Texas Boating

by LENNY RUDOW :: TF&G Boating Editor

ElectroFishing

GLANCING AT THAT HEADline you might guess we’re about to get into an ill-fated conversation about ba eries, jumper cables, and sh oating belly-up.

You’d be wrong.

Not only because the practice of zapping sh into submission is both unsportsmanlike and illegal, but also because there’s a be er way to use electricity to catch more sh from your boat.

LEARNING HOW TO FULLY UTILIZE YOUR ELECTRONICS

e sh nder and chartplo er tend to be the only pieces of electronics fully harnessed by the average boat-owning angler. ey use GPS to get to the hotspot, and the sh nder to peer beneath the water. at’s ne. It’s also just the beginning of how you can utilize marine electronics as sh-catching tools.

AIS is thought of by most people as a safety feature, but it can come in handy to anglers as well. Commercial boats have it, and that includes shrimpers. Just about everyone knows that shrimp boats a ract predators—everything from king mackerel to black n tunas— but nding those boats o shore can be a challenge sometimes. If, that is, you don’t have AIS. If you do have it, you’ll not only know where they’re located, but also where concentrations of multiple shrimpers are, which way they’re heading, and at what speed.

ANCHOR ALARMS are one thing most of us rarely use. ese are just for overnight cruisers, afraid they may drag anchor… right? Wrong. Anchor alarms are also useful to shermen, especially when you’re not anchored.

Dri shing is actually an ideal time to apply anchor alarm tech to enhance your angling prowess.

Stop thinking of it as it relates to anchoring, and instead, simply look at it as a way of keeping track of your boat’s position. Boat positioning is key when it comes to dri shing. In most common scenarios, you’ll be positioning your boat over a wreck, reef, or some other form of structure or live bo om that a racts sh. ese features are nearly always limited in size, whether the productive spot is just 50 yards long or it stretches for half a mile. Either way, when you have your boat properly positioned for a dri you can set an anchor alarm to go o when your boat’s traveled outside of that productive area.

Once you familiarize yourself with the basic mechanics of an anchor alarm you’ll be able to set one at whatever distance you choose in a ma er of seconds with a couple of keystrokes or taps on the LCD screen, so the time investment is minimal. But it will save you time at the end of each dri , as compared to the usual practice of just going for a while without any bites until you gure it must be time to reposition.

AUTOPILOT is another vastly under-utilized sh-catching tool. Obviously, these can make life easier while trolling by allowing you to leave the helm and help with tasks such as se ing the spread or cranking in sh. But their value goes well beyond that. Autopilot can also be used to return to exact spots where you got a hit (assuming you were fast enough to press the MOB bu on), Many have se ings for clover-leaf or spiral pa erns which allow you to work the water immediately around a spot where you got a hit so you can relocate a moving school of sh. Finally, when you’re working with a thick spread, which is sensitive to sharp turns (read: mass tangles ensue) autopilot can help smooth out the bumps by allowing you to dial in smooth, steady turns in increments down to one degree.

DIGITAL CHARTOGRAPHY exists in, or can be added to, almost every GPS/ chartplo er, and today’s digital charts o er stellar detail. In many cases, you can set your chartplo er to display contour lines down to one-foot intervals and in most cases, at least to three-foot intervals.

Although no digital charts are error-free, they can prove invaluable when you’re out on the water looking for drop-o s and structure. A less-o en utilized ability, however, is to study up on new destinations before you go there.

Taking your time and zooming in on all di erent features, contours, channels, and structure allows you to build a mental picture of an area prior to arrival. Many of us already do this while pondering over a paper map or chartbook, but doing so on your chartplo er will provide vastly more detail and de nition than any paper chart can provide.

RADAR can be used to nd ocks of birds, but it takes a fairly thick ock to be picked up by old-tech units. Modern solid-state and “broadband” units work much be er for this purpose. In either case, many anglers who try to use radar to nd birds, get burned a time or two by mis-identi cations and ghost returns, and shelve the idea. e trick to using radar to nd birds successfully? Stop trying to spot a seagull from a million miles away and zoom down to a one-mile range. en try moving range out a half-mile at a time and watch the screen for a minute or two at each range, out to ve miles (or farther with some units).

You’ll be amazed at how much easier it is to see a cluster of ve or 10 birds a few miles o , which probably disappear into nothingness at a 15 or 20-mile range. Although ve miles may not seem like a huge distance, that’s signi cantly farther than people can commonly spot birds with binoculars, much less the naked eye.

Learn to use your boat’s entire electronics suite in your angling pursuits, and you absolutely, positively will catch more sh. And you can leave those jumper cables si ing back on land in the truck, where they belong.

Email Lenny Rudow at ContactUs@fi shgame.com

TEXAS IS LIKE ITS own country.

With massive geographical boundaries and many unique cultures, Texas is as big and diverse as many nations.

For wingshooters, Texas’s hunting diversity is second to none, and it comes with a unique challenge only available within its borders. e Texas Upland Bird Slam involves the taking of dove, quail, pheasant, and chachalaca. ese birds require hunting from the far north to the Mexico border and o er opportunities from the Louisiana line to El Paso.

Let’s take a look at how, when, and where to bag these birds, and it starts with the right shotgun.

SHOTGUNNING IN STYLE e CZ All-Terrain Series o ers a unique shotgun in 12 and 20 gauge perfect for everything from dove to wild turkeys.

Clad in OD Green and walnut, these shotguns stand out without being ostentatious. e muted green Cerakote nish makes them ideal for eldwork, increasing their hardiness and making them near impervious to the elements. e stand-out feature of this series of sca erguns is a small but revolutionary addition to the ejector/extractor of the break-open variants.

