The “Slanty” Rock

An early Friday afternoon in mid May found Max Windsor and I fishing on the Gulf side of the South Jetty, but it was just too rough to be comfortable. The wind wasn’t too high, 10 to 12 out of the southeast, but the waves against the rocks just made fishing at this spot way too much up and down. With always the potential for one of us getting seasick, we decided on a different tack, so he “upped” the anchor while I slowly pulled the boat forward and soon we were cruising around the tip of the South Jetty.

Our new objective was the North Jetty and a “slanty” rock near the end, on the Gulf side. This spot had paid off before, but the only problem, there was just room for 1 boat. Maybe it would be open today and as we motored up it was and we were in luck! With the jetty in question being 6 miles long and loaded with good fishing spots, the “slanty” rock with the washboard face was one of the best. Angling under the surface it must have created enough hump to change the currents.

We came into the rocks quietly, carefully dropped the anchor, it caught, the boat swung stern to the beach and with the tide going out of the channel, a backwater was created on the Gulf side of the jetty, forcing the water to head in on our side. We would be free shrimping using live shrimp with our 7 foot, popping rods, black reels loaded with 15 pound line, split buckshot clipped on 12 inches above a number 8 hook, trout poison!

We cast out and as the bait slowly sank, the tide would carry it back toward the beach, with a strike being possible anywhere. Our first casts were rewarded with 2 good hits, not the nibbling bump of a bait stealer, but good solid hits that turned out to be, after long runs and thrashing around the boat, Spanish mackerel, 18 inchers. We boxed the 2, noting that we were lucky to land these sharp toothed, mackerel. Before they moved on, we added another to the cooler, but had several cut-offs.

When the speckled trout showed up, both of us had hard hits from 2 pounders that we boxed and cast back out. Mac had a hit almost as soon as the shrimp hit the water and as my shrimp settled, whamo, a spec nailed it and headed south! After spirited fights, we netted both and flopped them into the cooler. Thinking this would be a big catch day we both baited up and cast back out, but with no luck, the school had moved on!

While we were waiting for a strike, I put my rod in a holder and got out another popping rod, but this one had a spoon with a yellow, buck tail, why not make a few casts? About my third cast, I was rewarded with a nice strike and immediately the fish started a wallowing, splashing, surface fight, this was fun! Then Mac said, “Jon, you’d better check your other rod!” It was bent almost double, another fish and he added, “What’cha gonna’ do now,” as I placed the rod under my arm, clamped down my left elbow and picked up the other rod and set the hook into a nice trout.

Not offering any help, he was laughing at my antics, but if he’d just take one of the rods I’d be OK. Deciding that fishing with 2 rods was unproductive and that I’d bit off more that I could chew, I decided to let the line go slack on the spoon and I quickly stuck that rod in a holder, concentrating on just 1 fish, I landed it, but picking up the other rod, nothing was there.

We ended up with a dozen specs and the 3 mackerel, but the “Slanty Rock” paid off again.

More Outdoors Pictures, May 26, 2013

Two weeks ago, before I had my knee surgery, Colton, Mike and I went down to the coast and fished for 3 days, not much catching, but a lot of fun!  This picture of me, taken by our guide, showed yours truly fighting a speckled trout.

Back to the real world, Goldthwaite that is, we’ve had a lot of rain, hopefully the drought is broken, but during the dry spell in early April to mid May, this buzzard showed up at the water trough.  That’s a first, a buzzard getting a drink.

Then, on May 22nd, a hen turkey came by one of the corn/protein feeders.  The clock should read AM.

On May 24th, this buck, now 4-1/2 years old, see my post of May 13, “A Kinda’ Special Buck”, is feeding at the same feeder the turkey used earlier.  The buck, now rapidly growing his horns, will be a great one this year! Again, the clock should read AM.

Along The Intercoastal

In early May of 1968, my dad and I took off work early one afternoon and towed the boat down to Galveston Island, bought a quart of shrimp for $4.00, launched it and headed out into west bay on the east side of the causeway. Our objective for the day was to find a school of birds, sea gulls, working over shrimp that the speckled trout were driving towards the surface. Today we’d be using live shrimp and our tackle was 6-1/2 foot popping rods, Dad had a red reel and I had a direct drive model, both spooled with 15, pound line, popping corks, a 2 to 3 foot leader with small treble hooks.

We headed out to the Intercoastal Waterway where the channels split, turned right along the Pelican Island channel, cut the motor down and started looking. Not 400 yards ahead, there was a big bird school and with no other boats in sight, we’d have this one to ourselves. Positioning our boat down wind from the birds, we drifted up and at 40 yards, made our first casts. Dad sailed his cast right in front of the birds and before he could turn the reel handle had a big strike and me, trying to hard to make a long cast, had a wonderful backlash!

