepared. You’ve got nowhere to hide and you’re low to the blast of reflected glare.

At best, too much exposure can bring a painful case of sunburn; at worst, the nearest dermatologist shakes his head and points to a nasty-

STORY BY JOE DOGGETT looking chart. You’ve got skin cancer.

Melanomas are the killers, but squamous cell carcinomas are potentially dangerous, and basal cell carcinomas are scary.

Well, where were these learned doctors back in the ‘60s and ‘70s, when the idea was to get more rays, not less, to case-harden the beach lifestyle? Remember lathering on Johnson’s Baby Oil spiked with iodine?

Sun damage has a cumulative effect. Years of abuse working on that “dyno tan” can come back to get you, and a fresh burn during each wade is not a smart idea.

In addition to applying sun screen prior to each session, it’s good insurance to wear long sleeves and one of the lightweight “Buff” type face masks.

Under extreme conditions, lightweight fingerless fishing gloves are a helpful accessory; most old salts sport leathery, blotchy hands from years of sun-blasted baking.

While you’re at it, a hat with a wide brim provides more protection than the standard-issue ball cap. The floppy hat might look a little goofy but it prevents the neck and ears from getting fried. A strap keeps the bonnet where it belongs under a gusting wind or in a running boat. Don’t screw around with this; the sun is a real danger to coastal anglers.

DEHYDRATION – A good rule to remember when wading is, you never know how long you might be out there, alone and without support

Breaking waves mark the sandbars, but in rough conditions wader should be wearing a flotation vest. Treble-hooked plug, although excellent for big trout, can be dangerous when attempting to land fish amid rolling whitewater. A jig or spoon is safer.

TSFMAG.com | 35

Doggett might look like a dork in floppy hat, but the brim helps protect ears and neck from high sun.

systems. And summer heat can drain your reserves after several hours of pushing water.

Make a point to tank up before slipping over the side of the boat or leaving the beach vehicle. I learned this from jogging/running: Hydrate before you feel thirsty. Once you crave water, you’ve already taxed your system.

Tote a plastic water bottle on your wading belt. The water-bottle rig is fairly common on tropical flats (bonefish, etc.) but you seldom see it in Texas. Take a drink every so often; a few lusty swigs can be a big help if you get stranded or go into extra innings.

OVEREXERTION – This mainly applies to the considerable ranks of graying, balding boomers. Back when we were “agile, mobile, and hostile,” hard-charging across several miles of water was no big deal; now that we’re increasingly “fragile, docile, and fee-bile,” you don’t want to overdo it. You might have a stroke or something.

Seriously, be realistic about you physical capabilities. This especially is true during the heat of the day, and the anchored boat is a tiny white dot way over there, or you’re in the back of a goo-pie lake where you “sink to a knee” with each step.

Ironically, shallow water can be more taxing than deeper water; the waist-deep wader moving at a leisurely pace can sort of cheat by “leaning” on the water. But, regardless of depth, a forced march can whip you.

To hell with the redfish tailing along the far shoreline of the back lake. I know this sounds scandalous, but retreat. Know when to say when.

The young buck with a 31-inch waist might scoff but remember this: As the years creep by, those “washboard abs” have a distressing tendency to turn into “washtub abs.” And Father Time always has the final cast.

CURRENTS – Each summer swimmers are taken down by currents along the Texas coast. And, if you wade long enough, you might become an unwilling swimmer. The open beachfront and major passes are the most dangerous locations. The currents can be strong and the gouged channels are abrupt.

One step - you’re shuffling in chest-deep water; the next step - Oops, 36 | September 2012

Shell reefs often mark good fishing for bay waders but a stumble amid rough oysters can result in a nasty cut.

you’re in a “hat floater” channel!

Blundering over a dropoff is most apt to occur when you can’t read the bottom, such as early or late in the day or under heavy cloud cover.

Flat surf can be deceptive; with no breaking waves to mark the shallow bars, it’s hard to define the “guts.”

It’s a rookie mistake to be fooled by a passing cloud and bobble out over your head thinking the shadow marks the outside bar. Overshoot and keep paddling for open water, and the next bar you reach most likely will be in the lobby of the Riviera Hotel in Havana.

Sandy water with poor visibility is another risky situation; a misstep is really galling since unless you are targeting hardhead catfish you probably shouldn’t even be out there.

Panic is the big killer amid running currents or breaking waves. And, for the wader tangled up in a stringer and rod, it’s alarmingly easy to get flustered. Also worth note: When the bottom vanishes, six feet of depth might as well be the Mariana Trench if you freak out and start blindly flailing.

You can get into serious trouble within seconds by losing your cool.

It’s scary business. Try to stay focused and stroke across the flow, angling with it to the nearest shallow water. It won’t be far.

If you are wading in rough surf, the whitewater is your ally. It marks the bars and will help push you to the beach.

If things really get sketchy, ditch the rod. What’s several hundred dollars worth of tackle when you need the free movement of both arms to save your bloody, freaking life? There is, admittedly, something unacceptable about tossing a perfectly good Shimano Chronarch and a Titanium Green Rod but at least think about it.

Respect tidal flow, especially when it’s really pumping about midway through the stanza and you are waist- to chest-deep in a constricted area that accelerates the power. San Luis Pass is an excellent example of a danger zone. Rare is the summer when the gaping maw of the pass doesn’t put at least one unwary wader in serious trouble.

Sustained wind, alone, can generate strong currents and powerful waves along open beaches. Side-shore winds are most dangerous because they rake up (south/southwest) or down (east) the coast, creating river-like currents running parallel to the beach. A windgenerated rip can set up with alarming force even when not much surf is showing.

Currents are generated by winds, waves, and tides. Regardless of source, they demand caution.

They are silent and patient and they can take you down. My strong advice is to don a proper flotation vest whenever you wade near a big pass or major channel, or on the outside surf bar. They don’t call it a “life jacket” for nothing.

CUTS – The coastal wader leaving a blood trail on a green tide typically catches a hook or stumbles over a bottom obstruction (I am omitting getting stabbed by a stingray barb, discussed last month).

Of course, hooks are not unique to wading; in fact, the boater amid tight quarters runs the terrible risk of getting smacked by a side-arm swing from a careless companion. But the wader is most likely to get slashed or barbed when trying to land or unhook a fish. This is because everything is slippery and you have no sure-fire way of subduing the fish.

Hand-grabbing is most dangerous with plugs trailing two or three sets of trebles. And small fish can be more risky than large ones. This is because a brag-class speck or red usually is “played out” by the time it is within reach. It also offers a firm grip across the shoulder.

Conversely, the school speck comes in quickly, full of pep, squirting here, slipping there, hard to clamp between thumb and fingers.

The surf wader amid breaking waves really is at risk. Just as make your stab, a sneaker wave unloads on the bar, knocking you sideways and driving the trailing treble from a 52M MirrOlure into the ball of your prune-wrinkled thumb.

I’m not saying don’t use plugs (they are great for big trout), but if conditions are rough or you’re into rapid-fire “jug” trout action, life is much safer with a single-hook lure such as a jig or spoon.

The more I think about it, a small landing net is good insurance for small fish bouncing around in the surf. If nothing else, it keeps your hand several feet from the impact zone if a jacked-up shark shoots in to grab the fish. You can tuck the net under your wading belt, along the small of your back, ready for a quick draw when needed.

Bottom clutter is another hazard. Man-made junk from broken-down beach houses is an ongoing issue in the surf near subsiding beach developments, and the bay wader must be on the alert for old pilings, abandoned crab traps, things like that. The wrong step can result in a bad cut on the foot or lower leg.

Oyster beds are another threat in many bays and back lakes. The shells cling together, forming irregular clumps that are easy to bumble over. Of course, redfish are uncommonly fond of oyster reefs, so you often find yourself staggering and lurching among the bladed and barnacled shells.

Ankle-high neoprene booties with hard soles will turn most shells but a hurried step or, worse, an awkward stumble can result in a major cut - especially if you throw your hands and arms out to cushion the fall. There are no cushions amid oyster reefs, only more cuts.

And the oyster cuts can be dirty, easily infected. Perhaps more important than a backup 1/2-ounce copper Sprite spoon is a first-aid kit in the boat or vehicle. Not to mention an updated tetanus shot.

VIBRIO WHATEVER – I’m not sure what this stuff is, but don’t want any part of it. I suppose it’s been around for years but, until the past decade or so, most soggy two-steppers were blissfully unaware of the virulent danger.

It’s officially named vibrio vulnificus (vibrio for short), a nasty bacteria carried in saltwater. My impression is that vibrio infection occurs most often in the hot weather months. And it seems most fertile in the bays, opposed to the open Gulf.

Statistics seem to support the fact that the vibrio bacteria enters through a fresh cut or abrasion all the more reason not to fall over the aforementioned oyster reef. It’s also surmised that individuals with weakened immune systems (whatever that means) are most likely to be infected.

But, regardless of circumstances, if it gets you the effects are prompt and appalling. Apparently, there’s no doubt a serious problem is erupting. If a cut blows up after a wade, waste no time in reaching qualified medical help.

This stuff can kill you. Something like half-a-dozen fatalities occur from vibrio in Texas each year (and several times that number are infected). Of course, to put things in perspective, hundreds of thousands of people get wet each summer along the Texas coast.

I wish I knew more about it, but I just don’t.

But I do know this: Add up all the risks, over-rated and otherwise, and I’m still not going to stop wade fishing. And I’ll bet you don’t either.

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STORY BY JOE RICHARD A Galveston billfish boat trolls slowly past either Little Sister or one of the Cerveza Rigs, each built in water deep enough for billfish. This vessel carries four fuel drums on the forward deck.

38 | September 2012

Fire on the boat

often has grim consequences, if not for the crew, then the vessel itself. The sudden fire and sinking of Let it Ride, a 50-foot Bertram heading offshore during the Port Aransas Deep Sea Roundup tournament on July 14, came as a wake-up call to many boat owners. The thought of young crew members jumping for their lives 35 miles offshore that day has left fishermen uneasy…how could this happen with a modern boat running with safer diesel engines?

As described in the Port Aransas South Jetty, the fire came without warning and may have been electrical.

Heading offshore, the crew was anticipating a day of tournament fishing, but the salon began filling with smoke. The crew donned life jackets and the smoke grew worse. Another tournament vessel, Hideout, was apparently on the same course and soon pulled up close by. The Bertram’s crew then jumped overboard and spent only a few minutes in the warm Gulf before being pulled to safety. Flames erupted behind them, and they watched Let it Ride burn and sink very quickly.

Further details for public consumption were scarce, as they generally are soon after a boat sinking, pending a Coast Guard report and insurance claim. You just don’t see published, finally detailed reports of marine

TSFMAG.com | 39

Different Fires & Extinguishers Here’s some info on different boat fire situations: Class A involves combustible solids such as wood, paper and cloth, or anything that leaves ash upon burning.

Class B includes flammable liquids that can explode such as gasoline, oil and kerosene. Class C covers electrical fires.

Class D involves combustible metals such as magnesium. While water can be used to extinguish Class A fires, it should never be used to extinguish gasoline, oil or electrical fires as it can make them spread. >Carbon dioxide fire extinguishers are appropriate for class B and C fires. These extinguishers are not recommended for class A, ash-based fires, as they could spread fire when blasting with high-pressure carbon dioxide gas. >There are two varieties of dry chemical extinguishers appropriate for boat fires. These include sodium bicarbonate, an alkaline material, for class B and C; and, potassium bicarbonate, purple “K”, also alkaline and for class B and C fires. Dry chemical extinguishers are not effective on class A fires. While they often leave a messy, corrosive residue and are difficult to clean, they are more effective and easier for a novice to use. >Foam extinguishers put out class A and B fires. These extinguishers have a water-based material to quench class A fires as well as smother and separate vapor layers in class B fires. Foam extinguishers are a newer technology.

There are various safety precautions to be taken with fire extinguishers on boats. Inspect them monthly to make sure they’re undamaged and stored properly. Mount them where they are readily accessible. Check gauges to ensure they are still charged. Check seals and weigh the extinguishers to make sure they meet the minimum requirements on the label. Replace broken hoses and check for nozzle obstructions. Make sure extinguishers are Coast Guard-approved.

40 | September 2012

This center console erupted in flames offshore, and the crew that was saved was soon watching safely from another boat just upwind.

sinkings, except sketchy coverage in the media. Yet the Gulf bottom is littered with wrecks from the past 50 years, weekend misadventures from the recreational fishing industry.

Boats are considered almost fire-safe these days, and even bay boats have stopped using small, external fuel tanks. I’ve never actually witnessed a boat fire during my too-many years on the Gulf, and that can lead to a casual attitude that is probably fairly common. Sure, I have life jackets and one fire extinguisher. But how accessible in a quick, bewildering fire? What would I do if fire suddenly erupted—fight it with the extinguisher Let it Ride burns some 35 miles off Port Aransas. The crew has already jumped ship and is safely on another tournament boat.

TSFMAG.com | 41

Cooking on the Boat While open fires are highly frowned upon in boats, there are exceptions. Sailboat crews are used to a month or more on long ocean crossings, and that’s why they carry stainless steel charcoal grills that hang over the side. In a pinch, they can instantly dump hot coals overboard. I’ve seen these grills on a few powerboats, used by fishermen determined to have a hot meal—even during closed snapper season. Apparently it’s perfectly legal to consume your own fish offshore, regardless of species. (Just don’t bring extra fillets back to the dock). Most anglers prudently refrain from cooking on the boat and stick with venerable favorites like Vienna sausage and my go-to offshore favorite, mustard sardines on crackers.

Back in our youth during those three-day kingfish tournaments, we stayed offshore the entire time to save fuel. But we grew weary of cold food, and so one year carried along an Old Smokey and charcoal. Our Mako center console wasn’t considered safe for a barbecue, so we climbed a small platform 60 miles offshore and set up the Smokey, which soon spouted 3-foot flames before settling down. We were so proud of the butterflied scamp grouper on the grill (covered in butter and Tony’s), and also the fresh Shish-kabob, that we took pictures. The Gulf was glassy and the meal exquisite. However, we later found out that open flames are bad for gas production platforms. A friend familiar with the industry said many offshore platforms leak unscented natural gas, that can’t be detected by fishermen.

He said he hoped it was a windy day during our offshore repast. I told him the Gulf was glassy after a small shower had passed. He just stared in amazement.

Platform gas leakage in calm weather is something to consider, even when cooking on a boat off the Texas coast.

Anchored over a snapper rock or drifting is likely a better venue than cooking alongside a platform. Years ago one fishing boat supposedly set off a rig fire, just with the spark from their outboard motor. The Gulf was so calm, a massive plume of invisible natural gas hung over the structure.

There was a hellish flash and the two fishermen dove overboard, but raincoats they were wearing melted in the fire. Their injuries (or how they in fact survived) were never fully explained.

Cooking fish on the boat without fire is far safer by using a microwave, but only billfish boats carry that option.

However, even small boats can carry a bowl filled with a ceviche pre-mix made at home of lime juice, cilantro and other favorites; chunks of fresh fish are added when caught.

I’ve lately been thinking how we used to make tasty ceviche on our multi-day, bluewater trips offshore, without fire on the boat. Why not try it on today’s 12-hour trips? You can fish while the ceviche “cooks,” and there’s no flame on the boat. In the spirit of no-fire cooking offshore, I’ve included a tasty ceviche recipe, where lemon and/or lime juice cooks fresh fish. It’s quite tasty and far safer than a pre-wrapped sandwich from the nearest Stop-and-Rob, processed perhaps two months ago in New Jersey.

42 | September 2012

(if in reach), or jump overboard? Would the boat soon explode like in a James Bond movie? Hard to say. All you can do is keep a good extinguisher strapped within reach of the helm, where you won’t have to take even a step to reach it. Seconds count; spray down a flame within 10 seconds, and you might save the boat and a long swim. Electrical smoke pouring from the walls of a billfish boat salon, while offshore, would seem beyond remedy, however.

