Bay Fishing

We had really been looking forward to getting to go deep sea fishing from Port Aransas for months prior to this trip.   This is something that my grandfather would take us on nearly every summer when I was younger and hearing me talk about it Cece wanted to try it too.

We went to a couple of outfits the day before to get prices and times and decided on Dolphin Docks that I’d been out with many times before, all of the others along main street as well.  They were the friendliest and most helpful with our questions.  For the 8 hour deep sea fishing trips we had to be at the shop early before sunup which meant either getting up from our camp site at 3AM and riding all the way from Goose Island and hoping the road construction and ferry along the way did not slow us down too much or we could get another place to stay in town.  We got a motel room across the street and had to leave the tent and stuff set up two islands away.

We had to get licenses from the gas stations the night before and were all set to go fishing in the morning!

The next morning however it was blowing hard and although the minimum amount of people needed to go out had already prepaid 4 of them did not show up the next morning and the trip was canceled.  The captain said if we wanted to wait around for a couple of hours and see if there was enough for a later one we could do that.  We sat and talked with the captain and owner and crew for a few more hours but by then there was even less people and it looked like the whole day was wasted.  They said from the weather reports it only looked to be getting worse through the weekend as a storm system went through, the one we had been running from since New Mexico.  So it looked like even less of a chance of going out the next day or on the weekend.

We went out and explored Port Aransas for half the day and by the afternoon the waters were calmed down a little and we were able to get in on a short bay fishing trip instead.    I’ve never liked bay fishing, its like paying for something that you could be doing yourself but she was really set on getting to fish and we had already paid for our licenses for the day.   Unfortunately I didn’t get any pics of us fishing we were too busy baiting hooks and then loosing it to small hardhead and gafftop catfish that we had to keep throwing back.

Me and Cece did not end up catching anything keepable that we could eat but we had a good time anyway.   We struck out this time due to the weather, now we need to come back to try deep sea fishing!

The best places to fish, shipwrecks and places marked DANGER!

I did not know there was a lighthouse near Port Aransas.  It looked quite neglected with all the buildings in a sad shape.

I thought this was pretty funny, across the bridge of this tanker ship in 8 foot high letters: NO SMOKING.

This is the owners other boat the Poly Anna shrimp boat.  Its a very interesting design for a shrimper, it appears to have 3 hulls up front and 2 in the back, the one in the middle does not go all the way back.  You don’t see many shrimp boats with muti hull design.

Our catch for the day, pretty slim.

One guy also caught this sting ray and I learned an interesting fact when they were discussing how to cook this thing.  They said to cut it into small strips and they are pretty good.  The guy wanted to know how they taste and they said exactly like clams because much of the time when you think you are eating clams you are actually eating this.  So if you ever go to a restaurant and get clam meat in strips you are really eating sting ray.

Here is the stinger they cut off so nobody would injure themselves.  Those serrated barbs look pretty dangerous, I’d hate to get stabbed by one of these.

Wow there are rednecks even on the ocean.  These are barges with travel trailers on them, they were pumping something off the bottom and spewing the mud out a distance away.