the "Real fish kill of 2021" in progress

[stickman]

Guides are to blame, I have seen them do the same thing you just described. Folks save your $700 dollars and buy yourself equipment to target fish yourself. It is more satisfying

Yes, makes sense now that you put it that way...
Spend $700 on gear they might use once a year, then spend a ton on bait, fuel, hotel stays just to hit the coast once or twice. The way I see it let’s say John Doe spends $1500 a year on his 2 trips a year with his own equipment ($700)and catches nothing or maybe just a few whiting, or whatever. Most folks I have taken aren’t local and don’t want to spend their money that way. Spend your money how you see fit, Fish how you want, with who you want, however often you want...just get kids or anyone interested involved and make sure they have reasonable expectations NOT ONLY in fishing but in life too. Even guides have slow days on the water but what people take away from the trip excluding fillets should be worth the cost of admission. If I could afford to take trips for less I would, and I’ve donated plenty of trips. Facts are, boats, maintenance, and living expenses dictate the cost of a guided trip. There are a few making great money but most can tell you it’s not a glorious lifestyle, just a choice to do what we love and get paid for it while sharing the outdoors with folks that may not have a chance to get out very often.

[MadHatter]

Isn't this still the Land of the Free? Use what ever you want to catch your fish. Just don't try to tell me how I have to catch them.

Whatever bro .
You're told exactly how to catch em .
Otherwise, I would be dusting off the crank telephone, and getting dad to order me some more det cord and dynamite.
Ya'll just think you know how to catch fish.
They been stifling me since the 80's .
Any one remember ole Benji Waters the GW up in NE Texas?
Back before time began, a friend of my dad's put ole Benji and his boat about 15ft above the Sulphur River.
It had been a long day of "fishing" and when he came around the bend everyone took off.
Well call him Bubba, but anyway Bubba started dropping sticks as fast as he could light em.
Bubba got one of em timed right 😂😂😂😂.
RIP buddy, you were literal hell on wheels in your day.

[GarGuy]

Mirror Lures, Kelly Wigglers soft plastics(smoke with a pink tail), Bone Super Spooks and Johnson Sprite spoons or Hot Rod spoons were go to artificial baits.. I've caught some really big Flounder bouncing 3/4 ounce gold spoons off the bottom, up drop offs in channels and on sand bar edges..
Back in the day we would cast net the giant white shrimp and fill up our ice chest..

You can hang a fresh shrimp off the back of those and catch fish with em!

[trophy8]

Hot **** folks take fishing too serious

[stickman]

Hot **** folks take fishing too serious

Yes, but it’s some people’s livelihoods. So... I’d say that can be taken serious. Comparable to the oilfield workers thread just in a much smaller scale. How the fishery is managed/mismanaged by the government and utilized by Texans affects us.

[trophy8]

Yes, but it’s some people’s livelihoods. So... I’d say that can be taken serious. Comparable to the oilfield workers thread just in a much smaller scale. How the fishery is managed/mismanaged by the government and utilized by Texans affects us.

No I totally get that 100% and agree 100%. My comment was more about what bait a fella chooses to throw lol. Big difference in management and talking **** about bait

[stickman]

No I totally get that 100% and agree 100%. My comment was more about what bait a fella chooses to throw lol. Big difference in management and talking **** about bait

Lmao, Very true.

[PondPopper]

This is true and I speak from experience. Went with a guide and went down to Matagorda. Went to a bunch of spots with live shrimp and didn't catch anything. I did catch a croaker and put on a rod and oddly nothing ever took it.

Dang did you take Bananas on the boat or what?? You should have accidentally caught something..

[jason86]

I have a different take on something than you do, and poke a little fun at the same time(the folks on here who know me know I’m trolling when I do that) and people like you take the bait and reveal what a Karen you are. Anyway, sorry to hurt your wittle feelings.

Women drink white claws men drink beer

[AtTheWall]

1991 - 32"

The rod and reel, my old Fenwick fiberglass custom with an ABU XLT Sychro drag reel/ 8 lb clear Ande mono - The Mirrolure responsible dangling from it's lip M52R classic - Corpus Christi Ship Channel night time - air temp 24 degrees, fishing deep structure 15 - 25 ft deep - bit around 0200

Caught and released about a dozen, all over 26" that night

Day before the front hit, 75 degrees the day before

I timed the front at a spot, that holds big fish and worked it from sun down to around 11 am the following morning. Bit the entire time, catch and release over and over and over

They logged up at 12 - 20 ft along the channel edge

I have three specks over 30" - two on M52R Mirrolures and the third on a Johnson Sprite Gold Spoon 3/4 oz weedless wading at sunup Upper Laguna. That spoon speck was chasing a foot long mullet, which was leaping in circles with this trout boiling up - dropped the spoon in the sweet spot and it was on. I thought it was gonna be my first redfish of the day........weighed 8.7 lbs and went 31.2"

The other 30" speck, hit a Mirrolure M52R - Lure looked like a baby speckled trout painted with spots. Fishing a deep hole next to a rock jetty near NAS Corpus - Laguna side. Specks were feeding on chicken specks (baby specks) in the lights - so tied on the spots and it was yet another redfish like experience till I got her close and realized she had a lotta spots.