One obvious fire hazard on boats is transferring fuel. Billfish boats carry sturdy, 200-gallon bags of diesel on the stern deck that can be pumped straight into the tanks below, then folded and put away. I’ve also seen them carry 30-gallon plastic tanks tied to the bow rail, though wave impact up there can be considerable in bad weather. I haven’t seen how they maneuvered those barrels back near the stern for transferring. During our long kingfish trips we used 30- and 15-gallon plastic drums, the latter easily lifted by one guy, and two people to lift the 30. We simply set each barrel on top of something and siphoned with a one-inch clear hose, preferably in calm weather. Nobody smoked in our crews, so we didn’t worry about fire. One day in two-foot chops a careless crewman let a drum topple over, spilling gasoline on deck. It apparently drained out the scuppers, because spilled fuel below decks might have found a spark from an automatic bilge pump. That could have triggered a fire that an extinguisher would have been hard-pressed to stop. In which case we should have kept those life preservers within reach, if not wearing them. But we were fearless in those days, and guardian angels followed us around like seagulls.

The safety factor in two boats fishing within hailing distance can’t be overemphasized. If one suddenly gets into trouble, the second is right there for assistance.

Ceviche Recipe Preparation time: 15 minutes to prepare, 3-4 hours to marinate. Make the same day you catch fish.

2 lbs of firm, fresh red snapper fillets (or other firm-fleshed fish), cut into 1/2 inch pieces, completely deboned.

1/2 cup of fresh squeezed lime juice 1/2 cup of fresh squeezed lemon juice 1/2 red onion, finely diced 1 cup of chopped fresh seeded tomatoes 1 serrano chili, seeded and finely diced 2 teaspoons of salt Dash of ground oregano Dash of Tabasco or a light pinch of cayenne pepper Cilantro Avocado Tortillas or tortilla chips In a non-reactive casserole dish, either Pyrex or ceramic, place the fish, onion, tomatoes, chili, salt, Tabasco, and oregano. Cover with lime and lemon juice. Let sit covered in icechest for an hour, then stir, making sure more of the fish gets exposed to the acidic lime and lemon juices. Let sit for several hours, giving time for the flavors to blend.

That first bite of good ceviche offshore will make your eyes roll back in your head—and there won’t be an open flame in sight.

TSFMAG.com | 43

This looks good, add some wind and it looks great. This is what I am looking for along windward shorelines.

J AY WAT K I N S

ASK THE PRO

THINK LIKE A PREDATOR! If you have spent a day on the water with me, attended one of my Fish Smart seminars, or purchased any of my 20plus DVDs; you have no doubt heard me state (probably more times than you care to recall) that an angler needs to be able to think like a fish.

Over the past thirty-five years I have had countless wades back to the boat with time to think about all the things I think I have learned and, in many cases, how much is still needed to be learned. A background in the outdoors/biology field has left me with the belief that I can sometimes think like the predators I pursue. My dad was a biology teacher/coach. He always wanted to be introduced this way as he felt his best skill was teaching. Good coaches are great teachers as well so I believe those two go hand in hand.

My love for the entire outdoors left me with a very good visual of what makes things happen the way they do and why they do. This early-acquired love and knowledge has been of tremendous benefit to me in my saltwater guiding career.

August is our hottest month and one of the two months of the year when tides can be lowest. Low water equates to super-heating at Glenn Hornsby with the surface and in the shallows so nice summer trout. anglers must adapt accordingly. I do 44 | September 2012

not guide at night so nighttime wades are out. Used this tactic a little in my younger years but soon learned that I preferred keeping my nights open just in case…well you know what I mean. Now older and married so maybe nighttime charters should be added but you probably already know what this means too.

It is my belief that during August trout turn to nocturnal feeding patterns. I believe this is true of larger trout much of the time but, for sure during the low tides and heat of August.

Knowing this really doesn’t put you any closer to catching them if you don’t know what it is trout look for as far as nighttime raids on the shallow flats and shorelines are concerned.

First they need an ample and predictable food supply. Then they need bottom structure for camouflage and, third they prefer a quick deepwater outlet. This allows for a low calorie burn when entering and exiting the feeding grounds.

I prefer windward grassy coves with hard sand beaches. These coves need to have offshore dropoffs with distinct underwater points and a bottom that has a variety of guts, sandbars and moguls along with submerged grassbeds and grassy edges. The grass attracts the fish as

Pam Johnson, pretty lady with a solid redfish. One of many taken along guts, bars, and grassbeds.

C O N TA C T

it provides camouflage. The guts, bars and mogul bottom create current disturbances as tides and wind-driven water pushes along the shoreline. The grass is the predator’s ambush point and the moving water delivers the food, so make your cast to the grassbeds and then allow the current to deliver it naturally for you.

My thought is that the trout spend the nighttime hours working the shallows, enjoying the cloak of darkness and cooler water temperatures. The hard shoreline creates a wall; one the trout can use to drive bait against, making for easy kills.

As the sun climbs in the eastern sky, trout exit the coves a short distance to 3-4 foot depths, holding tight to the grassbeds along the dropoff, taking advantage of the current shearing off the bars, disorienting the bait.

Pay attention to the mullet activity along the dropoff. Mullet running the dropoff react to the presence of predators even when not being attacked. Instinct provides them the ability to react to the mere presence of predators. By slow-wading the dropoff we can fish shallow in the pre-dawn and then simply turn 180 degrees and cast to the deeper side of the drop. Nothing I like better than a cove that has several shallow sandbars with grass scattered along the edges along a 3 to 4 foot drop.

By mid-morning it can get down right ridiculous once you’ve located the holding areas. Never is it more important than now for one to be able to put the brakes on and stand back and let it happen. Just last week we found such an area and caught three to five pound trout for nearly two hours. These were fish I had not been seeing or catching over the three weeks prior in any numbers.

Let me sum up, I want to describe what I see in my mind’s eye that gives me the confidence to apply this tactic anywhere I fish along the middle to lower Texas coast.

Bait has been thick along a certain shoreline for weeks prior to the dropping of the tides and brutal August sun that pushes the thermometer toward 100° daily. Calm nights produce water clarity up shallow over heavily grass-laden coves that hurt daytime results for me. Slicks and nervous baitfish confirm that trout the size I seek are living in the area. With the application of a few brain cells I draw a comparison to the lion documentaries I enjoy on the Discovery channel.

The lions feed by night and lie in the shade during the day to escape daytime heat, with full bellies. I see where lions spend their day, not interested in hunting or eating, but something tells me if a gazelle or other easy prey wanders near they would kill it and maybe eat it later that evening.

So if trout possess the same predator instinct, feeding shallow at night and then laying up, and my daytime efforts in those same shallows produce no strikes or sightings, I can still see them in my mind’s eye. I must then look for the closest, coolest areas to find them.

Enter my shallow coves with cooler underwater structure nearby they can lie up on, still close to their next meal. In my mind they might not need to eat but, given opportunity to rise from their slumber and score an easy kill (my lure pulled right under their nose), we can still find what we are looking for. Oh, and while trout have no claws, they have a decent set of fangs.

Bottom line, you have to see it through your mind’s eye and believe they are there. Then you can catch them. Come see me in August and early September and let’s go lion hunting.

May your fishing always be catching.

-Guide Jay Watkins

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Jay Watkins has been a full-time fishing guide at Rockport, TX, for more than 20 years. Jay specializes in wading year-round for trout and redfish with artificial lures. Jay covers the Texas coast from San Antonio Bay to Corpus Christi Bay. Telephone Email Website

361-729-9596 Jay@jaywatkins.com www.jaywatkins.com

Skyward Camouflage Clothing Toll-free 1-888-359-5644 TSFMAG.com | 45

Chris Mapp’s Boat Maintenance Tips When you get back to the dock from a day of fishing, load your boat on the trailer and pull the drain plugs, how much water should you expect to see draining from the hull – if any?

This raises a lot of great questions.

The first thing you need to discover is the whether the water is fresh or salty, this is the taste test. Do not take a drink; one drop on a fingertip is all it takes.

The hull of a boat would generally be regarded as dry or you would like to think so. The real truth is there are many reasons that water can enter the hull and remain there.

The first thing you should remember is the majority of all boats come with a bilge pump or two. If you do not have one, I can’t stress enough the importance of installing one with a float switch or installing a fully automatic bilge pump system.

Water can enter your hull through the rear drain plugs, especially if they are older and the rubber has lost the elasticity to complete a good seal.

Sometimes the drain plug tube or receptacle fitting has become loose or the silicone around the tube-to-hull seal has become weak. Age and chemicals (meaning fuel or cleaning products) can degrade this area.

Plastic drain plugs deteriorate from UV light and chemical exposure.

Threaded brass and stainless drain plugs are considered better in some

46 | September 2012

Got water in

your hull?

ways but in no way immune to sealing problems of their own.

The livewell fill and recirculation pumps are another common source of problems - where the cartridge fits into the holder coming through the hull or any connection on the fill or drain side.

I recommend having a marine brass/bronze shut off valve any place water has entry through the hull to a pump of any kind, or an exit such as a drain.

Rain is a strong possibility on boats stored outdoors with the bow down. Always raise the trailer jack to the highest point when storing or parking for any period. Always pull the drain plugs when storing.

Always remember to reinstall prior to launching. Even boaters with decades of experience have made this mistake.

My conclusion is that some amount of water (usually small) is 100% normal and knowing the amount your boat takes on during your average fishing day is important. Any increase in the amount indicates a problem. Ditto an automatic bilge pump that seems to cycle more frequently than normal.

There are numerous other areas and topics to discuss; rub rails, seal between inside liner cap and hull, bow eye fittings, exterior hull vents, etc. The important thing is to know your boat and know some water is to be expected…but keep an eye on it!

Chris Mapp coastalbendmarine.com chrismapp@coastalbendmarine.com | 361.983.4841

Reels, Rods and Lures that fish can’t resist

Waterloo Casting Rod • 1-piece graphite blank • 8 line guides plus tip • Medium-fast action

Heddon Chug n Spook

Designed to spit a large amount of water while producing a walk-the-dog motion

Shimano Chronarch Reel

• Gear ratio: 5.5:1, 6.4:1, or 7.0:1 • Seven bearing system

CASEY SMARTT

F LY F I S H I N G

ONE MORE CAST

48 | September 2012

Get Involved I frequently get inquiries from folks who are considering taking up fly fishing but don’t know much about it. I usually suggest they find a fly fishing club in their area and attend a meeting or two to get started.

Nearly every metropolitan area in Texas has at least one club that hosts regularly scheduled meetings, fly tying get-togethers, and sponsored outings. They are a great place to start.

Another way to get involved is to attend a fly tying or fly fishing show. Events like the annual Fly Festival in Houston, Fishing Tackle unlimited’s Fall Expo, the FFF Gulf Coast Conclave, and the GRTu Troutfest are all relatively big events where you can try out tackle, visit with vendors, and attend seminars. If you want to see tackle, casting and fly tying at its finest, attend one of these events.

Lead by Example When it comes to human behavior, peer groups are powerful things. The simple fact is that people, especially children, copy what they observe around them…right or wrong, because they see it as accepted behavior. As sportsmen, we each have a unique responsibility to recognize this and to lead by example.

If we tear up the seagrass beds with our boats,

video

Check out Casey’s Fly Fishing Video Library at www.caseysmartt.com

so will others. If we leave behind garbage, others will too. If we take more than we give, there will soon be nothing left. The best way I know to make a positive influence on those around you is to be a good role model. Step up. Be a leader and show those around you a better way. Most of them will follow.

Catch and Release I began to practice catch and release, honestly, out of laziness. I really didn’t want to clean and package fish at the end of the day so I never kept any. But I soon found that I enjoyed the feeling of letting fish go.

It was sort of a game- they let me catch them and in return I let them go. These days I let everything go because I have grown to believe it is the most sustainable practice. unfortunately catch and release, like many other issues, has become a volatile topic. Enough so that I am not going to stir the pot other than to say I feel strongly that catch and release will be the only way our future fisheries will withstand the pressure put on them. It is a simple a matter of numbers. When one adds in the fact that modern technology has enabled the average recreational fisherman to harvest fish with ever-increasing efficiency, the outcome seems clear. No doubt this is something lawmakers will have to hammer out in the years to come.

Patience Remember sitting on the banks of Grandpa’s tank waiting for a catfish to bite? It seemed to take forever, and while we watched and waited for that draped line to straighten out, he kept reminding us “to be patient.” Patience was one of the first angling lessons many of us learned and, in our modern world of instant results, it has been all but lost.

Boats are faster, tackle more efficient, electronics are better… all these things get us what we want quicker and more efficiently. But what about the journey? What about the simple joy of fishing for what it is?

Let it Be One of the most enlightening things I ever did on the flats was to not cast at a big group of tailing reds. And the only reason I did it was because on this particular day, we had caught so many that I was taking a break. But by quietly observing those redfish instead of plopping a fly in the middle of them and breaking up the group, I had an opportunity to actually see them move, feed, and interact.

I watched as small shrimp jumped out of their path, saw them jockeying for position on a particularly inviting stretch of mud, and in general just got to see redfish just being redfish. Not only was it really cool, but it gave me a better feel for how the next group would move.

These days I frequently will let a fish pass if it gives me a good chance to watch its behavior. If you ever can find the nerve to watch a gamefish instead of casting at it, give it a shot. It’s a worthy exercise.

C O N TA C T

Nearly ten years ago, Pam and Everett Johnson extended the opportunity to write the Fly Fishing column in what was then Gulf Coast Connections magazine. Having spent the better part of my life devoted to fly fishing, I was excited and honored to be considered for the position. Everett gave me some advice before I got started. He said, “Our goals are to promote education, conservation, and the enjoyment of fishing and the outdoors. As far as your column goes, I won’t tell you what topics to write about… you are free to choose them. But I will always expect you to draw on your experience and show honesty and integrity in your work. I won’t accept gossip or BS, and I need your stuff in on time.” They were simple, sound, solid words.

Over the past decade I have done my best to remember Everett’s advice. I have tried to share what I’ve learned, and hoped these pages have helped others become better fly fishermen and fly tyers and led them to more success on the water. But most importantly, I hope these things have led to a greater awareness of conservation and responsible stewardship of the natural world.

I have two growing boys that enjoy fishing, and we have spent some very special times together on the water. But they also love baseball, golf, band, hunting, and all the other great things kids like to do. The reality is, at the end of the day there aren’t as many extra hours as there used to be. So… the time has come for me to step down as the Fly Fishing writer for Texas Saltwater Fishing Magazine.

I will always be grateful to Pam and Everett and the readers of this magazine for giving me the opportunity to write, create, teach, and learn. It has been a wonderful journey and truly one of the great experiences of my life.

In the short term, I’ll keep contributing fly fishing content to my website and will do my best to answer questions from anyone who is willing to ask. There are also several book projects in the works that hopefully will reach completion in the not-too-distant future. For now, here are some parting thoughts.

Casey Smartt has been fly fishing and tying flies for 30 years.

When he cannot make it to the coast he is happy chasing fish on Texas inland lakes and rivers.

Telephone Email Website

830-237-6886 caseysmartt@att.net www.caseysmartt.com TSFMAG.com | 49

Bird Island Boat Ramp can be a busy place during summer. (TPWD photo)

B y A d r i a n a L e i v a | F i s h & W i l d l i f e Te c h n i c i a n Upper Laguna Madre Field Station | Corpus Christi

FIELD NOTES

BIRD ISLAND BASIN BOAT RAMP:

GATEWAY TO BAFFIN BAY Texas has long been known for the big game-fish being caught here for as long as anyone has been keeping record. This is due to the many different types of ecosystems found along the Texas coast that harbor different habitats which, in balance, create a unique world-class fishery we Texans can feel proud of. One of those ecosystems is the hypersaline Upper Laguna Madre (ULM) and its back bays such as Baffin Bay, Alazan Bay, Laguna Salada and Cayo del Grullo which historically have produced many trophy trout, bull reds and black drum or, as we like to call them, “Baffin grouper.”