To make them more ideal for use while handling dogs on a quail hunt, for example, each of the All-Terrain over/unders and side-by-sides have a set of rare earth magnets installed in their extractor or ejectors.

With these magnets in place, most modern shells are retained in the gun even when the gun is turned upside

Quality pheasant hunts are available in 37 Texas counties.

down. Never will a dog-handler accidentally dump shells out of their gun while bending over to work with their dog.

DOVE TIME

Some 400,000 Texas hunters take to the eld and bag somewhere in the neighborhood of ve million doves beginning September 1.

With the mourning dove population alone exceeding 30 million, this state is unlike any other in terms of hunting these sporting birds.

Yes, we said “mourning doves alone.”

According to the Texas Parks & Wildlife Department (TPWD), Texas has seven species of doves and pigeons. Of these, only four (mourning dove, white-winged dove, whitetipped dove, and European collared dove) are currently hunted.

Dove hunters only need $48 to get in on thousands of acres of prime dove hunting habitat. at’s the price of an Annual Public Hunting Permit (APH), which unlocks access to many dove-speci c leases and hunting land totaling more than 900,000 acres.

Dove (and small game) leases are distributed from South Texas (Brooks County) to the Panhandle (Hansford County) and from the Beaumont region (Orange County) to far West Texas (Hudspeth County).

Around 80 percent of the acreage is located in Dallas/Ft Worth (Reg. 4), Austin/ Waco (Reg. 6), Houston/Beaumont (Reg. 7), San Antonio/Corpus Christi (Reg 8).

Texas holds the most consistent quail population in America, but even in Texas seasons can fl uctuate. WE’VE STILL GOT QUAIL!

Quail numbers are down nationwide, but South, Central, and West Texas, as well as well-managed properties in the Panhandle, still have substantial populations. e most commonly hunted quail here is the bobwhite. A beautiful (and tasty) bird famous for ushing at the very last second, makes up most of the quail bagged in Texas.

Number two is the scaled quail, most o en referred to as “blue quail” in Texas.

According to TPWD o cials, scaled quail occur throughout the Chihuahuan desert and are the most common quail in the Trans Pecos. ey are also present in the Edward’s Plateau and Panhandle. ese wary birds

Texas is the only state to offer a season for chachalacas.

o en run instead of ying in retreat and can make impressive speeds.

In the Trans-Pecos, the beautiful Gambel’s quail is present and in huntable numbers. Public land for hunting them is scarce, but Elephant Mountain Wildlife Management Area is an option.

Quail season kicks o October 30 and runs through February 27.

CHACHALACA? HUH?

e plain chachalaca typically occurs in small groups of three to ve individuals. ey are found in tall, thorny thickets, scrubland, and second-growth forest edge along the Gulf-Caribbean slope from the Lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas and Nuevo Leon, Mexico, south to Honduras and Costa Rica, according to TPWD o cials.

Texas is the only state to have enough of these unique birds to o er a season, and they are available to hunt in four counties (Cameron, Hidalgo, Starr, Willacy).

Secretive and o en di cult to spot in their native habitat, these unique gamebirds o er a challenging hunting experience for the outdoorsman. e upcoming season is October 30 to February 27 with a daily bag limit of ve birds.

Texas Parks & Wildlife o ers hunting on ve units of the Las Palomas Wildlife Management Area. ese include the Baird, Anacua, Carricitos, Longoria, and Tucker Units.

FINISHING WITH PHEASANTS

Texas has quality free-ranging, wild pheasant hunting in 37 counties in the Panhandle region.

According to TPWD records, the rst pheasants in the High Plains and Northern Rolling Plains of Texas immigrated from western Oklahoma in 1939 or 1940. Various a empts at pheasant stockings have occurred at the state and private level from the Panhandle to the Gulf Coast (which used to have a season), but the Panhandle is where the birds ourish.

With a December 4 to January 2 season this year, most Texas pheasant hunting is by Panhandle area residents.

Still, there is a hardcore group of hunters who make the annual trek to get in on hunting what could be the most beautiful upland bird in the big, open spaces of the Panhandle.

Shotgun Diversity

CZ’S ALL-TERRAIN SERIES COMES IN 12- or 20-gauge and the option of 28 or 30-inch barrels, depending on the model.

Equipped with sling swivels, these shotguns are ready out of the box. Almost all models come with extended  Bobwhite AT chokes. All species of the Texas Upland Bird Slam are huntable with either 12 or 20 gauge, with the 20 being most popular with the dove and chachalaca hunters and 12 having the edge on quail and pheasants.

Models including the following: • CZ Bobwhite G2 All-Terrain 20 Gauge • CZ Upland Ultralight All-Terrain 20 Gauge • CZ Upland Ultralight All-Terrain 12 Gauge • CZ Bobwhite G2 All-Terrain 12 Gauge • CZ Redhead Premier All-Terrain 12 Gauge • CZ Drake All-Terrain 20 Gauge • CZ Drake All-Terrain 12 Gauge • CZ 1012 All-Terrain • CZ Redhead Premier All-Terrain 12 Gauge • CZ Redhead Premier All-Terrain 20 Gauge

Get more details on the web here: cz-usa.com/product/cz-all-terrain-series.

 Drake AT

records, the rst pheasants in the High Plains and Northern Rolling occurred at the state and private Panhandle to the son), but the Panhandle is where the birds

 Redhead AT

 Upland

Ultralight AT

All species of the Texas Upland Bird Slam are huntable with either 12 or 20 gauge, with the 20 being most