pictures

Matagorda Fish-Kill

Friday Night
Kasey and I got to Matagorda beach around 9:30 and set up camp about 15 miles down. There was a light on-shore breeze and almost no waves. We decided to take it easy that night and hit it hard in the morning.
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Saturday Morning
I got up at 0530 and made coffee. I picked out a variety of lures and assembled my wading gear. Kasey got up at 0600 and we started throwing lures in the surf. When the sun finally came up we were thrilled to see how clear the water was. There was a lot of bait in the surf but not the big schools of menhaden we saw last summer. We managed to string several trout on different lures but around 0930 my curado stopped working and I returned to camp. I soaked a live finger mullet in the first gut while I trying to fix the levelwind on my reel. After about 10 minutes I caught a fat trout on the surf rod. Kasey followed suit and we proceeded to pull in one fat trout after another until about 1130. We were only fishing two rods because that is all we could keep up with. We assembled the EZ-up and rested in the shade until later in the afternoon.

Saturday Night
We picked up several more trout that evening and topped off the fish cooler. Now we would start adding fish to the auxillary cooler that I tried to talk Kasey out of bringing. We called this cooler the glory box. We also started running out lady fish and mullet beyond the second bar. Kasey caught a medium size shark and followed it up with a black tip that was approaching 6 feet. This fish jumped completely out of the water. The next three fish that we hooked up with were massive. Kasey’s 330 GTI was nearly spooled in my hands. The fish continued to run with a locked down drag. With the line almost gone Kasey threw a rag over the reel and I used both of my thumbs to stop the spool. The fish kept going but the hooks pulled. My jigmaster was the next reel to get hit. It was the same story but this fish actually stopped running and I thought I had a chance. Just as I started to recover line the hook pulled again. We ran out more bait. The jigmaster got hit again by a very powerful fish. This one also made a very long, continuous run against a locked down drag. I thumbed the spool and snapped my 30 lb line. Kasey broke out the 9/0 and rigged up a new bait. Something strange happened. The rod bent over once and then went completely slack. The line was cut above the leader. At this point we were feeling pretty defeated and tired from an active day. We packed it in at 1030.

Sunday Morning
At 0600 I began throwing lures in the surf. I caught a keeper trout and dropped it in the glory box. Kasey was wakened by the trout rattling around in the empty cooler and came out swinging the cast net. We soaked finger mullet in the first gut and started catching trout and Spanish mackerel. The action was slower than yesterday but consistent until about 1100. We packed it in and drove home.

Stingray story

I heard some news today saying that 'the crocodile hunter' Steve Irwin was killed by a stingray stabbing him in the chest.

Made me think about some of the giant rays we have hauled out of the gulf.