The Upper Laguna Madre can be accessed through 16 public boat ramps. Texas Parks and Wildlife Department (TPWD) routinely monitors these ramps by counting boat trailers and interviewing fishermen. Overall the number of trailers at every boat ramp has increased within the last 20 years. Fishing pressure, a calculation based on the number of people fishing multiplied by the number of hours spent fishing, for private parties (non-guided trips) along the coast has increased and, in the ULM it has tripled since 1991. The most popular boat ramps in the ULM are Bird Island Basin Boat Ramp (BIBBR), Marker 37, Billings, Clem’s, Bluff Landing and Kaufer Park. However, data show that BIBBR has been the most popular boat ramp for several years to the point where, in the summer months, if you don’t arrive around sunrise you may not find a place to park.

BIBBR is located inside Padre Island National Seashore (PINS), which is the longest stretch of undeveloped barrier island in the world, and is dominated by tidal flats, mud flats and grasslands. The parking lot has 114 spaces available for vehicles with attached boat trailers of which two are marked for handicapped parking. There are another six parking spaces for vehicles without trailers with two designated for handicapped. This boat ramp 50 | September 2012

has the capacity to launch and retrieve at least four boats simultaneously which improves the flow of traffic during the busy summer days. The popularity of this boat ramp can be attributed to several other reasons.

The area around BIBBR is still very pristine. This area is surrounded by the King and Kenedy ranches to the west and PINS to the east. This part of the Laguna Madre is mostly undeveloped which has contributed to the conservation of many marine resources and different habitats that are utilized by different wildlife and bird species, such as the redhead duck, Aythya Americana.

Seventy-five percent of the population of redhead ducks winter in both the Laguna Madre of Texas and Tamaulipas, Mexico. However, some manmade changes have occurred that have changed the dynamics of the Laguna Madre. The dredging of the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway (GIWW) has improved circulation between the ULM and the Lower Laguna Madre (LLM) as well as the Gulf of Mexico, and moderated the salinity levels. This has increased the coverage of seagrasses which support a healthy population of redhead ducks and vegetated nursery areas for juvenile fish. Probably the primary reason BIBBR is so popular is that it is a gateway to several excellent fishing spots such as Yarbrough Flats, The Land Cut, Nine-mile Hole and Baffin Bay. Baffin Bay is a secondary bay to the ULM. It too harbors different types of habitat such as serpulid reefs, beach rock outcrops, seagrasses and bare bay bottom.

The salinity is generally higher in Baffin Bay than the rest of the ULM. TPWD gill net data show that greater numbers of trout are caught in Baffin Bay with a greater frequency of these fish being larger (Table 1). Hypersaline environments are commonly associated with low species diversity and low productivity as fewer organisms can tolerate higher salt concentrations, but the ULM is a

unique ecosystem with high productivity due to the recycling of seagrasses. Thanks to this dynamic system you never know what might hit your bait. For example, on January 21, 2012 a 23-inch gag grouper was landed at BIBBR. Another unique catch around BIBBR this spring was four grey snapper caught and released from TPWD gill nets.

Angler surveys are another way TPWD monitors fishing activity.

Creel data over the last 20 years for BIBBR showed the highest trout and red drum catch rates (Table 2) for the five busiest ramps surrounding the ULM. Unfortunately though, higher catch rates does not automatically mean launching from BIBBR will guarantee fish in the box as there is still some skill, or luck, involved with finding them.

Not all trips leaving the BIBBR are day trips. This is because there are an estimated 200-300 land and floating cabins located from the mouth of Baffin Bay to the southern end of the Land Cut. TPWD data show that 46.7% of all trips greater than 12 hours originate at BIBBR, followed by Marker 37, with a mean trip length of 21.5 hours.

So, if you are heading south to launch at BIBBR there are several things to keep in mind. First, because this is a national park, there are fees both to enter the park and to use the ramp. Primitive restrooms are available. There is no electricity at the fish cleaning station so don’t forget your old-fashioned fillet knife. While park rangers continuously patrol the area, it is always a good idea to keep your vehicles locked and your valuables out of sight. The National Park Service has also recently installed a “no motor” zone near the windsurfing beach marked by white buoys with orange stripes to reduce the chances of accidents between boaters and windsurfers. Always be safe and courteous to other anglers, boaters, and other bay users. TPWD will continue using the best available data and scientific tools to monitor fish populations to be able to make sound decisions and adopt measures to ensure appropriate management of our resources for present and future generations.

The area around BIBBR “ is still very pristine... This part of the Laguna Madre is mostly undeveloped which has contributed to the conservation of many marine resources and different habitats that are utilized by different wildlife and bird species.

”

Check the TPWD Outdoor Annual, your local TPWD Law Enforcement office, or www. tpwd.state.tx.us for more information.

Table 1. Total numbers of spotted seatrout and numbers of large trout caught in TPWD gill nets during 2007-2011.

Year

Fish Caught ULM

Baffin Bay

Fish Caught >29in ULM

Number of Samples

Baffin Bay

ULM

Baffin Bay

2007

22

41

0

2

49

41

2008

32

51

2

9

57

32

2009

28

41

1

7

55

35

2010

19

31

0

0

48

42

2011

18

36

1

9

52

38

Table 2. Recreational angler catches per hour for red drum and spotted seatrout at ULM boat ramps.

Red Drum Catch Rates 1986-2010 Boat Ramp

Spotted Seatrout Catch Rates 1986-2010

Weekday

Weekend

Overall

Bird Island

0.06

0.05

0.05

Bluff Landing

0.06

0.03

Marker 37

0.05

Billing’s

Boat Ramp

Weekday

Weekend

Overall

Bird Island

0.29

0.22

0.25

0.04

Bluff Landing

0.28

0.17

0.21

0.04

0.04

Marker 37

0.16

0.11

0.13

0.05

0.03

0.03

Billing’s

0.16

0.10

0.12

Clem’s

0.04

0.03

0.03

Clem’s

0.16

0.10

0.12

Kaufer

0.02

0.02

0.02

Kaufer

0.25

0.18

0.21

TSFMAG.com | 51

Keep that rod high to clear the coral.

C A P T. S COT T N U L L

K AYA K F I S H I N G

BELIZE II Here it is a month later and my mind is still on Turneffe Island. That place has gotten into my soul and now I find myself daydreaming about being back in paradise most every day. And for the hopelessly addicted sight-caster it really is paradise. Last month I related the trials and tribulations of permit fishing as well as the joy of finally getting a tarpon on the fly. Those are great memories and obviously played a huge part in the enjoyment of the trip, but the kicker had to be the bonefish.

I realize most well-traveled fly guys would rank the tarpon and permit over the bonefish, but ask just a group of fly fisherman who haven’t caught any of the three and I bet the bonefish would win in a landslide.

Since I was a youngster I always wanted to chase the silver ghosts of the flats. Throughout the years I must’ve read hundreds of stories about bonefishing in addition to watching countless TV shows with entire episodes devoted to stalking these cool fish. They get a lot of pub.

What I like about bones is they are doable. By that I mean if you do your part, they’ll do theirs. By no means 52 | September 2012

am I saying they’re easy, but with a reasonable amount of skill you should be able to land one. They sort of remind me of our redfish in that way. It takes patience to get in position to get your shot, it takes some thought to figure out what fly to throw and it takes skill to properly present the fly. Do those three correctly and a bone or redfish will

Very small flies that worked.

Camille and her first bonefish.

likely eat. The fight may not always be exactly fair, but again you can accomplish the landing with a reasonable amount of skill.

I like doing things I can work at and get good without relying so much on luck. Tarpon on the other hand require a lot of luck. There’s definitely skill involved, but luck plays a huge part in getting a good hookset, keeping the lure or fly pinned and not having some form of game-ending equipment failure. Permit? I’m convinced that permit require the stars to be properly aligned, a rabbit’s foot in your pocket and a four leaf clover tucked under your hat just to get one to eat.

Maybe that’s just me, but I don’t think so. Tarpon and permit become obsessions that drive you nuts. Redfish and bones are challenging entertainment.

Now on to the fish story. A few weeks before our trip my bride announces that she wants to catch a bonefish on the fly. A worthy goal, but she’d never even attempted to cast a fly rod in the yard much less use one to go fishing. She works at Fishing Tackle Unlimited around some great fly casters and is married to a fly guide, but you can’t pick up a decent cast through osmosis. It was agreed that she needed casting lessons. It was also agreed upon that I would not be the one giving said lesson. Those of you who are married understand and those who are not will one day figure it out.

Weeks pass and no lessons are taken. Two days before we depart our good friend Banning Collins with TFO rods comes to town. He just happens to be an awesome casting instructor and a sucker for a good challenge. The lesson starts and I promise to just sit back and watch.

Promise broken, I made a comment and got the look. So I did the proper thing and walked away. Thirty minutes later I poked my head around the corner to see my wife rolling out these beautiful casts. They weren’t long, but they were solid on technique. Inside of two hours she was casting plenty good enough to go fishing. Awesome.

That was on Thursday, fast forward to Sunday morning. We meet up with our guide for the first morning with six days of fishing ahead. As we’re going over what kind of fishing we’d like to do, Camille tells him she’s never fly fished and wants to catch a bone on the fly. I’m not sure what was actually going through his mind, but his response was perfect.

“We can do that.” And off we went. After about a fifteen minute boat TSFMAG.com | 53

Camille and Daniel on a bonefish flat.

ride Daniel slows the skiff to a stop and drops the anchor. Picture in your mind what you think a tropical bonefish flat next to a coral reef dotted with islands of palms should look like. This was better. We donned our wading boots, grabbed the fly rods and slipped into the air-clear water. I dropped back to take a few photos and then caught up just in time for Daniel to point out a huge school of tailing bones.

I don’t really know what I was expecting for my first encounter, but a hundred or so bonefish happily tailing in a few inches of water was way

One of my bones.

54 | September 2012

beyond expectations.

The next thirty minutes was pretty much a blur of excitement, frustration and ultimately satisfaction. There were missed shots, missed bites, break-offs, lines wrapped around coral heads and a few that just simply came unhooked. We were getting a crash course in what not to do and constant coaching from a very patient guide. Then it all came together. A nice school was approaching with the sun in my favor.

I waited until they hit an open area free of too much coral. The fly landed perfectly and the take was obvious. A quick strip-set and the bone raced away. This time I managed to hold the rod tip high enough to clear the coral snags and eventually brought him to hand. With the monkey off my back the nice relaxed feeling set in and I started doing more things right than wrong. Landing that first bone was sweet, but my favorite part of the morning was when I quit fishing and just started watching my wife as she stalked and landed her first fish on the fly. I was proud beyond words that Camille had been casting a fly rod for a grand total of less than three hours and already experienced success. That’s way better than the learning curve I went through.

The bonefish at Turneffe Island are typically two to four pounds, a bit on the small side compared with many other popular bonefish destinations. There are however, a good many bigger fish. I had one school of a couple dozen cruise by that were easily six to eight pounds and Daniel’s best on the island topped twelve. That’s a true trophy in anybody’s book. What they lack in size they make up for in numbers and availability. Any time we got tired of endlessly casting for tarpon or were frustrated by permit we could scoot out onto a nearby flat and locate a school or two. Many of these schools easily number over a hundred fish and seldom fewer than thirty. The bonefish population on Turneffe is ridiculous.

There is also something really unique and cool about this fishery, it is the only known location in the world to have golden bones. They are a color variant that shows up on the dark turtle grass as a gleaming gold fish, almost koi-like.

golden bone was easing past and he was just inside the near edge. The cast was perfect and the take was immediate. I had him. The school raced away and I could trace my line straight to the brightly-colored fleeing fish. Then the school parted. My line went left and the golden went right. The only consolation came in that it was my largest bone of the trip, just the wrong color.

Should you decide to give the bones at Turneffe Flats Lodge (www.tflats.com) a try, I’d suggest bringing along a variety of very small shrimpy-looking flies.

Size 8s worked well, but my 6s went pretty much untouched. The lodge had some as small as size 10 that the bones gobbled up consistently. Also go with very lightly-weighted or even non-weighted. Flies with any weight, even bead chain eyes, would quickly hang up in the coral rubble.

Now if you’ll excuse me I’m overdue for some tropical daydreaming. I promise I’ll get back to some Texas saltwater fishing next month.

They’re scarce, but during our stay I was lucky enough to see several including one large school that held three of these beauties. After landing quite a few regular bones I set my sights on the golden prize.

Most of them I observed were square in the middle of the tightlypacked schools, almost as though the other fish were protecting them and making it nearly impossible to get a fly in their face. Late one afternoon I got the shot I was waiting for. A large school holding a

C O N TA C T

You know you are at a true fishing lodge when there are rod racks built into the porch.

Capt. Scott Null is a devout shallow water fisherman offering guided adventues via kayak, poled skiff, and wading.

Telephone Email Website

ROY’S Bait and Tackle Outfitters

281-450-2206 scott@tsfmag.com www.captainscottnull.com

7613 SPID Corpus Christi, TX 78412 www.roysbait-tackle.com

361-992-2960

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TSFMAG.com | 55

Notice there is no rod in this guide’s hands.

S C O T T S O M M E R L AT T E

ACCORDING TO SCOT T

THE RETURN OF THE COMMERCIAL FISHERMAN Guide: one that leads or directs another’s way Over the last eight years I have written about any and everything I could think of in regards to fishing, some of it serious and some, well not so much. However, there is one subject that I have barely only touched on.

It is something that I strongly believe is happening but I always shy away from it for fear of alienating good people and that is discussing the impact that fishing guides are having on our fisheries.

Now, before I go any further, I want to preface this with acknowledging the fact that a good portion, if not most of the guide community are damn fine human beings who are just out there to make a living. They mean no harm, although they are all, myself included, partially to blame for what has become of our fishery- both good and bad.

First, let us take into account the fact that 90% of the boats on the water would not have a clue where or how to fish if it was not for the guides. The reasons for this are many. Let’s face it, most of the locations and techniques utilized to fish them were discovered and/or developed by guides. Simply put- most guides are good at what they do. They have to be because their livelihood depends on it and the populous knows it. That is why, when people are out fishing, they watch what the guides are doing and imitate it. This could be identified as the first major problem from within the guide community.

Remember, I said most guides are good people. Some guides have a very selfish attitude towards the resource in 56 | September 2012

regards to how they utilized it and that attitude is learned by their customers and others who are observing what these guides are doing. For example, the term “burning” was coined and popularized by a group of fishing guides on the middle coast and the practice of “rodeoing” fish was developed down in the Lower Laguna many, many years ago. These practices were not that detrimental 20-30 years ago when there were a lot fewer anglers trying to enjoy a public resource. Well, things have changed as more and more people have flocked to the coast and now these methods for locating fish account for 80% of all disputes on the bay or dockside. The problem now is not so much the guides doing it, although many still do, but their customers who went out and bought a boat and started doing what they saw their guide do.

Another example that comes to my mind was a photo I saw of a fairly large tarpon that was caught off the mouth of the Brazos River by a relatively novice angler and acquaintance. He sent the image to me and then gave me a call. He was so excited and proud. We talked about it some and then I asked what he caught it on. “Well we went and caught a couple of trout and put them on a circle hook and tossed them into schools of rolling fish,” he told me.

Shocked, my reply was, “Dude, that is against the law.

Why would you use trout for bait?” He then proceed to tell me a story of how he was talking to a guide down in Port O’Connor who told him that a trout was one of the best baits for a tarpon. Just another poor soul who has been

fisherman. Yep, I said it. He is selling a bag full of fillets that he caught.

Guides statewide do this daily and in my, and many others, opinion it is wrong despite the fact that it legal.

