November 9-11
My brother returned to Texas for another coastal camping trip. This time he invited one of his college buddies who flew in from Denver.
On Thursday Ed and I packed the truck before picking Kirk up at the airport. From IAH we headed straight to the coast arriving there at dusk. The beach was in good shape and we ran it at 40 mph. We set up camp 15 miles from the Colorado R. I fished a little bit on Thursday night but I didn’t try for long. I opted to sit around the fire and pass the whiskey instead.
Friday was our only full day of fishing. There was a persistent south wind that had the gulf stirred up. The water was brown and waves were breaking very far out. I tried to kayak a bait past the third bar but after executing a backwards end-over-end flip in my kayak I decided to cast my bait into the first gut. Some time later, while fighting back a hangover, we heard the sweet sound of a fish stripping line off one of the jigmasters. Kirk fought and landed a nice bull shark.
Fishing was slow so we were forced to entertain ourselves with beer and firearms. Kasey arrived around 11am and we went on a bait run. Ed stayed at camp to watch the lines. We found a cut leading back into the bay and quickly netted some mullet. Kasey caught Mulletzilla. We contacted the Discovery channel but they weren’t interested in doing a show on it. When we returned to camp, Ed had a nice bull shark on the beach. Kasey quickly followed with a small bull shark but that was the last fish of the day. Around 11pm on Friday night the cold front we were expecting finally arrived. Ed and Kirk toughed it out in a tent while Kasey and I listed to the wind and rain from the comfort of our trucks.
Saturday morning was in the 50’s and the wind was steady at 25mph from the North. I cast a bait into the first gut and went back to poking the fire. Ed had assumed a squatting position in the dunes. From this vantage point he was able to see my rod get nailed and alerted me by yelling and waving a TP streamer overhead. I had to sprint the 60 yards from camp to the waters edge to catch my rod. It was on the sand when I got there. I landed this bull red. Kasey and Kirk eventually got up and we set out more rods. We ended up catching 3 more bull reds and had several more that came unhooked. We slowly packed up and headed to Houston around noon. I think everyone had a pretty damn good time. This is probably going to be my last overnight beach trip of 2006.
posted by brian | 1:54 PM
5 Comments:
Sounds like it was great! I especially love it when you invite someone for their first coastal run and it actually works out.
Kirk probably went home thinking you always catch a handful of red and a couple big sharks.
Tell me more about "Mulletzilla"
Blogger is Pissing me off with the pictures!
I have a few more I want to post but they aren't showing up. I'll try later.
Got to eat some of that shark, I was very impressed with how clean and white the meat was, even the tail section.
As it cooked it had a little of that "sharky" smell but once finished it was clean tasting pure protein. I had forgotten how much I enjoy the firm texture of good shark meat.
always been a favorite of mine too. one of the few critters where bigger is better. 6 footers are ideal for steaks. Dont need to do much to em they got flavor without adding flavor to em.
I spent a lot of time cleaning all of the red meat off the shark fillets and steaks. I also soaked the meat in fresh water for at least 24 hours with several water changes. It took a while to get the "sharkiness" out.
I fried some up for my neighbors last weekend. They were all very impressed with the meat.
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