Fishing in Texas Two Days Before Hurricane Ike

Hurricane Ike is due here in less than two days. Today, Wednesday September 10, I went to the surf in Corpus Christi, Texas.
What a tremendous fishing day, for the few of us who went.
At daybreak I went to Packery Channel, the jetty-protected opening between the Gulf of Mexico and the upper Laguna Madre. I have never seen so many skipjacks (ladyfish) as I did at dawn. These tailwalking relatives of tarpon were so numerous I simply couldn't get my lures past them for the first hour of the day. When I went to the end of the jetty, the skipjacks I caught were much bigger. One that was at least two-feet long broke my line. Two are pictured.
However — the fishing was tremendous for those four people on the jetty, including me. I used a live mullet to catch a 27-inch redfish. The person next to me had the odd fortune of catching a redfish just a fraction over 28 inches. In Texas, you can keep three redfish a day between 20 and 28 inches, but if you keep a redfish OVER 28 inches, you have to take a tag off your saltwater license and attach it to the fish. You get just one tag with your license.
Another fish pictured is the snook, even more regulated in Texas. Only one allowed per day, and only if it's between 24 and 28 inches. This one went back. Other fish caught at Packery channel in the short time I was there: mangrove snapper, blacktip shark and flounder.
At 11 am I went to nearby Bob Hall Pier. The water was clear, the fish were biting better than I have seen all year. And there were only five people fishing, all together in the shallow water. In three hours they had caught a huge stringer of trout and spanish mackerel using live mullet, and like me earlier, they were constantly battling the super-aggressive skipjacks, so numerous they were a nuisance. Sad to say, the county parks department had to close the pier at noon to prepare for Ike.
We can just hope it'll still be there after this weekend.

An Almost All-purpose Saltwater Rig

There are as many different rigs to attach to your line as there are fish in the sea. Here's the one I use the most, and it's very common in fresh and saltwater.
There are three parts: the weight, the swivel, and the hook. The hook is at the end of what's called a "leader." It's stronger line than you have on your reel. Here, the line from the reel is 20-pound line, and the blue leader is 25-pound line.
The round weight just slides up and down the line and it's known as a barrel sinker, or an egg sinker. With this set-up, the brass swivel prevents the weight from sliding down to the hook, and when the fish bites, it can't feel the weight, as it would if it was the type of sinker that's tied on to the line.
Especially in saltwater, you may want to substitute a steel leader for the blue fishing line leader, because so many saltwater fish have sharp teeth that cut even heavy line.
You'll see many, many kinds of rigs, some with two hooks. Use whatever you like, or — whatever you see that's working where you are.

Saltwater Safety: My Big Three

Here are the three things that I see newcomers at the beach so often don't know about: teeth, catfish fins and jellyfish.
Everyone is probably aware of the power of sharks. Their jaws can crush a metal tackle box. But you do need to keep the fingers away from the teeth of many other saltwater fish. Bluefish have razors in their jaws, and mackerel (top photo) can suddenly lunge after they are landed, with their sharp rows of teeth.
Little sharks have very strong jaws and have to be handled with care, and even the benign speckled trout have teeth that will scratch up your fingers, possibly without you knowing until later on. They have one great big tooth you need to watch for. Just after this photo was taken, the trout clamped down hard on my thumb. Fortunately the glove was just thick enough!
I believe the biggest unknown danger on the saltwater fishing pier is the "hardhead" catfish. Its teeth are not much of a problem, but it has three fins that are sharp spikes. The BIG mistake is to put your shoe on top of a catfish to hold it down. I have seen the terrible result: that top fin is so strong and sharp that it goes right through shoes. To avoid having to handle these fish, ALWAYS have pliers handy.
Of course, stingrays can deliver a similar spike-like stinger with their tails, and most people are aware of that danger. Wearing shoes in the water is always a good idea.
Jellyfish: don't touch 'em. Whether they're in the water or washed up on the beach, some types have tentacles that will sting just like a hot matchhead if you touch them. Portuguese Man-O-Wars, by far the most lethal (they can actually kill people but that's very rare) are well known, but fortunately they have the bright rainbow-colored air sac that floats above to mark their presence. With most jellyfish stings, it's usually a matter of time, enduring a pain that can be severe. The treatment is meat tenderizer from the grocery store, but it's not always effective, and if you get stung, it's probably 30 to 60 minutes of waiting for the pain to go away. Afterward there may be little red spots where the tentacles made contact.
I almost always wear pants or waders in saltwater. They protect very well.

There was a Tropical Storm?

