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Cole is ready for his first trip
to the salt. |
Tomorrow, we leave for the sequel to this trip with the idea that we will try to win some scholarship money for Cole. We plan to target flounder. Who knows if success is in our future, but the adventure awaits! We'll see what happens...
As most trips do, this one began
with frustration as I scoured the house time after time, snapping at anyone who
wasn’t helping me look for my sunglasses. My 10 year old son, Cole was excited and had already loaded the truck. He was ready to roll. Once we finally got on the road, we ran
into traffic caused by an accident. We re-routed and ran into more
traffic. After stopping for drinks, ice,
and sunflower seeds, we eased our way out of town, headed south for Port
Mansfield, TX. My nerves calmed and Cole and I settled into what was going to be a great fishing trip.
After clipping the north side of Corpus Christi, we headed south on Hwy 77 and stopped at my favorite
Dairy Queen south of Robstown (it’s my favorite because I only stop there on the way to go fishing with my brother), we settled in for the last
stretch of the drive through what was and to some extent still is the King
Ranch. I told Cole that when I was a kid
I could remember seeing a sign that said something to the effect of “No fuel
next 100 miles”. He was astonished. I was too, as I learned that civilization
apparently moves in at a rate of a mile per year, because there is still a
sign, but 35 years later it reads “65 miles”.
After making our way through the
mesmerizing windmills dotted along the road east of Raymondville, we arrived at
my brother Chuck’s little weekend getaway cabin. Chuck was working on his boat trailer when we got there. We made short work of
finishing that off, went to the harbor to pick up the boat and got it ready for
the weekend of fishing we were about to be blessed with.
As we went to bed, Cole asked me
“Dad, do you think Uncle Chuck was serious about waking us up at 5:30 to go
fishing and I’m going to get to drive the boat?” He was elated to know it was true!
Saturday began at 5:30 AM with a knock at
the door. Cole shot out of bed like rocket. He was dressed and ready by the time I
stumbled out of the bathroom. A quick ride to Poco Loco Marina and the boat was
in the water. Cole was behind the wheel under the watchful eye of Uncle
Chuck! Our live bait of choice was croaker, and there was no croaker to be found in port, so we
knew there was a cast net in our future.
As we got out of the harbor and throttled up the boat, we began to
encounter a choppy bay and Cole yielded the wheel. Though he didn’t want to admit it, he was a
little scared.
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| Morning run out of Port Mansfield, TX |
We stopped along the South Padre Island shoreline of the East Cut to throw the
cast net. After a few throws, a couple
boats went by. I looked back to check on the boat which was adrift about
10’ off the shoreline where we beached her and headed further out despite the Power Pole. We all ran back, Cole was the first one there
and decided that he was not going to be a hero when he took three running steps
into the water and was chest deep.
Being the second one there, I swam after it and was immediately reminded
of how difficult it is to enter a boat from the water without a ladder.
MENTAL NOTE… All of my future
boats will have a ladder (just like Chuck has carried a set of pliers with wire
cutters on the boat since 1985, but that’s another story).
With bait in the baitwell, we
headed out to the jetties. There was a boat where we wanted to fish, so we eased further down the jetties and caught a
few White Trout and moved on. We headed
toward the North Cut and flagged down a croaker boat along the way. We circled him for a few minutes as he was
dealing with some issues on board. We
bought a few dozen croaker. The exchange
there was a little dicey with the choppy condtitions. The larger vessel swamped us with water, but
the Mosca Flats Raider handled it with ease.
Cole however was not so sure about that sequence of events.
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| Cole fighting his first speck |
Finally, we eased into the North
Cut after a rough ride and Chuck got us set up.
He told Cole to cast upstream into the current and feather out line
giving it a little bounce as it drifted and before he could really finish, he
said “Look, see the line going? There is
probably a fish on there.” He let it run
for a few seconds and set the hook. Cole
reeled it in and there was his first Speckled Seatrout. It was fun to see him learn just as I did
from my brother.
Soon he was baiting his own
hooks, making his own casts and catching his own fish. But, as it goes with a 10 year old,
inevitably he started doing his own thing and we would have to get him
redirected.
After about 30 or 45 minutes, and
a few redirections, Chuck said “Let’s try something different”. He took a rod
with a baitcaster and began tossing a 3” Pearl White Gulp! Shrimp around a
nearby dock and let him reel it up showing him how to work the bait. This went on for a few minutes and ultimately
Cole got snagged on the dock. They waded
over to it, got the snag out and began fishing from the dock. At this point, Cole was basically fishing
vertically. He would just drop it in and
bounce it off the bottom and walk along the dock so he didn’t have to
cast. A minute or so later, he thought
he had a snag. As he pulled it up, he
realized the he caught his first Flounder.
As they landed it, the fish flopped along the dock just ahead of Chuck
trying to pick it up. Cole laughed and said “Are you taking my Flounder for a
walk?” Within an hour he caught his
first Flounder and his first Trout
As the day wore on and Cole
continued to experience success (when he did it the way he was told) and
failure (when he lost focus and began doing his own thing), I was amazed to be
witnessing the learning curve taught by success and failure. Even more amazing to me was that this did not
keep the distractions at bay. I guess
when you’re 10 years old, casting and reeling is just as fun as catching. Trying to experience it as an adult through
the eyes of a 10 year old is a strange dichotomy.
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| Cole's first Flounder |
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| Day 1 |
We worked several trout holes and
probed for flounder along the way. We moved on up the North Cut to a channel
that must have been cut for an oil well years ago. We were attempting with no real luck to sight
cast for Redfish. After that we worked
our trout holes again on the way back.
