Back to the Sailboat Channel

Sometimes they bite and sometimes, well nothing is happening, ( I did catch a stingray, always fun to take off your hook when you are sitting in a kayak). This was one of those days. We had gone kayaking to the sailboat channel last Sunday and we had a blast. Our first spot didn’t produce anything, but the second spot was as hot as it gets.

Renita had found the fish and she caught one on every cast. They were under size reds and blacks but talk about fun. We were moored together, and she kindly moved over so we both could catch fish. The fish moved so close that you could see them tailing, (feeding nose down on the bottom with their tails sticking partially out of the water), just ten feet away from her kayak.

To top the day off, a rosette spoonbill landed next to Renita, and she was able to get a great shot with our small waterproof camera. It put on a show, moving its paddle shaped bill back and forth feeding on crustaceans, before finally flying to another feeding spot.

So, a few days later we decided to head back and hopefully find some bigger fish. Launching at the usual put in spot, we paddled to our first spot and nothing, and I mean nothing! It was a very high tide and the fish must have been in the black mangroves.

Moving to the other spot didn’t help as the only bites were blue crabs stealing our bait. There were quite a few boats up the smaller channel that led to a gas well and paddling up to them, we watched as they caught a few small speckled trout.

They were casting jigs and lures and of course I hadn’t brought any along, only dead shrimp and a few mullet. We ate lunch before moving into a small opening in the mangroves. The tide was so high that we were able to paddle through to the next accessible area.

Backtracking, we had noticed that the high walls had eroded from Hurricane Harvey. Shells were all over the place and while we didn’t care about the shells we decided to try to find a path through and look for other fossils.

Finding a narrow opening I beached my kayak and after a few muddy steps reached dry land. We had heard that the islands often contain rattlesnakes and so I gingerly walked along looking for Pleistocene bones or teeth.

Not finding any fossil or rattlesnakes, I decide to climb the man-made berm and see what was inside the triangle shaped area. Someone had left an easy chair alongside the narrow l-shaped pond. A duck flew away and I snapped a few images with my phone, before returning to the kayak.

We tried a few more spots but never did find the fish. Renita mentioned that it had been fun exploring a new place and I had to agree. Sometimes the fishing, or lack of catching takes second place to the days fun. Clear skies