They said there was a tropical storm named Edouard hitting the Texas coast this morning. At Padre Island National Seashore the surf was calm in the sunshine, but the water is still cloudy, less than two weeks after Hurricane Dolly. The beaches are back in shape after some spot repairs.
But on the other side of the island, the water in the Laguna Madre was clear at the Bird Island Boat Basin, and at the windsurfing park the trout were biting in three feet of water where I went wade fishing at sunrise. I used the white shrimp "Gulp" lure.
There are many who believe fish bite more when the barometer is falling. Today the barometer was in free fall, and the fish were biting.
At one of the piers ("Marker 37") along the Kennedy Causeway that leads to the island from Corpus Christi, the fish are supposed to bite mostly at night.
But at mid-day the trout were hitting on every cast. There was one slight problem — the speckled trout in Texas have to be 15 inches, and these were SO close. I measured one at 14 and 7/8 inch.
Also hitting were skipjacks, also called ladyfish. Related to tarpon, these are not fish to eat but are really fun tailwalkers and summersaulters. They usually get away by shaking the hook in mid-air.
I checked at the marina fish cleaning station, where they ask that all fish remains go into plastic tubs and not into the water. Also, people are requested not to feed the pelicans, one reason being pelicans cannot swallow fish that have been cut up.
There was proof that elsewhere, plenty of big — and VERY big — trout and redfish were biting today.

Fishing After Hurricane Dolly

An outing this morning shows me that apparently there are no worries in the aftermath of Dolly, at least at the northern tip of Padre Island after the hurricane stirred everything up a week ago.
At the Packery Channel jetty (the divider of Padre and Mustang Islands), no visible damage —but yes, if you look closely, that is a tree — not fishing rods — impaled into the rocks at the end of the jetty. The water in the surf never has cleared up as of Friday, but will anytime.

In the Laguna Madre the water is clear and the fish are there and biting.
These trout were caught on mid-day lures close to the Kennedy Causeway when I went wade fishing in three feet of water. I cast to the trout in slightly deeper water, maybe four or five feet deep. Most of the Laguna is 3 to 5 feet deep.

I use gloves whenever I reach into the mouths of speckled trout — good to have in your back pocket. (Wade fishing is fun but it takes practice. Use steel-toed boots and cover your legs in salt water to avoid jellyfish. Hip or chest waders are a very strong recommendation. And wade in sand — not mud!)
Also a hardy lizardfish hit the same lure, a "Gulp" on a lead-headed jig. Yes, lizardfish, and it does look like a lizard! (It went back into the water.)

Can You Fish in a Hurricane?

Can you fish in a hurricane? There's some lore about hurricanes stirring up the surf and putting fish in a feeding frenzy.
A visit to the Padre Island surf at Corpus Christi gave me the complete answer: No.
No, you can't fish in a hurricane. You can't cast your line into 50-mile an hour wind, you can't stand on the beach, if you could cast into the surf the water would whip your line in every direction. People did come to experience the power of a hurricane in between blinding rain squalls (and try to fly in the wind), although most beach roads, and certainly the pier, were closed.
At Packery Channel the jetties were barely visible from the highway, and the boat launch docks were nearly submerged.
In the Laguna Madre, the water was high at the piers lining the Kennedy Causeway (photo shows Clem's close to water level), and the wind made it scary to stand there since it was hard to avoid losing your balance.
I did notice these three hardy souls fishing at the closest-to-land-pier, the famous Red Dot, where they sloshed their way to the very end. And no — I asked and they had not caught any fish at all.
Maybe AFTER a hurricane, fishing will be good.

Night of the Whiting

The whiting is not a rare fish in the Gulf and Atlantic, but it's also one you don't often see in huge numbers. After sunset June 23, the whiting were present in huge numbers at Bob Hall Pier in the Gulf of Mexico in Corpus Christi, Texas.

The bait needed to be on the bottom, and the wait was often only a matter of seconds before these powerful fish struck, especially for the people using shrimp for bait. I was using a plastic imitation shrimp with a strong scent called "Gulp," in white. It worked very well, and since this tough plastic didn't come off when the fish nibbled, it was much easier to use.

I lost count of the fish that I caught (in the mid-Atlantic many people call them "kingfish.") Most were about one pound, and a two-pounder was a big fish. I didn't keep any, but they are good to eat, and many people lucky enough to be at Bob Hall this night took home enough whiting for a great meal.

By the way, these fish are known for being in very shallow water. This night they were all in two to three feet of water, very close to the shore. So yes — for people who know how to cast their lines a good distance, or for people who like to wade into the surf and fish (they do bite well in daytime), there's no need for a pier!