We had steady success and ended the day with eleven trout and one flounder. We also
caught an assortment of the usual hardheads, gar, and skipjack. After splitting the duties of cleaning fish
and cleaning up the boat and getting it ready for day 2, we had some Sausage
and BBQ for dinner and relived the tales of the day.
Day 2 began much like day 1 in
that there was no croaker to be found.
So, with our trusty cast net, we headed straight to our trout holes
along the North Cut. As we were pulling
into our first spot, a local guide pulled up right behind us and began
fishing the same honey hole that all the guides take their clients to fish. Chuck and Cole headed out to hunt baitfish
while I stayed and got a head start on fishing with a Gulp! Shrimp. I skipped it up under and around the dock we were next to hoping a nice doormat sized flounder was ready for breakfast, but no such luck!
While Chuck and Cole caught a
bunch of bait, I landed a dink trout that needed to grow a little more, so I threw it back. I
could hear the guide giving his lessons and directing his customers. About the time Chuck got back with the bait,
the guide lowered the motor and took off.
I switched to live bait and put the first trout in the box on the next cast. We joked that the guide saw he was
about to take a butt whoopin’ from us and didn’t want to be showed up by a
redneck with a cast net in front of the family that just bought bait and paid
him $500 to put them on the fish.
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| Day 2 |
We put 7 fish in the box in short
order. I know, because I counted. I think that jinxed us though, because the bite slowed after I counted, so we moved on. We fished the middle of
the cut, the mouth of the channel we fished the day before and further up the
west shoreline of the North Cut.
After a couple hours of coming up
empty there, we came back and set up in our favorite trout hole and finished
out our limits. We stayed catching and
releasing as the bites continued. We
never got a real total, but I figure we must undersize or over our bag limit.
have had 15 keeper trout and we
probably released 10 that were either
As the day was moving along
quickly and we still had a long drive back to San Antonio, we left the trout
biting (something I have never done before) and made about a 40 minute run to
the jetties at the East Cut to see if we could hook up with Mr. Redfish.
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| 31" Redfish |
We pulled up to our spot and put
lines in. Almost immediately I started
getting hits. I slowly bounced my live
mullet and the hits got harder. Finally, I had a fish on! I set the hook and started reeling. Before I had two cranks on the reel the drag
started screaming. That fish had me
running laps around the boat, which is not easy with a 10 year old on board
that just wants to see everything. I chased and he kept taking line. As I got him close to the boat, off he went
and thus began Round 2. This time, he
took a little more line and I let him run a bit. When he got back to the boat he wasn’t ready
for round 3. Chuck, however was ready
with the net and I was glad because I wasn’t sure I had a round 3 in me either. This was my PERSONAL BEST Drum at 31” in
length and weighing about 11 pounds. I must have put on a pretty good show,
because the guys fishing from the jetties were cheering for me as I took my spot on the deck at the bow of the boat for a photo op. Poor Cole never
got his line in the water before all that broke loose.
After we got Cole fishing, I baited up again and tossed it out and began working it back. I got a few hits and jerked one out of some unsuspecting fish’s mouth. I guess I was still a little punchy after that fight. The next cast I reeled in a slot red which put up a good fight, but nothing like the first one. About 10 minutes later, I hooked up again and the fight was on! Again!
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| 41" Redfish and release #CPR |
This one, I knew, had to be bigger. This fish took what seemed like endless amounts of line. I recall Chuck wondering if it might be a Tarpon. He had me running laps again for awhile. Then Chuck suggested I let Cole fight him for awhile, so we exchanged rods and I reeled his up and grabbed the video camera. As I was taking video, he said “Take it.” I put down the camera and watched him a bit longer as the fish kept taking line until he said “Take it” again. I took the rod back and the fish took me to the stern and tried to get me tangled up with the motor and the Power Pole. Then back to the front and back around again. I finally got him close to the surface and he swirled and went back down. It looked like a red, but we didn’t see the tell tale spot, so we were thinking maybe this was a Black Drum. What ever it was we knew it was big. I fought hard to bring him back to the surface and noticed a tiny little dot near it’s tail. I joked later that he had outgrown his dot. After one more dive, and several tries with the net, we finally landed this monster redfish. He barely fit in the net.
Again I took my stage at the
front of the boat to the cheers and congratulations of the onlookers from the
jetties. One asked what its length was
and I proudly proclaimed it to be 41”.
My new and current Personal Best Red Drum was now 41” and I have no idea
how much he weighed. The scale on the
Boga Grip bottomed out at 15 lbs. I would venture to say it was double that.
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| Cole's first Redfish 27 3/4" |
After releasing the biggest fish
I have ever caught, I sat on the cooler and drank a Gatorade in the 100+ degree
heat of August, catching my breath once again.
I was trying to recall who it was that just told me it was too hot to
fish a week earlier. Cole hooked up with
his own Redfish. It gave him a pretty
good fight that I enjoyed watching, but was no match for the strong 10 year
old. Cole’s fish measured in at 27
¾”.
We called it a day and headed in
proud of our catch, and satisfied with a great fishing trip! Chuck cleaned the fish again while I hosed
down the boat and packed up.
We said our good byes and thanked
Chuck for a great fishing trip. Cole was
already asleep by the time we left Port Mansfield which takes all of about 3
minutes. As HWY 186 turns east back
toward Raymondville, I saw a pair of White Wing Dove fly across the road in
front of me headed South and realized… Dove Season is right around the corner!