Believe me folks, I could give so many more examples of how the guide community, in general, is affecting our fishery and, not all of it is bad. Heck, just look at how much guides give to the biggest champion of the resource, the CCA. Donated guide trips account for a big portion of the funds needed to help protect our fisheries. Call it being responsible or even self-serving in regards to job security, for every guide out there pushing the ethical and legal limits of the profession, there are two more who are doing their best to insure the future of our fisheries.

For me guiding is about the total outdoor experience. I make an effort to learn all that I can about not only the fish and how to catch them, but also the world that they live in. I do this so that I can pass this information along to the people who choose to share their day with me.

It is not about the number of baggies filled with fillets, if it was, I would have been out of business a long time ago because I rarely allow anyone to keep a fish on my boat and here I am, all these years later, still guiding.

The guiding community as a whole needs to grasp the concept that it has a responsibility to the resource and all the people who utilize it.

If we neglect it, we are only hurting ourselves. So, in my final attempt to have a profound effect on the world of Texas fishing through this column, I encourage all guides to take off their commercial fisherman hats and become “real” guides. Rather than taking people on boat rides to catch fish; teach them how to fish and how to become good stewards of the resource. By doing so, you help preserve our profession and help make the Texas Gulf coast a better place to be.

Be good…and stuff like that.

C ontact

misguided- pun intended.

I do not know where I heard or read this, but several years back, I came across information inferring TPWD estimated that guides and their customers are responsible for nearly 40% of the catch brought to docks in Texas. Now I do not know if it is true or not, but it seems a realistic number, at least to me. Again, guides need to be better than the average fisherman or their career will be short.

The problem with this is the fact that, here in Texas, most guides fish alongside their customers and in a lot of cases, contribute to their customer’s catch sometimes to the tune of 50% or more of the box. I know a lot of guides that do this and defend the practice saying, “My customers want to go home with limits of fish and they won’t come back if I am not providing that.” My response to that is, “That is a crock of pure bull!”

First off it is against the law, or at least it used to be until some idiotic bureaucrat came up with the idea of a “boat limit”. That is right, it used to be illegal to catch fish and contribute to someone else’s “limit”. However, people complained about guides keeping fish so TPWD, with their typical lack of forethought, decided to take away the guide’s ten trout by creating the boat limit. This, in turn, allowed the daily bag to be ten fish times the number of anglers not including the guide- actually, a genuine effort except for the fact that, if guides had been following the law to begin with, there would have been no need to take away those fish. They never would have been there in the first place. Now it makes it easier for not only the guide to contribute to the box but also the other anglers on the boat.

Now, let us examine a scenario. A group of four sports return from a day of guided fishing and they throw 40 trout up on the nails for a photo (a practice that turns my stomach BTW), yet they cast to and caught every one of them. In my opinion, their guide should be praised for a job well done. He got the folks back to the dock safe and sound and put them on a great day of fishing. Now all that is left to do is clean the fish. But what if the anglers were not very good and 25 of the 40 trout were caught, boxed, cleaned and package by the guide… what now? Well that guide just crossed the line and became a commercial

Scott Sommerlatte is a full time fly fishing and light tackle guide, freelance writer and photographer.

Telephone Email Website

979-415-4379 vssommerlatte@hotmail.com www.scottsommerlatte.com

TSFMAG.com | 57

The lineup left to right - Jenny Fisher, Sandra Garza, then me and Erica Carpio.

These are some excellent fisherwomen.

MARCOS GARZA

YO U T H F I S H I N G

FISHERWOMEN Don’t know about you “guys” but I think we are lucky to know women that like to fish. However, with the women I know, it is a competition to see who can catch the most fish and/or biggest fish. Most of the time, these women are “lucky” enough to win when we go out fishing with them; and with this win comes bragging rights. I have fished with enough women to know how competitive they can be. I know that my mom uses her bragging rights all the time, and still reminds my dad of times that she kicked his butt in fishing. This article is dedicated to those women that brave the outdoors with us to come whup our butts in the one thing that we love so much.

This month, I had the privilege to go offshore fishing on Capt. Shuler’s boat with a group of young fisherwomen on vacation. This group had stayed at Getaway back in February and one of the girls landed a personal best trout of about 29 inches wading and throwing topwaters. That 58 | September 2012

last sentence was just to tell you that these women that I was on the boat with were pretty serious about their fishing. So anyways, we headed out in the morning to our snapper spot to start the day. Our plan was to get our limit of snapper and soon after head closer to the beachfront and look for tarpon and kingfish. We arrived at our snapper spot at around 7:30 because of the wind chop that added to the 2-3 foot swells we were already going against. Brittney and Jennifer dropped their baits into the water as we drifted over rock piles, waiting for the right time to set the hook on a good sized red snapper.

Our goal was to be done snapper fishing and be by the beachfront by nine o’clock.

It took all of about 10 minutes to get the first keeper sized red snapper in the boat and it went from there. Well since I was the one person designated to take all of the fish off the hooks, the girls were giving me a hard time

about not being able to hold onto a nice king. This was on to the fish. When a girl Jennifer’s first king ever and Garrett Peay with his first oversized red that we gives you advice on handling we had every intention of caught and released at the Port Aransas Jetties. fish, it kind of hurts your pride getting it to the boat, even a little, but seeing as how it if that meant following it. was all in good fun, it was We were lucky enough that just something for all of us to it was not too big and we laugh at. Our snapper fishing did not have to follow it did not last long for we had around. We got the king in reached our goal of having and Jennifer was so tired it our limit of red snapper by wasn’t even funny. After I nine o’clock. Our ride back had unhooked the king, she towards the jetties was a long got to take a picture with her one because the girls were first king and soon after was feeling a little sea sick. These back to fishing. girls were tough and even Our day ended short though they felt sick, decided because the girls were to stay out and fish until they starting to feel worse, and couldn’t handle it any longer. chose to head into the Now began our hunt for harbor. We had landed kingfish in our usual spot. We around eight kingfish, and drifted through it many times, had limited out on snapper only able to get two kings before noon. That’s not to blow up on our Bomber too bad of a day with the topwaters. Getting to the conditions out in the gulf kings was tough, so we finally decided to troll around for them while and the girls feeling sick. The girls will be back soon for a cast and also looking for tarpon. We trolled a good while, then suddenly, one blast. That should make for another excellent article don’t you think? of the girl’s reels started to spit out line and screech. We had hooked

TSFMAG.com | 59

Kings will always bring a smile to youthful faces.

MIKE JENNINGS

TEXAS NEARSHORE & OFFSHORE

THE RIDDLES OF

KINGFISH

Strike up a conversation with just about anyone who has fished off the coast of Texas and you are likely to hear a tale involving the King Mackerel - kingfish as it is normally called. The kingfish is probably one of the most common fish caught just off our shores. Due to its large population and tendency to roam close to shore it is also among one of the first species caught by novice anglers in their early quests for offshore adventure.

The King Mackerel is a sub-tropical species of the Atlantic Americas that typically ranges not only in the Gulf of Mexico, but from North Carolina to well south of Brazil. There are reports of kings being caught as far north as the Gulf of Maine. Although I know of areas off our coast that hold kingfish year round, they are considered to be schooling fish and highly migratory by nature. There are two known migratory groups. The Gulf group ranges from Texas in the summer to as far away as through the Florida Straits arriving along the 60 | September 2012

Oh the excitement of a kingfish fight!

Offshore platforms, within easy range for smaller boats, attract tons of kings for Texas anglers.

middle-east coast of Florida in November. This group spawns generally in the Gulf of Mexico throughout the summer months. The Atlantic group is abundant off North Carolina in spring and fall, migrating to southeast Florida where they spawn from May through August. Tagging results indicate this group winters in deep water off the Carolinas.

Very little is known about the king in its first year of life, except that it will reach a weight of about 3 to 4 pounds and grow as heavy 20 to 25 pounds by age seven. Any fish reaching over about 20 pounds is most likely a female. The kingfish can grow as long as 70 inches and reach weights approaching 100 pounds, with anything over about 50 pounds being considered quite respectable by most any avid angler. The current world record king is a 93 pound specimen caught at San Juan Puerto Rico on April 19, 1999 by angler Steve Peraz Graulau.

A nice king comes aboard.

TSFMAG.com | 61

Colton Cunningham with author.

Colton’s last fish of the day won the 65th Freeport Fiesta’s youth king division and weighed heavier than the adult division. Way to go Colton!

62 | September 2012

Kings can be found around just about any structure or condition that is holding baitfish, as well as in open water where they follow the movement of menhaden during the late summer.

They are basically opportunistic feeders taking advantage of a variety of schooling fishes, squid, shrimp and even known to feed on certain mollusks at times. The larger kings seem to become more specialized feeders preferring finfish in the 4 to 8 inch range.

I would venture to guess that by far the majority of the kings caught in the western Gulf are caught on and around offshore oil and gas platforms. There are several platforms in the areas I frequent where my clients land hundreds in a single month.

To me the kingfish seems to be the victim of a love-hate relationship with local fishermen. Newer anglers to the sport seem to love them because of their sheer numbers and the fact that they are often easy to target and catch. More seasoned anglers seem to dislike them or consider them sub-par for the same reasons.

To me fishing is about spending time on the water and pitting your wits against the fish. Make no mistake, kingfish can “get lockjaw” as they say and be just as challenging as any fish out there when conditions are not ideal. We see this often

I may find they will bite just as I engage the motors and start the baits moving again. On many occasions I will catch them consistently on only one side of a platform. It may be the up-current side today and the down-current side tomorrow. I may find success at literally skipping the baits on top, or holding in the current with the baits virtually motionless. If all else fails I may go to deep diving plugs or fast trolling jet heads.

Sometimes they will eat everything you put in the water and seem to almost jump in the boat. The next time the difference in success and failure may be as much as a subtle difference in the speed that a bait falls through the water column. Figuring out that minor subtlety and exploiting it is what will separate you from that angler that underestimated the ever-abundant kingfish and overestimated his confidence and ability in just how easy they are to catch.

I have learned to always ask myself, “What am I doing wrong here” before asking, “Where did they go?”

C ontact

during the days of the full moon. It is these tough days, when I have to knuckle down and dig them out, that I think I end up enjoying the most. I often hear people at the dock talk about how the kingfish are gone, virtually vanished from where they had been plentiful on the last outing. It is more likely that the fish were still there and just didn’t cooperate.

We humans are creatures of habit. We brand a species such as the kingfish as an easy adversary or underestimate their nature as a survivor and we are quick to blame unknown conditions or unexplained movements as the reason for our lack of success. Many never even stop to consider that their feeding habit may have changed temporarily and because they did not change their fishing tactics they simply were not able to catch them that day.

I can’t even count the number of times I have heard someone say that kingfish are easy; all you have to do is use this lure or rig a bait this way and you will catch all you want. Well - that single-minded approach was their first mistake. Their second was thinking the fish weren’t there because they didn’t catch any.

When I pull up to an area or piece of structure and tell my customers that we are targeting kingfish they almost instantly ask how we are going to fish for them. I get some funny looks when my answer is, “I’m not sure yet.” I then just smile and say, “But I’ll let you know as soon as I figure out what they want today” I usually start with the simple approach consisting of drifting baits like sardines or ribbonfish. If it doesn’t work I will slow them down, or speed them up. I may add weight to pull them down or back down on my lines to make them sink more rapidly. Eventually,

Captain Mike Jennings is a professional charter captain with more than 25 years offshore experience. Mike is the owner/operator of Cowboy Charters in Freeport TX and is known locally for running further and fishing harder for his clients.

Telephone Email Website

979-864-9439 texassportfishing@gmail.com www.cowboycharters.com

TSFMAG.com | 63

CADE SIMPSON

K AYA K F I S H I N G C H R O N I C L E S

ROCKPORT REDS! Hello kayak fishing friends! You may have noticed the change in the title of my column here; we are now calling it Kayak Fishing Chronicles. The chronicle aspect of my writing seems to be going over well, and since I have inherited primary kayak writing duties at TSFMag, we decided to keep the format and have you join me each month as I make my way along the Texas coast. I will be expanding a bit to provide gear reviews and fishing methods of interest to kayak fishermen. I hope you will enjoy the new format.

As you can see in this month’s title, I decided we’d try the Rockport area. It was my first adventure there and we caught fish! So break out your Hook-N-Line Fishing Map and tag along. If you haven’t already been, you 64 | September 2012

really to need to try the area on your own. There are miles and miles of easily accessible waters tailor-made for kayaking.

Where Having driven through Rockport a half dozen times; I decided it was time to wet a hook in the ever-popular waters of this pretty little coastal town. The RockportFulton area (Rockport and Fulton have grown so they now meet in the middle) is situated on the Aransas Bay System. Given my penchant for marsh fishing I actually took a little detour from the popular waters of Aransas Bay and found some marshy areas on Copano Bay, only minutes away. HNL map F130

is best for the immediate Rockport area.

When and Weather I fished Rockport in July for this article and boy was it hot out.

Not to mention, for the first time in many moons, I was greeted with no wind. The occasional ominous cloud would roll by teasing us with the chance of a little shower but overall it was only partly cloudy and as I said - HOT! Tackle and Gear As this is the first official CKC article, I will spend a moment focusing on a piece of kayak-specific equipment that is quite useful for paddle-boaters. Let’s first take a step back to when I took the plunge into kayak fishing, wind would put a serious hurtin’ on the fishing effort. Even the slightest sneeze wind will push a kayak.

I thought myself clever one when I began carrying a 4-foot aluminum flounder gig which I would shove through a scupper hole into the shallow mud below me. I jokingly dubbed it my kayak PowerPole. While this method was much improved over nothing at all, it did have its downsides. Any rocking of the kayak would wiggle the gig loose. Also, if the water was much over two feet, the gig became altogether useless.

Fast forward, I now have added the proper tool to my arsenal of kayaking equipment. I stopped in to see my buddies at Austin Canoe and Kayak in Houston to pick up a truly functional shallow water kayak anchor, a Stake-Out Stik. My new Stake-Out stick is a 6-ft fiberglass rod. With a hole in the top, I have attached a tether

of rope approximately 10-ft long, a carabineer tied to the end of the rope. The carabineer is attached to my kayak’s side lifting handles.

The pole is then shoved into the mud or sand. Now my depth range of effective “staking out” is up to about 5-ft. Wind or not, a Stake-Out stick is very useful as current from changing tides will carry you out of your fishing spot quite quickly. Then there is the everlasting strength of a good redfish that will take you on a fun little ride, removing you from your original casting position.

Moving on to Rockport-specific tackle and gear establishments, from my observations of numerous coastal towns, Rockport stands out as a Mecca of sorts. Within this region lies a trio of shops that are hard to compete with in any coastal town, or major city for that matter - Tackle Town, Swan Point Landing Outfitters-Orvis and Seaworthy Marine are the shops I speak of.

Furthermore, as I scouted for bait shops, I came across one. I

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then noticed next door was another, then another, and another, and another! Five independent little bait huts in a row; Pelican Bait, Capt.

Cady’s, Bea’s Bait, Fleming’s Bait Stand, and Mom’s Bait Shop. If bait is your choice and you can’t find it here – you probably don’t need it!

Hitting the water Oh the powers of soft plastic under a popping cork. After launching on the side of the road, not a formal boat launch per se; it did not take long to find a good point in the marsh shoreline to begin spotting fishy signs. Paddling through mediocre bait activity everywhere, I noticed something popping the top of the water in a little pocket of the grass line. Stake-Out Stik in place and two casts later, I had my first red of the day. This same little hole produced another red and a speckled trout before I moved on. We worked other points along the way without much action.