While I picked at the backlash, Dad was in a big fight with the spec that later proved just under 5 pounds, but soon he wore it down and as I slid the net under it, Dad unhooked it and put it in the cooler, rebaited and cast back out. Finally proving victorious over the backlash, I cast out and we both had big strikes, good fish that circled us around the boat, wallowed on top and we finally tired out both specs and netted the almost 5 pounders. Having only one net on board, I netted my dad’s fish, then he netted mine and, while we were wasting precious fishing time with this school of big trout, it fell to me to untangle the mess.

Untangling us, we baited up and cast out, had simultaneous strikes, 2 more nice fish, but mine slipped the hook and Dad brought his spec in, I netted it and added another to the box. Baiting up and casting out, Dad was immediately into another nice spec, while I had the Mother of all backlashes. This one shut down my fishing for the afternoon, Dad added 2 more almost 5 pounders giving us a total of 6, almost 30 pounds of speckled trout!

The birds finally dissipated, Dad cast out several times with no strikes, so we drifted for almost 15 minutes hoping the specs would gather back up, they didn’t, so we headed back in, filleted the fish and drove back to our southwest Houston homes, all the while me thinking, I’ll have to get me one of those smooth casting, red reels.

The next day I stopped by Oshman’s and picked me up a brand spankin’ new red reel!

A Hitch In My Get Along

This past Wednesday I had my right knee “cleaned out”, cleaned out from bone chips, cartilage chips, along with spots of arthritis and I’ll be “stumpin’ around” for a week or two. The same doc that told me that I didn’t need a knee replacement did the surgery and he’s been keeping me playing Senior Softball for 5 years (after I was told by 2 docs that I’d need a knee replacement within a year). Such is life!

Surprisingly, there is some pain. When I go to bed at night, thinking the surgery would be a literal walk in the park, turning over is a great problem coupled with me being a restless sleeper, I wake up a lot! Last night, it was quite hot in our house and I checked the temp and found that it was 83, 83.8 to be exact. With the temp forecasted to be over 90 today, I hope our A/C man makes Sunday calls?

An old saying says, “When it rains, it pours”. It’s certainly pouring on us now, but “things” will get better!

A Kinda’ Special Buck

This particular buck, he’s kinda’ my pet, first showed up robbing the corn feeder at MaMaw’s blind, he was just 2-1/2 then.  Last year, he was the buck that challenged the buck that I had just shot and this year and now he’s 4-1/2 and will be a real shooter this year.

In 2011 he’s pictured going after the corn and protein, he’s the reason I put a guard over the feeder!

Last year he’s challenging the dead buck, see my post “[Challenge Unanswered]” of November 8, 2012.

Now this year, he’s still coming around MaMaw’s feeder, who knows the size his horns will reach?

I bet he doesn’t make it until next year!

The Last Click

Reading the title, you’d think that somehow I’d gotten my line stripped by a monster fish, but read on and you’ll see it was something completely different.

After, as it turned out, a very eventful trip off shore, see my post of  May 25, 2010, “[Honey Hole]”, with Bobby Baldwin, his brother and father-in-law, I was to meet Bobby and one of his friends from Beaumont at their boat shed on Bolivar peninsula and head back out with them for another go at some kingfish.  To top it all off, my ex-wife and I were to spend the weekend at their family’s beach house.

When I arrived at the boat shed, no Bobby.  His friend, Joe, was waiting for me and said, “Bobby was purty sick, but he told me to tell you to take the boat on out and catch some fish.”   What a surprise to me because I’d never taken a big, boat out anywhere, let alone, offshore, but the Fishing God’s were kind, a slight southeast wind and the forecast was for it to be calm all day!  Well there has to be a first time for everything so out we went!

Joe and I cranked it up, it started and purred as we backed out of the shed and putted out into the Intercoastal Waterway.  Trying to remember everything Tom had said coming in from my last trip with them, I opened up the big engine and we cruised on out into Galveston Channel and around the South Jetty.  We agreed that we’d stop at the special place and try for some speckled trout.  Fiddling around there for an hour, we caught 2, 2 pounders, then pulled up the anchor and headed south, out toward the 12 mile, oil rig.

Really being ciceros and having no experience with a big boat or offshore fishing, just as we left the spot on the jetty, we put out 2 lines for trolling, one with a green feather jig and another with a blue.  Unknown to me at the time, there’s a small hump on the Gulf’s bottom, probably an old wreck or some other type of structure, 6 miles of the end of the jetty.  Trolling over the hump, both lines were hit and two kings took off.  We did our best and finally gaffed both fish, by our estimate, 15, pound, kings.

Not even knowing to turn around and troll back across the hump, that we didn’t even know was there, we doggedly kept trolling south, toward the rig now visible just over the horizon.  We trolled around the rig for an hour with no luck and since it was past time for lunch, I told Joe that we were heading back in.

We must have trolled back across the hump, because one of lines was smashed by something big!  Putting the engine in neutral, I grabbed the rod this big fish took line out like there was no drag on the reel!  The fish continued the battle, but stayed deep, taking more line.  Finally I started gaining on it, and as it wallowed on the surface, we both gawked at the biggest red snapper we’d ever seen!  Gaffing it, hauling it aboard, it was huge and we guessed it weighed at least 20, pounds.

