Aransas Texas.... Why?

[Fiskadoro]

Originally Posted by JoeBeck

Jim love the old pic of the lighthouse, very cool. I take it you grew up in that area? Dean was telling us the lighthouse was built around 1850

I grew up about 350 miles North of there in Ft Worth.

Port Aransas is the closest really good Saltwater fishing to Ft Worth though I fished off jetties, wade fished, and fished in the surf all the way from Galveston to South Padre. As a kid I spent a lot of time in that area before I got into the four wheel drive, North Padre to Mansfield, surf, Jack, King, Bull Red and sharkfishing scene, or essentially moved on to larger fish.

If I moved back to Texas I'd consider Corpus hard as a place to live, and then I'd fish down the beach off Padre.

I'm not knocking the fishing you did by any means as I know it's a blast. That said: you were just down the road and a trip down the sand from some of the best surf and kayak fishing on the planet.

If you want to see some big fish try south of there off the beach.

Here's some recent Padre picks from extremecoast.com a website devoted to fishing that area. Not my pics just giving you an idea of what's down there.



Jack Carvelle at the mansfield jetties

Bull Red same location


Blacktip Mansfield Jetties


Tiger Shark North of the jetties North Padre Island


Cobia North Padre basically the same area


King Mackerel (similar to a Wahoo)


Kings, Jack, Spanish mackerel.


Tiger shark North Padre


King Mackerel on the popper


Jacks and Kings working bait


Jacks kings and sharks on bait


Jack Cervelle on bait

You should check out the report that goes with those last few pics here: http://extremecoast.com/reports/report080609.php

One last tiger...



Not for the faint of heart.... but I'm just saying if I was in that area that's where I would go fish...

Once again great report! I think between your post and those pics I just found I just convinced myself I need to make a rod trip down there!

Jim

[Tman]

Originally Posted by Jim Day

Tiger shark North Padre

Another Tiger shark North Padre...
Jim

OK, now I wanna go...

Get one of those bad boys, and (hopefully) paddle his arse into the sand...

['Cuda]

[QUOTE=Jim Day;46645]I grew up about 350 miles North of there in Ft Worth.

Incredible pics Jim.

I'm from Gladewater myself....grew up flyfishing Toledo Bend....trot lineing the Mississipi for big yellow cats and drop netting in the swamps of the Atchafalaya River for blue crab all night long with my dad talking to the owls.

[kurt]

Redfish are as tasty as they come. The only tough part is they have scales like armor. Evolving alongside bull sharks will do that, I guess.

[Quilted Germ]

Sweet pix all around. Question, what the hell do you do with a huge Tiger Shark like that? Looks like they are keeping them, no?

[Holy Mackerel]

Thanks for the report, looks like a blast!

[Fiskadoro]

Originally Posted by Quilted Germ

Sweet pix all around. Question, what the hell do you do with a huge Tiger Shark like that? Looks like they are keeping them, no?

No they revive then release them.

Jim

[bigbarrels]

Originally Posted by Jim Day

No they revive then release them.

Jim

Mouth to mouth and chest compressions?

Looks like a great place to fish.....

[Fiskadoro]

Originally Posted by bigbarrels

Mouth to mouth and chest compressions? Looks like a great place to fish.....

More like walking them through the shallows till they get active again and scare the #### out of the guys with them in the water

I love fishing there but it could get pretty hairy.

I once had a huge 12+ ft Tiger swim right up to me when I was taking shark baits out on a surfboard there. I swear it's mouth was about two feet wide and they have the nastiest hooked teeth you can imagine. He was right there in gin clear water and passed only inches underneath the board. Scare the holy #### out of me. I just pushed the bait off the board and quietly paddled in shaking the whole way. My buddy Ira got one 13' 6" 1500+ pounds and that shark looked pretty similar in size to me. It could of swallowed me whole without even trying hard.

Another time I was wade fishing with a stringer of specs tied to my belt loop, and slipped and feel down, then I slipped again, then I noticed a nine foot lemon was grabbing my trout and knocking me off my feet when he ripped them off the stringer.

Lemons, Tigers, Hammers and Bulls come right to the beach there and they all can kill you. I once hooked a 14 ft hammerhead there in less then three feet of water, and it jumped maybe ten feet in the air less then 40 feet from me. Then watched in awe as it melted all the line off my wide 4/0 in seconds.

It's not So. Cal. by any means.

I don't know if there is more access now but imagine being down the beach with sixty miles of four wheel drive only soft sand between you and there nearest blacktop, maybe half a day from the nearest hospital, with sharks the could rip your leg off like it was nothing in the water around you, and 150 pound sting rays with spines as long as a fillet knife cruising the shallows.

I imagine it's different now with cell phones but we knew a guy that was fishing down by the Mansfield jetties that stayed too late before a hurricane and got stuck back in the dunes trying to cross a new cut that formed due to the surge. They did not find him for something like a week and that was only because he walked all the way back to the Mansfield Jetties swam the Mansfield channel and then was found on the more populous South Padre island. He was out of water, living on coconuts that washed up on the beach, and fish he caught on a light rod he was carrying that he was eating raw. By the time they got back to his truck it was sunk so deep they couldn't get it out, I saw it there for years, though I heard he did save some gear that he'd buried in the dunes above the high water line.

Supposedly when he was asked about the whole ordeal by a local paper he answered that the fishing was unbelievably good the day after the hurricane

It was that kind of wild place back in the day. In other words just cool as ####.

Jim

Killer Thread and Nice Picts

[THE DARKHORSE]

Ahhhh, the memories of mosquitos and wide open fishing. It's tough to say which there are more of, but I'll go out on a limb with the mosquitos . I fished the saltgrass along the Texas coast nearly every week of my life as a child. The epic fishing for specks, reds and Flounder is something I think about often. My favorite topwater plug back in the day was a natural bone colored Jumping Minnow. To watch a single Redfish or an entire school of bull-reds charge that plug was heaven on earth. Big Speckled Trout love those 'walk the dog' type plugs too. Those were the days!

The Texas fishery is a great example of how proper management (DFG with watch-dog anglers) can sustain an incredibly complex body of water...under heavy pressure. To people who think Southern California has heavy pressure, think again. Every person with a truck has a boat in Texas and there's a lot of trucks . Nearly every man, woman and child loves to fish...all the time. A funny way to look at it: take your average nine year old girl here compared to an average nine year old girl in Texas...the nine year old girl in Texas can pitch an 1/8 ounce leadhead under a dock with a Shimano Chonarch SF baitcast reel, accurately, without backlashing. She'll probably see that school of fish holding just off the Oyster bed and make a cast without telling you, too. Even with all those people fishing, the fishing is ridiculously good...if you know where to go, and when. Kinda like here. It's just a different attitude towards enjoying the outdoors over there.

The mosquitos of the Texas Coast deserve another mention (try being allergic to them and fishing everyday ), but the people you'll meet make up for it. The word genuine comes to mind in reference to the common folk. Make sure to brush up on your eye contact before planning a trip. It would be funny as hell to watch the MLPA/BRTF "try" to do what they're doing here to the people of Texas..can you say "get a rope"?

I remember when the Redfish numbers were a little low due to a couple bad winters (the bays froze and killed a lot of fish). They built up a well recieved stocking program to achieve the numbers of fish they enjoy today. Someone could learn from this if they wanted to actually look at the science involved. Since the Southern California fishing is better than it's been in thirty years, let's just shut down fishing entirely .