Continuing on, lo and behold, another little cove in the bank and… another fish busting the surface. The first fish I hooked in this spot felt sizeable. It actually managed to pull enough line against the drag to get itself tangled in some old pilings that set it free. No worries, I pulled a slot red out of the same hole a few casts later. The popping cork rig remained the hot-setup of the day, cove after cove. In all we paddled about 9 miles. I ended up landing four solid reds and five specks with a few shaking the hook. All met the same fate – caught and released to fight another day.

Where to eat and where to sleep With all the commerce that comprises the Rockport-Fulton, sleeperies and eateries are not in short supply. Take your pick from all of the

common fast food chains, or from other local restaurants including The Shack’s Smokehouse Seafood, K-Bob’s Steakhouse, Jalisco Restaurant, Poor Man’s Bar and Grill, and many more!

Hotels and motels include but are not limited to America’s Best Value Inn, Holiday Inn Express, Yacht Basin Motel, Pelican Bay Resort, and Sea View Motel.

RV Parks include Sportsman’s Manor, and Bayview RV Resort.

The Other Angles Though not the Gulf shore, one could fish from the beaches along Rockport’s Aransas Bay waterfront, and of course there is bathing and

Unsurpassed Fishing.

Check out what Rockport-Fulton has to offer. www.rockport-fulton.org @ visitrockportfulton Photography by John Blaha

66 | September 2012

fishing under the pier's lights.

Contacts If you would like more information, visit www.cityofrockport.com/

Seaworthy Marine: 361-727-9100 Swan Point Landing Outfitters-Orvis: 361-729-7926 Tackle Town: 361-729-1841 Texas Maritime Museum – 361 729 6644

C O N TA C T

picnicking opportunity galore. There is a minimal fee for beach access.

Powerboat anglers appeared to flock in great numbers to access the waters of Rockport and shorelines can get crowded. Open-water kayak fishing is quite doable but as any of you regular readers know, I prefer fishing in and around marshes. To find suitable marshes, it took only looking around the corner into the Copano Bay area.

Speaking of Copano Bay, the Copano Bay Fishing Pier (old Hwy 35 Causeway) made a strong case for Choice #2 on my list of Texas’ Best Fishing Piers. Bob Hall Pier on Padre Island is in my mind the undisputed king, however the Copano pier covers a serious amount of water and is well lit. It all but spans the entire stretch across the bay.

The only break in the pier is near the rise in the bridge which allows larger boats access. Driving by at night, I noted dozens of people

Wrap up In my opinion, any town that can support three major tackle and gear stores must be a good town. Rockport really has it “going on” in many ways. An annual art festival was in full swing during my quick trip to Rockport. The beachfront, which is quite attractive by the way, was packed with vacationers and locals alike, enjoying the summer fun.

Wade fisherman were sparsely scattered around Little Bay while other party-boaters were pulling tubers and skiers.

Rockport provides nice amenities and quick access to neighboring towns/areas as well, providing an expanded fishing territory. Rockport is also home to the Texas Maritime Museum. A tour there would really round out your trip.

As always, be careful on the water, bring a friend, and have fun.

Telephone Email

936-776-7028 Cademan11@sbcglobal.net

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The gulls were the key to finding this ball of anchovies.

E X T R E M E K AYA K F I S H I N G & S H A R K S F R O M T H E S A N D

ERIC OZOLINS

THE ESSENCE OF CHAOS The world of kayak fishing branches into varying venues, sometimes traditional and sometimes alternatively unorthodox. I take part in a great variety myself– everything from bay fishing for shallow-water speckled trout and reds to wintertime battles with oversized black drum in the vicious, bitter cold. Several years ago I had the luck-filled opportunity to be the first angler to catch a yellowfin tuna out of the kayak in Texas (via mothership some 130 miles offshore) though some of my more relaxing and zen-esque outings have been flounder gigging out of the kayak on cool late-autumn nights. I can truly say I put a lot of miles on my plastic vessel(s).

With all these methods mentioned, without a doubt the most exciting and adrenalinepacked adventures I have taken part in happen just beyond the Dusky anchovies fleeing breakers, within sight of our – great potential here. sandy beaches.

68 | September 2012

It is a mysterious yet dangerous world when you begin to venture past the coastal sandbars in any customized kayak. Things can suddenly become very scary and even dangerous depending on a countless number of unpredictable circumstances. You can (and often) encounter sharks, and sometimes those sharks are freakishly large and frighteningly intimidating. You must

always keep your composure and as the saying goes – “try to remain cool, calm, and collected.” Sharks are curious creatures. As remarkable and terrifying as they may be, the encounters are usually short-lived (pending you don’t have a fresh catch dangling at the kayak). Sharks will almost always do a quick investigation and after seeing that your kayak is not a natural slab of food, they simply move on. I’ve had large hammerheads circle and “eye” the kayak out of curiosity and then descend to the depths, moving on with their business. One of the cardinal rules of offshore kayak fishing (aside from never to do it alone) is to always be aware of your surroundings. If you can be mentally alert and observant of your surroundings, then the rest is up to you to have fun and survive the day in your plastic battleship.

Perhaps the most-asked question I get is- “Where to fish?” This is a question that has resonated since the dawn of caveman angling and will only continue to be embedded in the curious angler’s vocabulary. I often post reports of my adventures online which in return generates countless people asking what direction I would point them. Overall, the answer is almost always the same and after quick thought, quite obvious. People often think that I roll down the beach and fish a pre-designated spot where “the fish are always hanging out” but this is simply not the case. Your number one key in regards to finding fish are the birds. As with so many aspects of fishing, birds (gulls, terns, and pelicans) can direct you to optimistic bait balls, or if you are lucky enough, even those jaw-dropping frenzies that rival insane documentary television footage.

Finding these birds offshore are first and foremost your best chance at getting into fish in an area without known structure. Driving up and down the beach with a pair of binoculars can be the difference between slaying the fish, or merely getting a tedious workout.

In Texas, we have about three to four solid months during which there is likely bird and bait activity just offshore. Fortunately the midlate summer is a Mecca for predatory action in our coastal waters.

August and September are some of the most productive months to journey out seeking large king mackerel, cobia, and even tarpon.

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Anglers may have to kayak out perhaps a mile and just wait for action to develop. Many times you may wait - and wait - and wait - with little or no reward. However, there are times when all Hell will break loose and the images captured by your retinas are nothing short of true bliss. With the dusky anchovies and scaled sardines gathering and moving along the coast, this time of year is absolutely prime to experience these types of chaos. Mixed within the mayhem are ry le. ve k are t tac y h n un n lig t o tle Lit rting o p s

70 | September 2012

mackerel, jack crevalle, skipjack, bonito, cobia, and various other species of predatory goodness. The action at times can be surreal and the sights observed can be likened to the term ecstasy. During these mass frenzies, several consecutive casts can produce a mixture of jackfish and bonito (little tunny), worthy of battle on any offshore vessel. You may also have the chance to sight-cast at an opportune cobia. The fact that a single baitball could produce such an array of gamefish all at once is surely one of the joys of this extreme method of fishing.

When chasing schools of baitfish or following the keen-eyed birds, you end up covering a lot of surface area. It is important to note that while hunting them down you will get a thorough cardio workout. I routinely turn my GPS on and record my track/trip when I venture out. On an average summer day my trip-odometer reads anywhere from 6-9 miles and I’ve done as much as twice that. For those out of shape or suffer from any physical condition, I highly recommend keeping the kayak on or near the beach. Being far offshore is the last place you want anything to go wrong, health-wise or otherwise. When kayaking with a buddy (which you must always practice), communication is essential. If one individual needs a short rest, both should. Never leave your partner or friends in the dust and always bring adequate drinking water and safety gear. I cannot stress how vital being safety-

goes on and we get closer into fall, the bait will continue to draw nearer the beach. In early July the little tunny action was on fire, with most averaging 5-8 lbs. Little tunny are cousins of the Atlantic bonito and are pound for pound some of the fastest fish you will ever encounter from the yak. The trick with these hydrodynamic speed-demons is to throw something very small mimicking what they are feeding on, or “match the hatch” as they say. As we get into August-September, hordes of jack crevalle and king mackerel will join in and start demolishing the bait.

Topwater lures with very light wire are always effective.

From now until October there may be an element of surprise within the baitballs because you can hook into just about anything, including tarpon and on a very rare occasion – sailfish. For me this is a very exciting time for kayak fishing and you can bet I’ll be out in the cruel heat giving it Hell for the next month or two. Then it will be back to the beach for some big-shark action!

Have fun, be safe, and rock on!

conscious is offshore in such a small vessel. If you follow proper safety precautions, then your adventure should prove golden and you could be in for a real treat.

So what is going on right now along our coast and what are the prospects for the near future? Simply put, as of the past month the anchovy baitballs are forming daily. Most activity is concentrated about a mile out however some of the baitballs are reaching just a couple hundred yards from the surf zone, primarily along the National Seashore of Padre Island and north on Mustang Island. As the summer

C ontact

Shark slicing through anchovies – get a bait in there!

For the past decade, Eric ‘Oz’ Ozolins has been a key figure promoting catch and release with sharks and assisting various shark-research programs. Oz is renowned in the kayaking world for extreme biggame fishing and runs Kayak Wars – one of the largest kayak fishing tournaments in the world.

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A big southern stingray removed from trawl nets, released!

STEPHANIE BOYD

F I S H Y FA C T S

WATCH YOUR STEP Of the elasmobranchs (sharks, skates, & rays), sharks get all the glory. They get the movies and myths, the terror and respect, and the subsequent scientific interest provoked by their infamy and by being an apex predator. But there’s another elasmobranch living on the Texas coast, one whose presence might be more significant to the wading angler: the stingray.

It’s not entirely incorrect to think of stingrays as flattened sharks. To be sure, they have their share of differences: a) position of gill slits (on the side for sharks, on the underside for stingrays), b) presence of spiracles (bottom-dwelling rays use this instead of their mouth for sucking in water to push over the gills), and c) body plan (flattened with pectoral fins attached to head: stingrays, torpedo-shaped: sharks).1 However, these differences are trivial compared to what they have in common: a) cartilaginous skeletons, b) 5-7 gill slits, c) dermal denticles, 72 | September 2012

d) an upper jaw not fused to the skull, e) several rows of teeth which are continually replaced2 f) no swim bladder, and g) an ancient common ancestor from which they both branched off (Jurassic period, circa 150 million years ago).1 Plus, there are some elasmobranchs that blur the lines.

Angel and wobbegong sharks are flat and have spiracles, but they’re not rays. Then there are sawfish (which are rays) and sawsharks (which are sharks), but both have flattened forward ends and torpedo back ends. And next time you’re web surfing, check out the shark ray; some scientists think this guitarfish is (a clue to) the missing link between sharks and rays.2 And stingrays are not completely excluded from legend. The ancient Greeks and Romans greatly feared the stingray’s venom. Roman author and professor of rhetoric, Aelian, wrote that stingray wounds were incurable. Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder stated in his Natural History that the spine was capable of killing trees, piercing armor, and corroding iron. The Greek poet Oppian even claimed that the venom could dissolve stone. In Greek mythology, Hercules apparently lost a finger to the bite of a stingray

(though I’m sure I don’t remember that from the Disney movie), and Telegonus (accidentally) slew his father, Odysseus, with a spine-tipped spear.10 Unfortunately, stingrays had their ten minutes of fame before Hollywood could dig their fingers in.

There are two types of stingrays: benthic (bottom-dwelling) and pelagic (swimming). Benthic types are more generally implicated in coastal scuffles, so they’re our main focus. Unlike most elasmobranchs, many species of stingrays are euryhaline (capable of living in waters of a wide range of salinity). In fact, a population of Atlantic stingrays in Florida’s St. Johns River lives completely in freshwater, though they still retain their ability to return to saltwater, should the instinct arise.3 Mostly, what people find important about stingrays is, of course, the sting. The venomous spine on pelagic stingrays is located near the base of the tail, possibly to discourage predators from taking a bite out of the central portion of the body. In contrast, the spine on benthic stingrays is a little farther away from the body, making it a more effective striking weapon. The spine itself is thought to be a modified dermal denticle. Note: the strike of a stingray is defensive, ONLY (and an involuntary response to boot). This animal will NOT seek you out and attack.3 Generally speaking, if a benthic stingray is disturbed from underneath, it will just swim away. It’s when you step on one that you might get into trouble. But really, who wouldn’t be upset if you stepped on them? To avoid this faux pas, just scoot your feet along the bottom in a polite shuffle; the stingray doesn’t get a toe in its eye, and you don’t get a spine in your calf. If there is a misunderstanding, hot hot water is the best on-the-spot remedy. (And the quickest source of hot water out on the bay is the “tell-tale” or “tattle-tale” stream from a running outboard engine.) Since the venom, produced by tissues in two ventral grooves along the spine, is protein-based, it is inactivated by exposure to high temperatures.3 Benthic stingrays have a benthic diet. Though dietary items differ depending on geographic location, typical prey consists of polychaete worms, tube anemones, crustaceans, mollusks, etc. To handle the often crunchy nature of these meals, stingrays have multiple rows of rounded teeth with flat, blunt surfaces for maximum crushing capacity. The exception is during breeding season when the males’ teeth develop long, slender cusps enabling them to hold on to the female during copulation. Besides using strong senses of smell and touch to find their (often hidden) prey, stingrays also use their highly developed sense of electroreception. Rows of sensory cells, called the ampullae of Lorenzini, can detect the weak electric fields generated by small, buried creatures.

Scientists also believe that male stingrays may use this sense to find buried females during mating season. You can run, but you can’t hide.4 Stingrays are ovoviviparous, the short meaning and end result of which is they give birth to live young. Basically, the female lays/hatches eggs inside her body; the young develop inside her, but they do not receive nourishment from a placenta. Litters typically consist of half a dozen pups or less (for the Texas coast species). Pups are miniature versions of adults and are on their own from day one.5 The two most common stingray species on the Texas coast are the Atlantic stingray and the southern stingray. For diversity, I’m also going to cover the yellow stingray and the cownose stingray (a pelagic species).

The Atlantic stingray, Dasyatis sabina, and the southern stingray, Dasyatis americana, both belong to the Family Dasyatidae, or “whiptailed” rays. You can imagine how that name was inspired… The two species are similar in appearance except the Atlantic stingray has a pointier “nose,” and at adult sizes, the southern stingray is much, much TSFMAG.com | 73

larger. While the Atlantic stingray only reaches about 13 inches, on average, in disc width, the southern stingray reaches 79 inches. Dorsally, both species have a color variation between dark gray/green, yellowish-brown, and brown.

Ventrally, the coloration is predominantly white or light gray with some of the dorsal coloration spilling over the sides, so to speak.(4,5) The Atlantic stingray’s lifespan is approximately 9 years.(6) The southern stingray has managed to elude this question at birthday parties. In marine environments, these stingrays are primarily preyed on by sharks and other large fish species. Closer inland, alligators also occasionally take some a la carte.

They are also commonly bothered by various ectoparasites, though rarely infested with them. This due, at least in part, to a symbiotic relationship with cleaner wrasses.(5) The yellow stingray, Urobatis jamaicensis, belongs to the Family Urolophidae, the “round” rays. Also aptly named. This stingray is also called the round stingray, the yellow spotted stingray, and the maid stingray. It reaches about the size of the Atlantic stingray, measuring in with a disc width of 14 inches. Here’s another species adept at avoiding the age question. While coloration can vary widely in this species, the yellow stingray typically displays one of the following color schemes topside: a netlike pattern of dark green/brown on a pale background OR a close-set pattern of tiny white, yellow, or gold spots on a green/brown background. The underside is yellowish- or brownish-white. They share the same predators as the Atlantic and southern stingrays; in addition,

the tiger shark seems to have a special fancy for yellows.(7) Lastly is the token pelagic, Rhinoptera bonuses, the cownose ray. The genus name (Rhinoptera) is derived from the Greek “rhinos,” meaning nose, and “pteron,” meaning wing.

The species name (bonuses) is from the Greek “bonasos,” meaning bison. Literally, nose-wing bison. The cownose ray has a conspicuously indented skull (hence, cow).