My three over 30 all 1990s Corpus and Upper Laguna Madre

I used to wade the power plant discharge on Navigation BLVD at night, freezing cold front conditions - lure of choice - chrome/black rattletrap. Those big Nueces Bay girls would hang on the edge of the farthest edges of warm water outflow, well away from the shoreline where folks used to line up shoulder to shoulder and soak live fingerling mullet in the 71 degree water spillway

No one waded out at night - in air temps in the 20s

I had some cold nights, my smallest speck was around 23"

They would smash the mullet and I would cast right at the boils with my trap. Killed it to points, I had to hide my technique. Told a Gamewarden who checked me one morning - he watched me till I came out. Biggest stringer he's ever checked according to him.

Back then, I killed a few to feed a wife and 4 kids. I only kept what we could eat fresh - never froze fish and released tons

[AtTheWall]

Better equipment, better electronics, skinny water boats that put people in places folks rarely went to 2 to 4 decades ago.

Back when I started fishing the Gulf & her bays, aluminum jon boats were the flats boat of choice. They were the only flats boat of choice because SKOOTERS and FLATS BOATS had yet to be invented. Including the coveted HEWES BONEFISHER - the first real FLATS BOAT.

I fished South Florida inshore in the 80s out of an 18ft square stern canoe with a 3 hp merc for power. Then - it was Hewes like hulls.....then the skooters hit. Loud, obnoxious 2 strokes with no jack plate, just a tunnel and flat barge like hull. Ugly - loud and then I realized if that style flats boat was our future - our future on a quiet flat that only had drifting boats pursuing fish....now these skooters - in the hands of rookies who now have access to flats - blew fish off key zones as they ran the **** outta of them everywhere and bitched, they couldn't find any pattern

The tackle, electronics, boats and now public access - up and down the coast is up - way up from those old days.

Get used to it........sure glad I got to live and learn from some of the legends back then. I caught the last legs of those good old days.

Hell - still remember specks and redfish - lining the seafood departments in Texas grocery stores = all caught by Texas commercial inshore anglers - the years before these species were classified GAMEFISH. Netting redfish and specks by the millions for the supermarket.

The years before any conservation groups formed as they are now. The only forming committee we recognized was the IGFA and commercial fishing for specks and redfish was part of our coastal community.

The best big speckled trout live bait is simple - A LIVE BABY SPECK. According to the old timers around Galveston I fished with back in the 60s and 70s

Even with the commercial pressures then, plenty of big specks were around....because, the public by the thousands - on boats that literally can go anywhere at speed skinny....LOTTA PRESSURE on fish today because a lot of the quiet habitat is now chewed up by airboats, skinny water boats that can run less than a foot hauling *** over the flat at speed. All day long, everyday of the week now. The water itself - these flats - have no down time.

Then the coastal development, along the areas where we have the most concentration of public boat launch access. Bulkheads and water diversions from our major rivers etc. The habitat is shrinking away, leaps and bounds I might add. Our influx of fresh water, in many of our reaches along the South Texas coastline are now literally starved of freshwater outflow - so critical for shell fish, tarpon and snook down there. It also impacts specks - it's plain and simply. They need that brackish mix in full swing and it's been slowly cut back through urbanization and water demands with growing coastal communities etc etc etc

I cast lures - always have. I will bait fish if I'm with a group that's engaged with boxing fish that way. I typically classify the bait trips a grocery run since you can score a lot of different species outside of our big three. Mangrove snapper, sheepshead, small barely legal black drum = GROCERY SHOPPING

Hell some of us cast topwater lures at 100 lb tuna too

[panhandlehunter]

Women drink white claws men drink beer

I get made fun of plenty about my white claws, but we talking fishing right now.

You can tell it’s a slow day at work. Lol

[jason86]

I get made fun of plenty about my white claws, but we talking fishing right now.

You can tell it’s a slow day at work. Lol

Ain’t nothing like the feeling when that croaker is getting nervous on the end of the line, soak em if you got em 😬.

[Smart]

Women drink white claws men drink beer

I get made fun of plenty about my white claws, but we talking fishing right now.

You can tell it’s a slow day at work. Lol

Oh hell ....we got some ammo now..

[rut-ro]

Some people go fishing 10 - 15 times a year and keep 2-3 fish each time. If go to La. once and keep 10 trout, what is the difference?

Who keeps 10 in Louisiana? I keep 25 that’s the limit. They are all about 14 inches but I’m keeping them