We iced the snapper in our cooler and headed in, past the end of the South Jetty, up the Galveston Channel and turned into the Intercoastal Waterway.  The engine had been running for almost 7 hours and, when we left this morning, we’d never thought to fill the gas tank, luckily for us we didn’t run out!  But misfortune reared its ugly head as I was putting the boat into the slip.  Turning off the engine, our drift, that I thought would take us on into the slip, stopped cold.  The tide was going out, back then I didn’t even know about tides!

Trying to start the engine, all I got was one click.  The engine that had been running for almost 7 hours wouldn’t start.  The starter chose this time to quit working.  Luckily, a man outside of the shed threw us a line and we tugged the big 23, footer boat back into the stall.  What if we’d gotten the click when we were offshore?  I didn’t even know how to use the ship to shore radio!

On meat market scales the snapper weighed 22, pounds!

A Killer Spot

“Unkie”, G.A. Pyland, of course my uncle, had been telling me about this new “super” place for speckled trout and redfish, not 2 hours from our homes in southwest Houston. Taking the short drive down to the coast, gas was only $.30 a gallon then, we, my dad and Dub Middleton, met “Unkie” and my cousin George at the specified bait camp in Port O’Conner. It was still dark and we’d have a 20, minute boat ride to our destination, a place Unkie called the fish trap.

With the tide coming in all morning, we cranked up our boats and headed down Matagorda Bay towards Pass Cavallo, the fish trap was located just north of the pass, with a small channel leading into a hundred acre lake, the trap. Arriving, we anchored the boats, jumped into the water and started casting. Our lures of choice were silver spoons with a treble hook, with a pink attractor attached to the hook. Each of us was using a black, Ambassaduer reel, with a 7, foot, popping rod.

Bump, bump, “Fish on”, I yelled out, as the rod bent with the strike, soon, not using a net, I grabbed the small red behind the gills, not big enough to keep, unhooked and released it. First fish of the day, but soon we were all catching small reds and if we’d kept them all, we’d had a good mess! The small reds finally quit hitting and we remarked that funny, no big reds and no speckled trout either.

After almost 2 hours of this fun, we told Unkie and George that we were going to try our hand in Espiritu Santo Bay and see if any birds were working. Knowing that late spring was a little bit soon for bird action, but these little reds weren’t putting any fish on the stringer! We pulled the anchor, and since Unkie and George were still fishing, we crept out of the fish trap and once in Matagorda Bay, headed north. Rather than going all the way back to Port O’Conner, we took a short cut into Espiritu Santo, a small pass that led into the east end of the bay.

Not 2 miles into the bay, we saw a bunch of birds hovering over the water, a sign that something had driven the shrimp to the surface. After changing to do nothing, slow sinking lures, we coasted up to within casting distance of the birds and Dub was the first to let fly and he immediately had a hard hit. What was it, spec, gafftop cat or ladyfish, but circling the boat the fish soon identified itself as a nice trout and when we netted it, a 3 pounder.

Dad and I cast out below the birds and both had hard strikes that proved to be identical fish to Dubs. The birds would break up and 5 minutes later, here came the shrimp back up to the top, we could see them hopping about evading the trout below, but the birds would converge on the hapless shrimp and what the specs missed, the birds would get.

We stayed with this school of fish for almost 30 minutes and boxed a dozen then they quit. For a while we stayed around, but we noticed the tide had changed and was going out, probably the reasons for the fish’s lockjaw. No more bird schools that day and we headed home around noon. It was a fun trip and we caught 12 nice specs, along with a lot of small reds (that we didn’t keep).

The fish trap is no more because several years later a hurricane rearranged the coastal area around Pass Cavallo!

Jakettes

Well, I guess that’s what they’re called?  A young, 1 year old turkey gobbler is called a jake, but what is a female bearded hen called, your guess is as good as mine, so I’ll call her a jakette!

This past week we had 2 hen turkeys dining on grasshoppers in the field behind our house and one of them was growing a beard.  Once she matures she’ll officially be called a bearded hen.  Being a user of Bing, I Binged Rio Grande bearded hen turkeys and came up with some facts.  About 15% of all turkey hens have visible beards and as the birds get older beards get more pronounced and bearded hens are just as protective of their young as the non bearded type.

These 2 birds, most likely, have been bred and are stocking up on grasshoppers, were covered up with them, so they can eat all they want!  They’ll lay their eggs shortly and we’ll have 9 or 10 poults running with their mother.  Last year one hen turkey had 14 poults, who knows how many eggs she laid, that I got a “shot” of at the water trough, see my post “[A Multiplier]” of October 1, 2012.  These poults were old enough to roost in trees and they flew within 2 weeks of hatching.

Luckily the camera was in easy reach and I took these 2 pics of the jakette or bearded hen.
    

Showing these pics to my Sunday school class, they laughingly told me to send both of them over to their places so they could eat their grasshoppers too!