Its body is about one and a half times as wide Can you find the stingray? as it is long (not including tail). The maximum adult size is under debate, but a disc width of 84 inches has been recorded.(8) Females live up to 18 years, while males live up to 16.(9) Dorsally, cownose stingrays are light to dark brown, sometimes with a yellowish tint. Underside, they are white or yellowish white, with some top coloring bleeding over onto the outer corners of the pectoral fins.

Predators of this pelagic stingray include cobia, sandbar sharks, and bull sharks. Funny fact: during mating season, a female that is disinclined to breed may sometimes swim with her pectorals out of the water. This species has recently come into the spotlight in some parts of its range for its predation of oyster reefs. Though commercial fishing has been proposed as a possible solution, the harvesting and processing of these rays is no picnic, which could lead to very expensive meat. Additionally, rays are quite vulnerable to overfishing since they mature slowly and have small litters. Cownose rays may sometimes be an inconvenience in some areas, but they are also an important part of the ecosystem (and already listed as “Near Threatened” by the IUCN).(8)

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74 | September 2012

BOATS MOTORS TRAILERS SALES SERVICE PARTS & ACCESSORIES

There are about 600 species of rays and skates worldwide; that’s more species diversity than any other cartilaginous group of fishes. Rays are a part of most marine ecosystems, and some freshwater ones. Exactly what niche they fill in the health and function of the ecosystems in which they live is not fully understood yet. Maybe their time in the spotlight will come again, hopefully not just in the realm of myth.

Footnotes: 1

"Bully for Batoids," Biology of Sharks & Rays, 21 July 2012 <http://www.elasmo-research.org/ education/topics/d_bully.htm>.

2 "Are stingrays related to sharks?" Beach Chair Scientist, 21 July 2012 <http:// beachchairscientist.wordpress.com/2009/01/02/are-stingrayssharks/>.

3 "About Stingrays," Mote Marine Laboratory, 21 July 2012 <http://www.mote.org/index.php?sr c=gendocs&ref=Stingrays&category=Shark%20Research>.

4 "Atlantic Stingray," Florida Museum of Natural History, 21 July 2012 <http://www.flmnh.ufl. edu/fish/Gallery/Descript/atlanticstingray/atlanticstingray.html>.

5 "Southern Stingray," Florida Museum of Natural History, 21 July 2012 <http://www.flmnh.ufl. edu/fish/gallery/descript/southernstingray/southernstingray.html>.

6 " Species Name: Dasyatis sabina ," Smithsonian Marine Station at Fort Pierce, 21 July 2012 <http://www.sms.si.edu/irlspec/dasyat_sabina.htm#epibenthic>.

7 "Yellow Stingray," Florida Museum of Natural History, 21 July 2012 <http://www.flmnh.ufl. edu/fish/gallery/descript/yellowstingray/yellowstingray.html>.

8 "Cownose Ray," Florida Museum of Natural History, 21 July 2012 <http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/ fish/gallery/descript/cownoseray/cownoseray.html>.

9 " Species Name: Rhinoptera bonasus," Smithsonian Marine Station at Fort Pierce, 21 July 2012 <http://www.sms.si.edu/irlspec/Rhinoptera_bonasus.htm>.

10 "The Odyssey," Myths Encyclopedia, 21 July 2012 <http://www.mythencyclopedia.com/NiPa/Odyssey-The.html>.

Science and the Sea

TM

A Neighborhood for Everyone There is a lot of activity atop the oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, but like an iceberg, there’s more below. Fish, crustaceans, mollusks, corals and other sea creatures make their home among the legs and cross-members of these giant man-made structures.

Rich communities of sea life thrive on coral or rocky reefs in all the world’s oceans, but the Gulf of Mexico does not have many natural reefs. Its sea floor is mostly sandy and barren. But each of the more than 4,000 rigs in the Gulf offers two to three acres of complex habitats where animals can shelter from predators and ocean currents. This is good news for fishermen and divers, since there can be 20 to 50 times more fish at rigs.

A rig-reef in the Gulf of Mexico. Credit: Brittanie Shey.

According to law, owners of oil and gas platforms in the Gulf have one year to remove a rig once it is taken out of service. Removal is expensive, costing several million dollars, and it evicts the rig’s underwater residents. A Rigs-toReefs program turns this problem, quite literally, on its side. By moving and toppling rigs, retired platforms become permanent underwater habitats that attract fish, fishermen and divers.

It doesn’t take long for residents to move onto these new “reefs.” A few fish begin to gather within a week of a rig’s arrival, and by the end of a month, soft corals, mussels, barnacles, sponges, starfish and algae have moved to the neighborhood. Then come shrimp and other crustaceans, followed by gobies, red snapper, amberjack, red drum and triggerfish. Large pelagic fish, like tuna, mackerel and sharks, also take advantage of these ocean neighborhoods, for a quick meal or to rest.

Rig-reefs benefit everyone. Rig owners save millions in disposal costs, marine animals get a home and fishermen get a top-notch fishing spot — truly making rig-reefs neighborhoods for everyone.

The University of Texas

Marine Science Institute www.saltwatersoul.net O.G.C.

www.ScienceAndTheSea.org © The University of Texas Marine Science Institute

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TSFMAG.com | 77

DICKIE ColBuRn

DICKIE ColBuRn’s Sabine Scene

Sabine

Dickie Colburn is a full time guide out of Orange, Texas. Dickie has 37 years experience guiding on Sabine and Calcasieu Lakes.

Telephone 409-883-0723 Website www.sabineconnection.com

78 | September 2012

While much of the state continues to bake under blistering sun we have actually had a little too much rain. It started with four days of minor flooding all the way from Houston to Orange about the middle of the month and, as of today; it has rained on or around Sabine Lake sixteen days in a row.

The initial flooding Another schooling temporarily washed out a trout redfish caught and bite that had us all thinking released. we were great fishermen but the excessive freshwater has finally been flushed out and each incoming tide has adequately compensated for the daily rains. The shrimp and menhaden are showing back up making the gulls an integral factor in daily game planning.

It is just the nature of Sabine Lake regulars to cuss the redfish, but like it or not they are doing their thing again and are taking a lot of the pressure off the trout. There is no need to target them as they will find

you. They are cruising the flats, mixing with the trout under the gulls and at times churning the surface when herding shad in the open lake. If you just have redfish on the brain it is hard to beat the jetties and surrounding marshes, but don’t overlook the Neches or Sabine River.

As we move into the fall, fishing for them with a crankbait in the rivers or bayous can be addicting. You will catch your share of solid trout as well, but the redfish find a 3 to 5 foot diver with a tight wobble like the River 2 Sea Biggie irresistible. Should that bite slow down, simply switch to a 3-inch swimbait like the Storm Wild Eye or River 2 Sea Live Eye and it’s “game on” again. The swimbait also fools some of our larger flounder every fall as well!

GULP and the Hoginar pretty much rule the roost down at the jetties, but

deep diving crankbaits like Strike Pro’s Warmouth Wobbler have resulted in several tournament wins this year. It takes a lot of persistence and a lot of rod to keep them bumping the deeper rocks, but that program has worked on upper-slot fish when all else fails.

Long casts and stealth are important when fishing the shallow back lakes. There are days when they will torpedo anything from a buzzbait to a slow-walking She Dog, but crawling a weedless spoon or plastic frog over the floating vegetation gets my vote. When they will hit none of the above, try pitching a Texas-rigged tube jig soaked in one of Pro-Cure’s scents and twitch it just enough to get their attention.

There is no surer bet right now for trout fishermen looking for eating-size fish than taking advantage of the birds. The best case scenario is to find needlefish and ladyfish hammering away at the shad on the surface as the better trout will be there eating them as well.

It is no secret that my first choice when exploiting the gulls is a 4-inch tail hanging below a Kwik Cork. It casts easily, makes just the right noise and keeps the lure in the strike zone at all times. Color is usually not as important as the length of the tail or whether to rig it on an 1/8 ounce jig or a 3/0 Mustad Wide Gap hook. Either way, we

literally fish our way through pounds of Assassin Sea Shads and TTF Flats Minnows this time of year.

Any time they will eat a topwater, I start with a She Dog in a bone/silver or Geaux Daley pattern and we have also caught some of our biggest trout recently on the larger Spook and TTF Flush. Black/ chartreuse head and pink/silver have been the best colors for us in the larger lures.

When the ladyfish won’t leave a topwater alone, try rigging an Assassin Die Dapper on a 1/16 ounce head. Chunk it into the melee and retrieve it very slowly in short twitches.

Don’t set the hook when the smaller fish peck at it as that seems to attract the larger fish waiting below for an easy meal to sink their way. My hottest color has been sand trout or opening night with a chartreusedipped tail.

They are not lures that I normally fish this time of the year as it is difficult for me to bench my time-tested MirrOdine XL when the trout on the deeper flats get finicky, but we have done surprisingly well with the Corky Devil and slow sinking Maniac Mullet this summer. We are able to fish them a little faster than the XL and at times that has made a difference.

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TSFMAG.com | 79

mICKEY Eastman

mICKEY On Galveston

Galveston

Mickey Eastman is a full-time fishing guide out of Baytown, TX. Mickey has 26 years guiding experience on the Galveston area bays and is the founder of Gulf Coast Troutmasters, the largest speckled trout tournament series of all time

Telephone 281-383-2032

Well the summer doldrums are kind of setting in around here. We’ve had a good summer so far but now the last week or so we have been getting a lot of southwest and west wind and it sure has put a damper on the artificial bite. If you are planning to target trout on lures you really need to go early in the morning or hit it late afternoon; the midday hours are generally slow except maybe on your best tide days.

If this southwest lies down we’ll get a better shot. Live baiters are still doing well and they’re hitting them pretty hard and heavy, all those big trout every day.

Best lure bite in deeper water has been on soft swimbaits like the larger Cocahoe Minnows, Tidal Surge, and sometimes the MirrOlure Lil John will get them.

Good colors have been root beer and watermelon with red flakes.

My game plan has been an early start, focusing on trout until the sun gets high. When I have wade fisherman we are working shallow for the first hour or two and the topwater bite has been fair to decent in two to three feet of water.

We have had a few that pushed to six pounds. I heard of a seven the other day but most are 3-4 pounds.

Surprising we have picked up some males that went three pounds. The topwater action depends a lot on wind direction. When it’s over we head to mud-shell mix in about six to ten feet and switch to plastic. The Trinity Bay gas wells were producing lots of trout but that has slowed to only a few good ones. The better

Rebecca had a good day with the Trinity Bay reds, typical open water stuff – mud boils, a little bait showing and an occasional slick.

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80 | September 2012

trout have either moved shallower to spawn or what you would call hot and heavy yet but the traffic pushed them away. There is still a ton of best of that action always comes into its own smaller trout out there though. later in August and throughout the month of It seems the concentration of slot redfish September. that were out on the channel between Marker Being a hardcore lure man I can hardly wait 52 and 56 have moved up into Trinity Bay. for September. Some anglers will complain There are still decent numbers of oversize fish that September is a transition month but the hanging there and they are fun to catch and promise of cooler days and maybe a few mild release. Those bruisers can save your bacon in northers followed by light southeast breezes west wind as clarity holds fairly good and you usually paints a brighter fishing picture. With will see current even on weak tide days on the quality of trout fishing we enjoyed earlier the channel. this summer I cannot help but think early fall East Bay is still holding some good trout weather will have it busting wide open again. over the major reefs. Soft plastics are working Look for the bigger trout to pull into wading and of course the live bait guys are really depths. There should be a lot of shrimp getting them. Schools of reds are in the mud moving from the marshes toward the Gulf and but they are not what we call tournament-class, that always means lots of good bird action for skinnier than what we are seeing in Trinity. the anglers that prefer to stay in the boat. The Looking into September, everybody is shrimp migration can also bring a lot of trout praying we can dodge the hurricanes. I know and reds to the edges of the well pads where some areas still need rain but I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t think we the shrimp like to bury up in that soft bottom. need it that bad. Along the beach front, I hope If the dog days have had you down there is we get some calm days as those poor guys are a change right around the corner. Make sure Mickey Jr. lands a very nice due a break. On the few laid down days we you have your trolling motor and batteries August trout on topwater. have had lately they have been getting really in shape if you plan to work the birds and nice trout action and good numbers of reds. It will not be long and wells. If you are wader, get your Corkys and MirrOlures cleaned and the surf will be full of bull reds. replace the split rings and hooks. September promises to be a great There are a few tarpon being caught off Galveston, not really month on the Galveston Bays.

TSFMAG.com | 81

BInK GRImEs

thE VIEW fRom Matagorda

Matagorda

Bink Grimes is a full-time fishing and hunting guide, freelance writer and photographer, and owner of Sunrise Lodge on Matagorda Bay.

Telephone 979-241-1705 Email binkgrimes@sbcglobal.net Website www.binkgrimesoutdoors.com

It’s good to be back. I am honored to be chosen to fill these pages with the how, what, when and where of the Matagorda fishing scene.

I begin my 15th year in Matagorda, getting my start as a deckhand on the late Capt. Melvin Talasek’s Boston Whaler.

I now own Sunrise Lodge on Matagorda Bay and fish and hunt full time, while scribing 3,000-6,000 words a week as a full-time freelance outdoor writer and photographer. I have written a couple of books about the outdoors. My latest, Sunrise Sunset - Devotionals for the Sportsman and Outdoor Enthusiasts, speaks of the spiritual side of the outdoors and how easy it is to see the hand of the Creator in the wild.

In just the first two paragraphs of my first column in this magazine I have written the word “I” more times than I have

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in the past five years. Rarely do I ever write in first person, but this space will be a little different as I try to bring a friendly approach to help you navigate and enjoy Matagorda.

If you have an idea, style of fishing or question you want me to address, drop me an email and I will try to oblige if the space allows.

Now about September. Until the first cool front hits the coast, the summer pattern will remain in force. The norm this summer has been to drift deep shell in East Bay when the wind allows. It has been a solid summer for healthy fish, with encouraging numbers of 5-6 pound trout caught and released.

As has been the case since June, live bait under a Mid-Coast cork has been the best bet for catching trout, redfish and some of the largest sand trout and croakers I have ever seen.

I am talking two-pound sandies and croakers to 17 inches. When fishing out of the boat, a live shrimp catches trout 10:1 in East Bay until the water cools and trout get back on plastics.

When wading, we have targeted the mid-bay reefs with Bass Assassins and small Super Spooks. Here is the funny thing: you can catch plenty of trout while wading with plastics and plugs, but out of the boat is a different story. I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t know why, but that is how it is in East Bay. West Bay was a tough bite in August - that is nothing new. Low tides and boiling water temperatures scatter fish over sand and grass. The guys who target redfish in West Bay have been in East Bay due to the tough conditions. However, expect all that to change this month as swelling equinox tides bring cooler water to the flats and cover reefs that have been exposed most of the summer.

Spots like Shell Island, Twin Island, Oyster Lake and Crab Lake should hold redfish, black drum and a few trout. Also, watch for the first sign of bird action, especially if we get a late September cool front.

I will be splitting time between fishing, teal hunting and dove hunting this month. The first half of the month will be all fishing, then as teal season runs Sept. 15-30, I will teal hunt in the morning and fish the afternoons. Then, as the South Zone dove season opens Sept. 21, well, flip a coin.

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TSFMAG.com | 83

CaPt. shEllIE GRaY

mID-Coast BaYs With the Grays

Port O'Connor Seadrift

Captain Gary and Captain Shellie Gray fish year-round for trout and redfish in the Port O’Connor/ Seadrift area. Gary started his Bay Rat Guide Service 20 years ago.

The Grays specialize in wade and drift fishing with artificial lures.

Gary and Shellie also team up to fish many tournaments.

