FISH CATCHING TRAVEL

Well that sucked, poor choice on my part.  One of the joys of a blog is you have a duty to report good and bad, unlike your average fisherman who can crow about the good days and then ignore the bad, not my style.

Weather

Lake Level

Today 95.79.    One Week Ago.  96.87.

Bite Times

Major 2:15 pm to 4:15 pm.

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The Wade Right Fishing Belt and the new Madre Sling.

For all your wading needs.

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The Boss wanted a fish fry so figured just head to the lake and put a few whites in the boat and maybe whatever else I needed to fill her order.  With the creek and river starting tomorrow and Thursday, I decided the lake because I have trolled up white bass the last few trips, so no big deal, right?  Wrong!  She is highly allergic to shrimp, I mean bad, and when the saltwater fish are feeding on shrimp she can literally have a reaction, and has, to simply eating them.

Here is a long story shortened, not a white bass, lost a big catfish on the troll, then boated 11 bass and not a one measured.  Sure not picture material.  So, no fish fry for her.  As far as the white bass the water temp has risen over 10 degrees way up lake and they hit the road.  Oh please, oh please bring back winter!  And about 12:00 it started blowing 20 mph out of the south which I thought might help some but it sure didn’t.

I caught on spinnerbait, Controlled Descent Jerk Shad, and crankbait but just could not buy a keeper.  And then it got over 80 degrees, good gravy.  So write this day of fishing off.  Happy to be out there but not filling the order was a little depressing.  The only way to beat that is head to the coast and beat on the trout and reds some, and that is just what I am going to do the rest of the week.  Today we are headed down to Aransas to see the Whoopers this afternoon.

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One of the downsides to getting older is you sometimes forget things and I happened to on one of the more interesting things I have seen in the outdoors in a while.  While I was fishing a cove off the main lake there were hound dogs barking off in the distance.  Then here came a doe swimming for her life with a really big black and tan hound in pursuit, or so I thought.  He was wearing what looked like a GPS collar and I assumed he was a dog used to recover injured deer.  But what happened next flat stunned me.

She swam not 50 feet from the boat with the hound about 20 feet behind her.  When she hit the bank you could tell she was really tired and just stood there, they swam one of the biggest open water areas on the lake.  The dog got to the bank, jumped up and walked within 10 feet of the doe and paid her no mind.  The dog kept going and hit the woods and was gone.  The doe was just standing there watching.  It seemed after she caught her breath she ambled off into the woods.  What was happening I have no idea, but it sure was strange.

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You know I bitch quite a bit about game and fish commissions often being nothing more than a rubber stamp for commercial interests, Texas being a perfect example at times.  But this goes way beyond that.  Here is a direct quote in a letter from the major commercial deep sea fishing interests, they are labeled by many as the Snapper Barrons, to the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council:  “Find real solutions to managing unrestricted, open access private angler fishing sector.”  WTF!  Think about it for just a second.  The commercial fishing interests think they own everything outside the jetties!  But here is the scarier part – That they think the management council would be receptive to that.

Who in the Sam hell do these *&^%%^&’ers think they are?  They want to keep you and your family off the OCEAN in your own boats.  That we need to be “managed!”  This is a perfect example of federal management bodies being tied way to closely to commercial interests.  We have to watch them like a hawk, and we all need to keep informed.  This is the bunch who “controls” the offshore snapper regs, so you can fish 5 days, and they fish year-round.  We need more folks on these councils that should a letter like that be received they blow their nose in it and toss it in the garbage.

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And on that note here are the numbers for Chronic Wasting Disease that is spreading in our deer herd:

 To date, 428 captive or free-ranging cervids — including white-tailed deer, mule deer, red deer, and elk — in 17 Texas counties have tested positive for CWD.

But the spread continues and so do the studies.  The state has previously acknowledged that it can take years to manifest itself in the population.  The time has come to take drastic actions but do not expect anything to change in the near future.  Keep on studying while the spreading in our herd continues.  Great plan.

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After we ordered snow chains for Colorado they arrived in only 2 days via Amazon.  Last week I got a text from Tim at Wade Right thanking me for sending him some swimbait hooks I had turned him on to on the Louisiana trip.  He liked them so I picked 6 at the store so he would have the company name and sent them first class to Houston.  It took 2 weeks to get from Victoria to Houston via the post office while it took 2 days for 30lbs of steel to get to the house from a private company.  Just saying.

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Guess I will stick with the salt as long as it stays this warm.  Cold water makes winter fishing what it is on the lake, and this crazy summertime warm up is counterproductive.  Hopefully it will break at some point before it starts driving the saltwater fish back into the bay.  This warming trend is really a double edge sword.  Back to the creek tomorrow then I hope Knockin Tail Michael will be able to join me Thursday and we lay the smack down on them.  So keep stopping in and thanks for reading my stuff.

Good Luck and Tight Lines