South Texas Fishing

Radio is still taking a beating here. Because of my limited capability, I find myself dodging the radio.

We have been doing some fishing, however, mostly in the Laguna Madre, Spanish for Mother Lagoon. A friend from Mannford, Jim, and his wife, Sue, are down here from Mannford and Jim brought his boat. According to Jim, who reads incessantly, the Laguna Madre is one of the most prolific fisheries in the United States. Jim, Luther Potts, and I have taken three fishing trips.

On our first trip out, we anchored on the edge of a channel and caught a bunch of whitings, or southern kingfish. These are somewhat reminiscent of sand bass in that they are very prolific, there is no limit on them, and they are very good to eat. We were fishing with frozen squid and shrimp and the whiting would only hit the squid, not the shrimp. I did find out that whiting have very sharp little teeth deep down in their throats - don't stick your fingers down there.

On our second trip out, the wind was blowing too hard to go out into the Laguna Madre so we went to Arroyo City and put the boat in there. It was about a seven mile run to the mouth of the arroyo so we made it. When we got out there, the waves were much too high to stay so we came back in and fished the arroyo. We caught nothing but "hard head" catfish, which I've been assured are absolutely no good to eat! Finally we gave up and, on the way back up the arroyo to the dock, I caught a glimpse of something in the water as we went by. In fact, we almost ran over it with the boat! I yelled at Jim to turn around because I thought we had almost hit a swimming deer. When we turned around and went back, we found a mangy, scraggly coyote desperately trying to get across the arroyo! That was our big excitement for the day.

The third time out, we decided to try the jettys out at Boca Chita. Again, the wind was howling but we were able to get into a sheltered spot. Our bad luck continued as each of us caught one small whiting and I caught a ray. Discretion being the wise choice, I cut the line to avoid the ray's barbed tail!

Jim and Sue have to return to Oklahoma this week so I think our fishing trips are over. We sure had a lot of fun, though, and I WILL bring a fishing rod next year!