Telephone 361-785-6708 Email Gary@BayRat.com Website www.bayratguideservice.com

84 | September 2012

By the time you read this article the kiddos will much better than this time last year. We finally probably be back in school and many families will managed to get some much-needed rain and would be kept busy with school functions and sports. Dove welcome more. Red tide hit us last year in September season will also be under way and many that enjoy and played a major role in the areas we that we could hunting will be spending more Tyler Turlington shows off his personal best trout or couldn’t fish. Hopefully with at 26-inches and was happy to photo and release. the recent rainfall we won’t weekends at their deer leases preparing feeders and getting see a repeat of that this year. ready for their upcoming West Matagorda Bay has hunts for the antlered quarry. been yielding plenty of trout What this means for those of action when fishing over us still on the water will be grass beds and sand. When fewer anglers and fewer boats fishing this bay system I which is something I have to pay closer attention to tide admit I am anxious to see. We movements than when I fish have had a wonderfully busy San Antonio Bay. Fish here summer and I find pleasure in are what we describe as “tide seeing more people enjoying dependent” in their feeding. what our wonderful middle Meaning that because they coast has to offer but many are occupying the waters days this summer, especially that are close to the passes weekends, left me yearning to the Gulf the more they for our less hectic fall and become dependent on tidal wintertime traffic. movement when feeding Our trout fishing has been since these movements very productive this summer, provide and move their food

Super nice red caught by David Carlson on an early morning trip.

source. As the tide moves in and out it moves the bait to the predator fish. The currents produced by the tides provide the best opportunity for fishing success. When the tide is slack the fish are inactive. So be sure to check your tide charts when you plan on fishing this bay system and also the Matagorda Peninsula and Island surf.

The surf bite will still be strong in September and I plan on taking advantage of it whenever the weather allows me. If I can’t make it to the surf, I will still be targeting trout on the mid-bay reefs and sandy shorelines of our bay system. Until we receive our first cold fronts look for fishing to be most optimal at dawn and/or dusk. Of course, I am not saying that the fish don’t feed at other times but during this warmer period I have my best luck during the rise and fall of the sun. If our winds do blow me off the San Antonio Bay reefs and/or surf then you can find me in the back lakes looking to hook up with some redfish.

It is no secret that September is known for the bull red run. And while these bull reds will be lingering in and around the passes to the Gulf also look for newly-matured reds from the bays to start schooling up heading to the passes from the bays to meet up with the more mature spawners.

Redfish leaving the bays usually do so in mostly large groups. Over the next couple of months these large groups will work their way through the bay and toward the pass.

Look for these redfish to travel shorelines close to the deep dropoffs of the bays as they make their way to the passes of the Gulf. While most of these schools move at good speeds expect them to stop often on the shallow shorelines to take advantage of some fine dining. It’s at these times that these fish become easy targets. Most anglers will be able to wade up to or anchor a boat within casting distance of a school and hook up with a fish from the edge of the school without spooking the others.

These redfish aren’t typically picky when it comes to eating but I have had the most success using just a 1/2 ounce weedless gold spoon.

Looking back at last year’s weather in September I noticed we had an early cold front in the first week and a few more before the month’s end.

It wouldn’t hurt my feelings one bit if we experienced a repeat of that this September. Fishing during the transitional period between summer and fall can be exciting. The summer was long and hot and I am super-ready for some cooler fall fishing.

TSFMAG.com | 85

DaVID RoWsEY

hooKED uP WIth Rowsey

Any of you that have fished with me for any amount of time or knows me on a personal level, also knows that my favorite off-the-water thing is bird hunt. My Upper article is supposed to be about fishing, and it will be, Laguna/ but September means the opening of dove season, Baffin followed by ducks, and, my favorite, quail. Redfish tails in the morning’s calm waters, supersonic doves in the afternoon, the smell of gun smoke, BBQ, and a cold beer at the end is pretty much a perfect day for me.

David Rowsey has 20 years September is the beginning of a major transition experience in the Laguna/Baffin on the waters of the Upper Laguna and Baffin Bay. region; trophy trout with artificial lures is his specialty. David has a Large migrations of baitfish and redfish will start taking place and can make for some awesome action great passion for conservation if you are lucky enough to spot them. The schools are and encourages catch and release of trophy fish. pretty easy to find on calm days, as they detect the vibration of an outboard for quite some distance away.

Telephone When they “hump” the water it will make even the 361-960-0340 saltiest of trout enthusiast get buck fever. When I leave Website www.DavidRowsey.com the marina, I like to depart with just enough light that I Email can scan the bay waters out for about 500 yards. I alter david.rowsey@yahoo.com my normal routes to Baffin just about every morning in

86 | September 2012

hopes of finding a new school of reds to play with later in the day as we wrap up trout fishing. It’s always fun to point out a big school of fish to clients who do not have the experience to know what they are looking at.

I make a mental note of where they are hanging out, and 9 out of 10 times we will find them again in the late morning or early afternoon. After a morning trout bite, it is a great way to finish the day.

Many of the trout we catch in September are as bulging fat as they are in April. Two things occur in September to promote these swollen bellies: Significant spawning takes place during August and into September, and the trout are inclined to gorge themselves as baitfish start migrating to the gulf.

September can still be as hot as you know what, but gamefish know what’s coming in the way of winter, cold fronts, and a reduced supply of groceries.

They are going to take their shots as they present themselves, and September is just the beginning of that feed pattern.

Fishing with your eyes becomes paramount now,

as with any other kind of migration, things are moving around daily. The fish you caught under those big rafts of mullet on a spoil island yesterday might not be there the next day.

If you find this to be the case, use your eyes, find the bait again, and hopefully duplicate the successful pattern from the day before. I use a spoil island as the example here, but the same applies to shorelines, reefs, etc.

September mornings are going to find me starting in Baffin just about every day. Keying in on dropoffs, natural passes, and hard barriers like spoil islands will be where I start my search for huge schools of mullet.

Once they are located, I try to keep myself and group on the outer edges of the biggest part of them. Staying on the edge is good for a couple of reasons: In most cases, the feeding trout will be there picking off the mullet that wanders away from its school, and where the feeding trout are is where I want to be casting.

Secondly, if you start throwing big

Gretchen Sengelmann with one of many big reds picked off from a school. Gretchen’s first wade trip was awesome - first one out of the boat every wade and catching all of the big three.

topwaters into a school or just simply get too close, you run the risk of spooking the school of mullet, they scatter, and the concentrated trout scatter with them. This technique, in my opinion, promotes lots of action/ bites versus just a few blow ups.

As the day heats up, I’m headed north to find those schools of reds we watched from earlier in the morning.

Knowing the general area they are in, now I can be sneaky and approach with some caution and stealth. I usually set up a good 1/4 mile south of where I saw them, deploy the Motor Guide and start cruising until I see them, their bulge of water or some other telltale sign. You are not always going to see the easy signs, so also be aware of where brown pelicans are sitting in the water, which way they are flying when they get up, and also for any concentrations of mullet flipping around.

Remember the buffalo…release the trout! -Capt David Rowsey

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TSFMAG.com | 87

tRICIa’s Mansfield Report CaPt. tRICIa

This year has proved quite interesting in the Lower Laguna Madre. Well, let’s be honest, frustrating is probably a better word. For a while now many of our time-honored and dependable patterns just haven’t been. The Laguna still offers great angling rewards, but for us to reap them we have had to accept what we see and then be spunky enough to reboot when Port required.

Mansfield More on rebooting, whenever you rely only on what you think you know, you’ll probably never know much more. In fishing, if your consistent and proven patterns all of a sudden seem to change, we have only Capt. Tricia’s Skinny Water two basic choices: keep doing what you have always Adventures operates out of done hoping for the best, or get in there and get with Port Mansfield, specializing in the new program. The new program here, or lack of, wadefishing with artificial lures. has to do with our flats proper.

For whatever reason, miles and miles of crystalline Telephone knee-deep water have basically been sterile of 956-642-7298 gamefish. We expected more redfish using the Email shallows by now – if not the iconic schools of years shell@granderiver.net past – at least good sprinklings of scattered singles Website www.SkinnyWaterAdventures.com and small wolf packs. I’m no biologist, but I like to think I am somewhat experienced in what I do and something has changed. There will be days of nothingness until you get your shirt pockets wet. Many

seasoned visitor anglers have echoed the same, ditto more than a few veteran locals.

Is it a change in forage? Water conditions? Traffic?

I wish I knew. So far this year it just hasn’t happened consistently up shallow, and I’m not even sure I remember what a mud boil looks like anymore.

Speaking further, I have trouble remembering the

Live the

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Paddletails in thigh-deep water have been our steadiest producers when they won’t go on top.

last time I saw a large group of reds tailing as far as you could see. Understanding there are cycles in all things fishing related, there is one thing we know for sure, and that’s that the parking lots have been routinely overflowing and the yellow bait flags often fly at half mast soon after sunup signaling the boats are out, check back later, even with three trawlers trying to supply the demand. So what do we do? We adapt to conditions. That is what a fisherman does. Here’s what we have done, perhaps something to consider until conditions change yet again.

Traditional summer areas, deeper depressions such as the Saucer, Greens, Rattlesnake, and Gladys’s Hole are basically done. Forget about any Hook-N-Line Fishing Map, as most named areas are consistently covered up with fiberglass and prop wash.

Until the relief of fall, we need to watch our fish signs closely and manage our expectations. We went to the extremely clear water about lower-thigh deep. Even without seeing much, just perhaps a few flipping baitfish and a bird or two, faith and effort have paid off.

In the absence of boats, fish are there and eating topwaters. Staying diligent has paid off with the occasional large scattered fish, then you walk into an area just full of them. Junior plugs have made for some violent explosions, especially in the early morning calm. Single hooks have helped much when the grass is pesky. After that, regular old soft

plastic tails pulled through potholes have been fairly consistent. Good equipment and braided line helps.

September is still going to be hot, but with traffic hopefully down, maybe these fish won’t feel as pressured and use the shallows more often. If overnight conditions have been conducive for a good cool-down, (clear skies, etc.), the sand is always worth an early look.

Going skinny is a large part of the Mansfield experience, but unfortunately many aren’t willing to risk it. However, if there are good amounts of bait up shallow, be confident, Having to work be quiet, throw tails and be excited. A Kelley deeper than Wiggler pumpkin/chartreuse on an 1/8 ounce normal is tough jig is hard to beat, and neither are those large on the younger anglers but they trout you might pull on while supposedly still get it done. fishing for reds. The challenge is whether we decide to target the exciting shallow opportunities, or go straight out to pocket-deep water.

Let’s hope that in September more fish will move into our beloved wading range, and please be conscious of others and lend a wide berth. Get out there and just do it, adapting to whatever Nature throws at you. But that’s what lure fishing is about, right?

What a challenge to try and fool Nature with something unnatural, but that’s what we do as sportsmen, unless of course we can call ‘rubber’ natural.

Remember; there is still no gasoline or diesel fuel in the Port!

TSFMAG.com | 89

CaPt. ERnEst CIsnERos

south PaDRE Fishing Scene

A rr oyo C olorado t o Port I sabel

A Brownsville-area native, Capt. Ernest Cisneros fishes the Lower Laguna Madre from Port Mansfield to Port Isabel.

Ernest specializes in wading and poled skiff adventures for snook, trout, and redfish.

Cell 956-266-6454 Website www.tightlinescharters.com

90 | September 2012

Aaron and I sat at the table after dinner sharing a thought that fish could possibly hold there. In our stories and comparing notes about the day each defense we never had to look this hard. had experienced on the water. The feeding patterns Anyway, back to the conversation, one of the keys to observed and what we tried led us to agree we’ve Aaron’s success has been the tide level. As he explained, been on an unusually tough two-month stretch. To he has been using the tide to determine where these Aaron’s credit I can say he’s been on good fish even on fish could be holding. From our conversation, he has the toughest of days. He has been consistently finding not been looking far from where they should be, but redfish when few have been able and his trout catches what he is looking for is any change or reason in the have been equally impressive. So you could see where water that might perhaps attract fish or cause them he had my undivided attention.

Longtime readers will remember Aaron as Jason Westbrook’s a former youth-writer for this magazine. He is trophy snook now in college and guides part-time. Manymeasured 34-inches. a-day I towed him around on an inner tube wade fishing and today he schools me at the dinner table.

We agreed that fish have not been in their usual places for this time of the year; and when you did find them there they do not hold for long. In my opinion, this is because of the heat, heavy boat traffic and lack of seagrass in lots of our flats around the Arroyo Colorado. I believe they have relocated to inconspicuous places that we have always passed, never giving

David Brysch on a stormy weather day; almost 34-inches and a whopping 11 pounds!

to relocate. This change could be as simple as a grass line, a spoil that always goes unnoticed, a drop or hole along intersecting channels.

A classic example; he explained how everyone is looking for fish on popular clear flats that get run over countless times throughout the day. He believes the fish are being pushed off to slightly deeper, offcolored water. It helped that a nearby shallow spoil area caused many boats to steer clear and thus leave it undisturbed.

He mentioned several spots that have produced excellent catches on the toughest days. He further pointed out that he waits on the tide to be just right. If it’s too low he waits till it comes up. He also mentioned that the heavier the boat traffic tends to be, the better chance that these fish will be there.

I mention this, not to pinpoint coordinates, but to get you thinking outside the realm of your normal spots. Heck, my conversation with my son that evening got me to think outside my box and want to try some new spots that I had never fished.

Trout numbers continue to be good but be prepared to sort for good ones. Flats near the ICW continue to be productive when the water is moving. It’s a good thing that some of these flats still have patches of grass. Dragging soft plastics along the grass has been a sure way to entice a strike. Besides keying on grass and water movement, we have focused on depths where bait is holding. I begin my days spreading my fishermen at different depths to determine which will be most productive. Look for this pattern to continue into September.

September has to be my least predictable month as it includes transition from summer to fall patterns. There will be lots of bait making it challenging to get the fish to bite. Expect lots of freshwater from storms and higher than normal tides. The good news is boat traffic will be lighter as many outdoorsmen will begin their hunting pursuits. Fish will not be as spooked or nervous as they were during the busy past few months. Not being as finicky will improve the topwater bite, even in the middle of the day.

I always like to mention products that I test on the water. By far the best shirt I own is the Simms Glenbrook shirt. It’s comfortable, very light and cool. It dries quickly and stylish enough to wear for an evening out.

Check it out at simmsfishing.com or if you’re in the Houston checkout the extensive Simms display at Fishing Tackle Unlimited’s two locations.

In closing, the hunt for fish has definitely been a grind lately, but whether it’s hard or easy, always try to make it a safe and enjoyable experience.

TSFMAG.com | 91

FISHING REPORTS

Lake Calcasieu Louisiana Jeff and Mary Poe - Big Lake Guide Service - 337.598.3268 In September, we'll have the first cool fronts of the fall. With all the rains we've been getting lately, north winds and lower tides are just what the doctor ordered! Trout should show up inside the lake and create some great fishing opportunity. Birds will be picking over school trout up to two pounds, but bigger fish will be more prolific over reefs. Shrimp imitations tossed under birds will generate the most bites. MirrOlure Lil' Johns, H&H Beetles, H&H Salty Grubs, and Norton Sand Eel Juniors will work best. Glow, opening night, and avocado are three colors you can't leave the launch without. Over reefs, use pogy or mullet imitations. MirrOlure Glad Shad, MirrOdine XL and 52MR, and all the different Corky models work well. If the water is clean, use natural looking colors. If it's stained, try something that looks like a disco ball. Redfish will be roaming the middle of the lake, hunting for pogies, mullet, and shrimp. Look for them under birds and slicks. Often, it's possible to catch them on the ugliest thing in the tackle box!

