BAD TRAVELS

We just spent 13 nights at the Matagorda Bay Nature Park RV park which is located on the Colorado River right where it flows into the Gulf of Mexico. Great to be back near the water although it’s not exactly what I’d call pretty water like what you see in the Florida Panhandle. It’s always brown and murky due to the silt that gets dumped in the ocean from the river.

This rural Texas town and surrounding area isn’t touristy but it is well known for it’s great fishing and seafood (shrimp and oysters). We came here specifically to get our fishing fix in and we fished almost every day. Some times in the morning, some times in the afternoon...almost always in the wind. It rarely stops blowing, but in a way that’s a good thing, it helps to keep the multitudes of mosquitos away. Muggy days with no wind are impossible to be outside without the protection of heavy duty bug repellent.

We were pretty lucky in the fish catching department. Our first good day saw us keep 2 big sheepshead (17” & 18”) along with some decent size Gafftopsail catfish and some whiting. The second good catching day we ended up with more whiting and 2 perfect eating size black drum (20” & 21”). You’ll see what they look like in the pictures

The third good catch day was incredible! That overcast morning we started out on the big long public fishing pier in the ocean but the water was quite rough and it was windy (quel surprise!). We caught a few fish but nothing worth keeping.

Went back to the trailer for lunch and then decided to spend the afternoon fishing off the small dock in the RV park, just steps from our trailer. Skies cleared up and it was quite warm and pleasant just to sit there fishing, soaking up the sun. The action started pretty quickly with me catching a small (17”) bonnet head shark (you’ll see pics) but too small to keep. Then Dave caught an eel that was at least 2 ft long. Man those things are creepy and way too snake like for us. It’s hard to get the hook out of their mouth without holding them, but holding them is very unpleasant...they swivel in your hand and then they try to wrap the rest of themselves around your hand/arm or they attempt to tie themselves in knots. Plus they’re wet and slimy! I can only describe the feeling of them writhing around as disgusting and yucky....yes yucky, and that’s thru a glove!

Anyways, after the eel we finally started catching some decent, keepable fish. Dave caught another of the good catfish and then we started catching sand trout. We’d heard they were very tasty and were looking forward to possibly catching enough for dinner. They’re not huge fish, and the 3 we’d caught were about 12” long. Dave was cleaning them and I turned around to look at my pole only to see it bend big time in the holder it was in on the dock. There was so much pressure on it that I could hardly get it out of the holder to try to reel what ever was on it in. OMG I could tell it was something huge because I struggled to pull it in, and it fought hard to stay away. In addition to trying to tire it out, I didn’t want it to get under the dock and wrap the line around it’s supports. Dave had the great idea to try to pull it up on the river bank vs. trying to net it and pull it up on the dock especially after we finally got to see a bit of it break thru the surface. It was a MONSTER Black Drum!! I had to give up trying to get it in on my own, my wrist was aching so Dave took over and slowly managed to land it on the shore. Holy crap, the frigging fish was half my size! No kidding, it was just over 3 feet long!! Biggest fish we’ve ever caught, my heart was pounding. I had to use both hands to hold it up for the pictures...it still doesn’t look real to me.

You’re allowed one fish of this type per day that exceeds the normal limits but sometimes bigger isn’t always tastier so I decided to let him go. Unfortunately, it didn’t seem to want to do anything but float on its side so we kept it and had some BBQ black drum for dinner. It turned out to be very tasty done that way, chewy but kinda like BBQ lobster.

Unfortunately we didn’t catch any decent fish after the big black drum but to be honest,  after that thing, most other fish feel pretty small. Mother nature didn’t really cooperate either, it poured rain the last 2 days we were here which limited our fishing opportunities. Overall though, we were very happy with our first fishing experience in Texas.

Today we move on to an RV park in Palacios, another coastal fishing town about 45 minutes south of here, where we hope the fishing continues to be as interesting and as fun as it was here.

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