HOME FOR THE WINTER - We found this RV park last year and between the low price, ($260/month plus electricity the great fishing and the very hospitable owners, we had to come back.
So we’ve been in Port O’Connor for just over a month now and its been colder than normal here, just a few days in the high 70s, even fewer in the 80s. The wind hasn’t let up very often making fishing not the most pleasant past time. Despite that, Dave and I have been fishing a lot, but not catching much. Apparently the fish don’t like the colder, windy weather either. Oh well, at least we’ve been getting outside albeit bundled up like crazy.
I have to say it’s great to be back in our trailer with all our own stuff. I was getting tired of living out of my duffle bag and moving from place to place for our 5 months back in Ontario. Staying put here and getting into a bit of routine ie. working out, eating what we normally eat etc. has been a welcome change.
There’s not really much to do here in Port O’Connor except fish but this little RV park we’re staying at is a pretty sociable place. Since we’ve been here they’ve had pot luck get togethers at least once a week, sometimes 2. The food is excellent and they all make it difficult to decline attending. Good thing we’re getting lots of exercise in!
Two weeks ago the owners organized a road trip to the Fulton Oyesterfest, about an hour south of here. They hadn’t been in years so they wanted to go check it out. Not knowing what to expect, we went in 3 cars and figured we’d hook up there. Wow, what a zoo! It was packed, not a hope in hell of finding anyone in that crowd so Dave and I wandered around and people watched. It turned out to be a small town version of Oktoberfest back home except with oysters & beer instead of sausage and sauerkraut and beer. We like cooked oysters but they only had them fried which we tried, they were OK. Of course there were also lots of raw oysters. I told myself I was going to try one, but when I walked by the tables full of them, the smell, well, I just couldn’t do it. We’d rather just grill the oysters in their shells on the BBQ...they’re sooo good that way.
Anyways, after paying way too much for beer (it was ridiculously expensive) and watching some strange entertainment called the Texas Gypsy’s (you’ll see pics) we decided to leave the official venue and find something to eat at a local restaurant. Found a place advertising a crawfish boil on the patio, it was pretty tasty and price wise, a much better value than the food at the Oysterfest. When we got back to the RV park all who went agreed it was a little crazy, way busier than anyone expected and likely a much better source of entertainment if you were in your 20’s and good and drunk. Like I said, just like Oktoberfest.
Our first 3 weeks of fishing here were not at all productive or interesting enough to up date the website with. In all that time Dave caught our one and only keeper, a 17” Sheepshead. Thankfully that all changed in the following week. The owner of the RV park took Dave and another winter Texan (they don’t call us snowbirds here) out fishing on his boat and they caught their limit of 5 sheepshead each. A few days later, he went out again and this time I was invited as well. This is a small fishing boat, no bathroom on board so I was told if I had to “go” they’d look the other way, I had to do the same when they went.
The fishing out in the gulf was excellent. The big rock jetty built to direct the barges out to the open water seems to be the breeding ground for the sheepshead we were after, plus they eat the barnacles that grow all over the rocks. Every few minutes you pull out a fish but they have to be 15” to keep so it still took us a few hours to accumulate the 25 fish (5 each) we were allowed to keep. After that we moved on to a few other places, in one of them Dave caught a monster fish, same type as the big one one I caught last year. Sadly I have to pass the biggest fish title over to him now, his beat mine by 2 inches!
After about 6 hours out on the boat, we only came back with the 25 sheepshead, none of the other fish we were after seemed to be biting but that was more than enough because they still have to be cleaned and that’s a good hours work.
I’m not sure how I managed to suppress the need to “go” for that long, but thankfully I did. I couldn’t realistically see how I was going to go anyways with out exposing too much or getting messy. The water wasn’t exactly calm either, think rocking boat and trying to squat and balance and you get the picture. You men have it so much it easier than us girls! Once we got back to dry land...let’s just say I had the best pee I’ve ever had!!! :-)
Now that it’s getting warmer, the fishing spots we can access on foot vs. having to be on a boat should yield better catches so we’re looking forward to spending another month here.
Check out our the Fulton Oysterfest pics and the Port O’Connor pics