Trinity Bay - East Bay - Galveston Bay | James Plaag Silver King Adventures - silverkingadventures.com - 409.935.7242 Predictably, James was talking about the tarpon fishing when he submitted this report. "We are expecting the best tarpon fishing in the Galveston area since 1997. There are lots of fish; we're already

92 | September 2012

ORECASTS F from Big Lake to Boca Chica

AND

seeing plenty, jumping some and catching a few. It should get better and better, with a peak around the latter part of September. If we don't get any storms stirring things up at the wrong time, I expect it to be top notch. Trout fishing has been steady too, nothing spectacular.

We're still working fairly deep water along the ship channel, using slicks and mud stirs to locate fish, and of course, fishing some unmarked structures. There's been a little bit of action in the deeper parts of the Trinity basin too. Best bite has been on soft plastics like the Bass Assassin Sea Shads rigged on three-eighths ounce jigheads.

Limits are pretty easy to catch on most days, mostly fish around two pounds, with a few better ones mixed in. Those patterns should hold into the middle of September. Cooler weather later in the month should make the wading better."

Jimmy West - Bolivar Guide Service - 409.996.3054 Jim was in the process of gearing up for the hunting seasons when we spoke. "I've been mowing and plowing the fields, getting things ready for the dove and teal seasons. I've got a bunch of people booked already. I'm throwing a big barbecue for opening day.

Usually, by the middle of September, we've got plenty of birds. The fishing's been great lately too. We're fishing out in the middle, in five to about eight feet of water, keying on slicks. On some days, there are a few birds working, and it's possible to catch keepers under them, but working the slicks produces a better average size.

On good days, we're catching limits of trout from two to about six pounds. Topwaters work great on the better days, with a variety of soft plastics producing more bites when it's a little tougher. The bite has been early, so you've got to get the trout before nine or ten o'clock for the most part. After that, looking for mud slicks and chasing the reds is a better bet. When you find them, there are lots of oversized fish, but some slot fish are mixed in too."

West Galveston - Bastrop - Christmas - Chocolate Bays Randall Groves - Groves Guide Service 979.849.7019 - 979.864.9323 September sets up well for Randall, if recent results are any indication.

"Fishing has been good. The surf has been good at times, and it will continue to produce well into September if weather allows. Usually, during the first half of the month, the fishing for both trout and bull reds is good along the beachfront. In the bays, we'll start to focus more on the shell. Seems the fish move off the sand and favor the oysters more this month. We'll target reds in the bays most of the time too. We have good luck on dark Bull Minnows with chartreuse tails. Topwaters will work much of the time too. On the calm days, it's often possible to wade slowly on the flats and find the schools of reds.

Sometimes, once we find 'em, we can walk along and catch plenty as they move around. It's a fun way to keep the rods bent. Fishing deeper water out of the boat can be better for trout. My new JH Performance boat is on the way; I can't wait to get in it. I'm having it rigged up with an Evinrude motor. It's going to be a beauty."

Matagorda | Tommy Countz Bay Guide Service -979.863.7553 cell 281.450.4037 September is a transition month, and the fish are much like people, looking forward to the change, according to Charlie. "We should start to get some cool fronts, and that usually perks up the fishing on

the shorelines. We got a bunch of rain recently, and that has both bays full of fish, especially in areas far removed from the freshwater influence. Most of the best catching recently is out in the middle of the bay.

We're drifting and keying on scattered shell in deep water, throwing soft plastics and bouncing them off the bottom. As we get into September, the wading will become more productive along the shorelines and in the coves of both bays. The other thing to watch for is the surf. We haven't had the right kind of weather to get out there much so far this year, but I've seen years when we spent most of September out on the beachfront. If we can, we'll head out there and fish topwaters a lot early in the mornings. This late in the season, we'll have to put up with lots of skipjacks and gafftops, but the trout can be bigger than average."

Palacios | Capt. Aaron Wollam www.palaciosguideservice.com - 979.240.8204 Fishing has slowed down a bit from the last couple of months due to the huge amount of rain (14 inches) we received recently. The key with all this freshwater runoff has been to find the saltwater line, and that is where we have been finding our fish. Because most of our local bays are fresh, most of our fish lately have been found around the wells, shell pads, and spoils out in West Matagorda Bay. The best method for catching them has been freelining live shrimp with a split shot around the structures and jigging the shrimp off the bottom.

The size of the specks has not been big, but we are catching lots of good eaters in the sixteen to eighteen-inch range. September is one of my favorite months because of the abundance of schooling redfish on local shorelines. Keys to look for are white egrets running down

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shorelines following fish, and huge wakes coming down shorelines. These are two surefire signs the reds are in the area. Best baits are paddletails in white or pearl with chartreuse tails.

Port O’Connor | Lynn Smith - Back Bay Guide Service 361.983.4434 Lynn has been fishing the surf quite a bit and hopes to continue doing so in September. "If we can, we'll hit the surf as much as possible. The topwaters work well out there, especially early in the morning. When we switch lures, it's usually to a soft plastic with a heavier jighead, at least a quarter ounce, to make it easier to cast into the wind. If we're not in the surf, we'll be fishing shorelines and sand bars with some grassy edges and bright potholes adjacent to deep water. In a way, the fishing is the same as the surf, meaning we'll try topwaters early and stick with them as long as we're getting blow ups. If we aren't getting many blow ups, we'll usually go straight to the soft plastics, but in the bays, we'll use a lighter jighead, most often an eighth-ounce. Lately, dark Bass Assassins in red colors have been working well, as have the Hogie minnows in similar colors. The fish will relate to fairly shallow grass edges early, but as the sun gets higher and heats up the water, the fish often move out a little deeper and we follow them."

Rockport | Blake Muirhead Gator Trout Guide Service - 361.790.5203 or 361.441.3894 Blake will be getting cranked up in the cast and blast season by the time this magazine hits the shelves. "Both the dove hunting and the teal hunting are set up to be good. I'll be doing both in September. As far as the fishing goes, I'll be staying around the passes mostly, trying to locate the schools of reds as they gang up and then head out to sea. It's still possible to find plenty of reds in the back lakes right now, but by the middle of September, the better bet is to work the shallow

94 | September 2012

flats adjacent to the major passes. There are usually lots of trout in those areas too. For the trout, wading is often best, staying along the shorelines where there's plenty of sand and some grassy areas. For the reds, fishing from the boat is usually better. From the deck, it's a little easier to see the herds and to remain mobile so you can stay with them once you find them. Topwaters work well to catch both the trout and reds in September. When they aren't working as good, I'll go right back to my old faithful Norton Sand Eels."

Upper Laguna Madre - Baffin Bay - Land Cut Robert Zapata – rz1528@grandecom.net - 361.563.1160 This summer continues to be very good for me. We’ve been catching many good-sized trout on my charters, with many trout close to the 25-inch mark and a few getting close to 30 inches. Fishing with live croakers has been the most productive for trout and also for good numbers of flounder. Bass Assassin Kwik Korks rigged with about twelve inches of fluorocarbon leader, an eighth-ounce jighead and a four-inch Berkley Gulp! shrimp have also been producing many trout and redfish in water depths less than three feet. I’m not expecting many changes during the month of September, except that I’ll be looking for the schools of bull reds on their way out to the Gulf of Mexico. To prepare for these schools, I’ll make sure my Power Pro braided line is in good shape, and that my 25 lb. test fluorocarbon shock leader is not frayed. I'll use a Palomar knot to tie on a halfounce weedless spoon or an eighth-ounce Spring Loc jighead rigged with a Bass Assassin Die Dapper in natural colors like sand trout or pumpkinseed/chartreuse.

Corpus Christi | Joe Mendez – www.sightcast1.com - 361.937.5961 With the water clarity improving over much of the Upper Laguna Madre and in Baffin Bay, Joe expects September fishing to be good.

"More areas are holding the crystal clear kind of water lately. We

continue to get good pushes of ocean water through the Packery Channel, and the water around the JFK is really pretty most of the time. As the reds bunch up in the area, it should be easy to find them on most days. If it's calm, the big motor often spooks them while we're running, and they make a big wake, so they're easy to see, even early in the morning. If it's windier, it's usually possible to spot them in depths of three to five feet, as long as the sun is out. We'll also target some fish in shallower water, hoping to sightcast them. Lots of reds and drum can be found in knee-deep water around sandy pockets in the grass. A few big trout are usually found along with them. Once we see them, we'll usually throw soft plastics with paddletails on light jigheads past their heads and bring them right in front of their noses to make them bite."

Port Mansfield | Terry Neal www.terrynealcharters.com – 956.944.2559 Well it is dog day season on the Lower Laguna and we are praying daily for rain and looking forward to September’s cooler temperatures.

Water temps continue to be running upper 80s and that means you either have to go early or work deep. Right now our trout are holding deep in this heat. The cooler temperatures should start pulling fish up on the flats along with lots more bait. Storms in the Gulf will bring the blue water right up on the beach, the bait is already there so there is no telling what you will be able to catch. For the hunter, there should be lots of excellent dove hunts to go along with the great fishing. It is hard to beat a good cast and blast weekend trip to South Texas. Good shooting and fishing and just keep what you will eat fresh.

Padre Island National Seashore Billy Sandifer - Padre Island Safaris - 361.937.8446 September is undoubtedly the most volatile fishing month with hurricane season as well as the time of year we are most prone to get red tide. But it is a wondrous month on PINS and can also bring the year’s best fishing. Shoals of dusky and bay anchovies and menhaden pass along the beach heading south and the finger mullet move out of the bay systems into the Gulf. Tarpon follow the migrating anchovies as do skipjacks, Spanish mackerel and sharks. Redfish follow the finger mullet and the surf becomes a killing field. We call it the time of the frenzies. All players that are ever present can be encountered and anglers need to keep an eye out for sharks cruising in very shallow water. Huge flocks of seabirds working the anchovies will lead the angler to the best locations. Fly rod sight-fishing is at its best with lots of large jack crevalle and tarpon being possible. Barring bad weather and red tide the biggest problem is trying to decide what to fish for as the days never seem long enough.

Lower Laguna Madre - South Padre - Port Isabel Janie and Fred Petty – www.fishingwithpettys.com – 956.943.2747 It’s tournament time! The boat traffic is peaking and it’s more important than ever to practice good etiquette. You should always give any boat fishing the right of way by staying a distance of at least one hundred feet, or more, upwind of their drift, and be aware of kayakers and waders, who are low to the water and hard to see.

Extending good manners to the dock and boat ramp will minimize the wait and improve the attitude of your fellow boaters. Freddy says, “There are times when no one else is around to help, and we will need to take care of each other, especially in very shallow or seldom traveled areas.” We’ve been having some good days, limiting on trout and jumping a couple of flounder a week, but reds are scarce in the shallows, unless the tide is cooperating, and then we’ll pick up two to six a trip. We’re throwing Cajun Thunder round and cigar corks rigged with Berkley Gulp! three inch shrimp in new penny, molting, and pearl.

Let’s all enjoy the LLM and surrounding resources this summer, by boating responsibly and safely.

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Steven Osina POC - 42” red

Frank Escobedo Laguna Madre - 20” redfish

Frank Gonzales South Bay - redfish

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Wayne Mack Port Aransas - 24” first redfish!

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96 | September 2012

Bill Rose Port O’Connor - bull red

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Ben Baxley Port O’Connor - 45” 35lb red

Kyle Rose Port O’Connor - first trout!

Reagan Gray Mesquite Bay - keeper trout

Bernie Villescas Port Isabel - 35.5” snook CPR

Juan Coronado Sabine Pass - 30lb redfish

Chris Filip Sargent surf - 40.5” - 25lb biggest red!

Travis Pfleeger Galveston surf - 26” trout

May Curry Trinity Bay - biggest drum!

Rodger Serna, Javier Maldonado & Chris Sessions Jim’s Peak Rock - big blue marlin

Gail Scull Corpus Christi - 44” 32lb red

Thomas & Jack Watson POC - redfish

Joe Bob Frederick USS BATAAN (east of Africa) – tuna

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Pam Johnson

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Got ideas, hints or recipes you’d like to share?

Email them to pam@tsfmag.com or send by fax: 361-785-2844

This recipe was contributed by Capt. Tricia Buchen • 1 pound medium fresh shrimp (heads on, whole) • 6 cups water • 1 teaspoon salt, divided • 3/4 cup white grits • 3 tablespoons butter • 6 ounces Pepper Jack Velveeta, cubed • 8 strips center cut bacon • 3 tablespoons olive oil

• 1 cup chopped sweet onion • 1 medium red bell pepper, seeded and chopped • 1 jalapeno pepper, seeded and minced • 3 tablespoons all-purpose flour • 1/2 cup heavy whipping cream • 1 teaspoon fresh lime juice • 2 green onions, chopped, plus more for garnish • 3 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro leaves • 1/8 teaspoon ground black pepper

• Remove heads from shrimp, peel and set aside, (save heads and shells) • Preparing stock: Bring six cups water to boil, add shrimp shells and heads. Low-boil 20 minutes while stirring occasionally. Cool and strain stock, discard shells.

• Cooking the grits: In large saucepan, bring 3½ cups prepared shrimp stock to boil, add ½ teaspoon salt. Stir in grits and butter. Cover and reduce heat, simmer about 10-15 minutes, stir occasionally until grits are soft and thickened.

• Add Velveeta, stir until melted and well blended. Set aside and keep warm.

• Fry bacon in large skillet until well done.

• Remove and cool, then crumble. Save drippings in skillet. Add olive oil to skillet (if needed). Sauté onion, red bell pepper and jalapeño for 3-4 minutes. Sprinkle with flour, and cook while stirring gently to mix well, especially bottom of the pan.

• Gradually add 1-1/2 cups shrimp stock, stirring to scrape pan drippings and to prevent lumps. Add crumbled bacon, and increase heat to medium-high. Bring mixture to boil, and cook until slightly thickened. Add shrimp, and cook 3 minutes, or until pink.

Remove from heat; add cream and lime juice.

• Stir in green onion, cilantro, remaining 1⁄2 teaspoon salt, and pepper.

• Spoon shrimp mixture over warm grits, garnish with chopped green onion. Adding a sprinkle of crumbled bacon adds to the presentation. Serve with fresh green beans or fried green tomatoes.

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galveston tides & Solunar Table Texas Saltwater Fishing Magazine September 2012

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Tidal Corrections Location Calcasieu Pass, La. Sabine Bank Lighthouse Sabine Pass (jetty) Sabine Pass Mesquite Point Galveston Bay (S. jetty) Port Bolivar Texas City, Turning Basin Eagle Point Clear Lake Morgans Point Round Point, Trinity Bay Point Barrow, Trinity Bay Gilchrist, East Bay Jamaica Beach, Trinity Bay Christmas Point Galveston Pleasure Pier San Luis Pass Freeport Harbor

High -2:14 -1:46 -1:26 -1:00 -0:04 -0:39 +0:14 +0:33 +3:54 +6:05 +10:21 +10:39 +5:48 +3:16 +2:38 +2:39 +2:32 -0:09 -0:44

Low -1:24 -1:31 -1:31 -1:15 -0:25 -1:05 -0:06 +0:41 +4:15 +6:40 +5:19 +5:15 +4:43 +4:18 +3:31 +2:38 +2:33 +2:31 -0:09

For other locations, i.e. Port Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Connor, Port Aransas, Corpus Christi and Port Isabel please refer to the charts displayed below.

Please note that the tides listed in this table are for the Galveston Channel. The Tidal Corrections can be applied to the areas affected by the Galveston tide.

Minor Feeding Periods are in green, coinciding with the moon on the horizon, and the last from 1.0 to 1.5 hrs after the moon rise or before moon set.

Major Feeding Periods are in orange, about 1.0 to 1.5 hrs either side of the moon directly overhead or underfoot.

Many variables encourage active feeding current flow (whether wind or tidal driven), changes in water temp & weather, moon phases, etc. Combine as many as possible for a better chance at an exceptional day. Find concentrations of bait set up during a good time frame, and enjoy the results.

Te x a s S a l t w a t e r F i s h i n g M a g a z i n e l

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