Fishing Before the Show

Renita’s sister Pam and her husband Roy arrived and after the hugs it was time to get down to business. They had spent the last three weeks in Tucson and Quartzite and had been on a rock buying spree, including my special order for Laguna lace agate. So now we have fifteen pounds of some of the most beautiful crazy lace agate we have ever seen.

Of course that means we have to slab the rock at the rock shop, along with seven pounds of stunning blue lace agate, and still get ready for our biggest show of the year. Still there was time to head out and go fishing and so Roy and I spent a day at the south jetty and a day kayaking in St Charles bay.

The coastal fog has been incredibly dense and the bait boats haven’t been able to get out and net live bait shrimp, so the severely limits the fishing we do. Sheepshead are everywhere and no one can catch them with the available bait. Still we heard that big reds and black drum were being caught.

We walked out onto the south jetty and the fog quickly surrounded us. It was pretty eerie but the ground swells of the surf on the rocks was only about a foot high. This should have meant that the jetty rocks would be dry but the sun prevented them from drying and so it was a slippery journey to the end.

As we neared the end we saw a fisherman fighting a giant fish, and I do mean a giant. His friend carefully climbed out on a wet rock and was able to net the prize, a forty four inch black drum. It was larger than any I have ever caught and it was nice to see him release the fish after the obligatory photos!

We cast out and hoped for one ourselves but the usual jetty gods limited us to small trash fish. They also exacted their tribute as the rocks snagged me three times in a row and I had to break of the thirty pound test line. Even though we didn’t hook up a giant at least we were in the right place to hook one. The others were all using blue crab for bait and we had dead shrimp so it might have been that our bait was too small.

The next day we decided to head out for kayaking at St Charles bay. Passing the whooping crane field in Lamar we were rewarded with the sight of five whooping cranes. Launching the kayaks into fairly large waves we headed for a protected inlet. The first cast produced a small black drum and then another. It was fun to catch fish even if they were undersized, heck I had forgotten my fish measuring ruler anyway.

Roy set the hook on a nice fish and as he was fighting it in, my rod went off! It was a double on red fish. Releasing them both, even though one looked to be a legal red,(the slot limit here if from twenty to twenty eight inches), we continued fishing and had a steady bite of small black drum. Even though they were small they still tried to pull us off our anchor.

The fog and rain returned in and we decided to head back to the truck. It had been a fun day of catch and release fishing and the last we will do till next week as rocks and wire work demand our attention. If you are in the area, be sure to attend the 52^nd Gulf Coast Gem and Mineral Show at Robstown, Texas. Clear skies