Aransas Texas.... Why?

[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

[forefrazier]

Originally Posted by JoeBeck

Steve I plan to stay on this beautiful Earth for a long f'n time

LOL...Joe..glad you have such a great sense of humor! You guys rock and I am just jealous that I cannot get my sweetie out on a yak to fish with me

[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 .