Kayaking Port Bay and searching for the Whooping Crane Twins

The weather here has been warm and humid, (until last night). Th wind had been light and so Renita and I loaded up the kayaks and headed to a spot we have always wanted to fish Port Bay. An acquaintance of ours fishes, in his kayak most everyday, and had talked about all the fish he was catching. Before we launched, we had talked about the fishing with another kayaker who told us he had caught three keeper reds, three days before. He headed out into the heavy fog and so we couldn’t see where he had gone. There were five other vehicles parked at the launch site but so we waited a bit for the fog to lift before we started fishing.

The launch was really shallow, as is the whole bay, and as we paddled out, I grounded on a cement block. It was part of an old dock that had crossed one of the bays arms. Stopping at the end we cast out live shrimp and soon caught a hardhead catfish. Releasing it we moved to anther spot and caught more hardheads.

Looking around, we did not see any of the others and so we paddled around the bay looking for their spots. We didn’t see them anywhere, so we stopped at a likely looking place and cast out our poles. Catching several hard heads, I recast again, and my bobber started to slowly move. Setting the hook, I quickly realized it was not another hard head and as it fought it pulled my kayak before the anchor dug into the sand. It took a bit before I was able to net a beautiful twenty-five inch black drum.

Another cast resulted in another nice black drum. Meanwhile Renita’s shrimp remained untouched. I suggested she cast to my spot and after rebaiting I cast to where she had been fishing. My bobber started to move, and I caught a third black drum, this one was seventeen inches.The wind came up and so we decided to call it a day. We had enough fish for two meals, (sometimes we eat the bait shrimp when we don’t catch anything as shrimp goes good with cornbread).

At happy hour our friend Jimmy told us that there were two whooping crane twins and their parents feeding at the field at Lamar. We decided to go there the next morning, but we didn’t see any whooping cranes.

Still, we got some great shots of a ladderback woodpecker, an eastern bluebird, and two cara cara, and a carolina wren.(they are listed with falcons in our bird book).

A little further on a juvenile vermillion flycatcher perched on a power line. A cardinal next posed for us with his mate, (or at least a female cardinal), and finally we spotted a female magnolia warbler.

It had been a good two days and we decided to come back another time when hopefully the whooper twins would be there. Clear skies