Pea-Eye, If you'll be my Mayberry, I'll be your Huckleberry

Patrick wasn’t really sure he wanted to go to Port Isabel to begin with; it was the seven-hour (from Austin) drive that gave him pause. It’s a long time for a 10-year-old to sit in a truck.

On the way home last night, he still thought it took far too long to drive to the southern tip of Texas but had decided it’s worth doing.

I agree.

Rockport, my hometown, has been my favorite place all my adult life. I called it “Mayberry-by-the-Sea.” Partly it’s the memories of a pretty good childhood there. Partly it’s the dozens of family members who still live there. Partly it’s the fishing.

Used to be, I’d make a trip at least once a month. Sometimes more often than that. Since last October, I’ve been home just three times. But in the same time I’ve made that seven-hour drive to Port Isabel five times.

Not as well-known as South Padre Island, its sister city across the causeway, Port Isabel maintains the charm and small-town friendliness I remember from 1980-era Rockport. With a population just under 6,000, it’s big enough to offer modern conveniences and small enough to easily navigate and meet the same people over and over again.

And the fishing can be phenomenal.

This weekend, Patrick out-fished both me and his Uncle John about five-to-one. He landed 18 fish of three different species and had a ball doing it. Our fishing guide Saturday, Capt. Carlos Garcia, has kids of his own the same age, and he was a patient and engaging teacher.

It was all about fun – feisty mangrove snapper, acrobatic ladyfish and hard-pulling jacks – and the promise of snook.

Port Isabel is ground zero for the Lower Laguna Madre’s burgeoning snook population. Anglers from around the world build multi-thousand dollar itineraries around the legendary game fish in South Florida, Costa Rica, Nicaragua and Belize.

And despite the fact the Texas record for common snook is a couple of pounds heavier than the world record for the same species, robalo are not much more than a footnote for most Texas anglers.

My brother, John, jokes that it is all just a vast conspiracy; he has yet to see his first big snook for himself. That didn’t change over the weekend, when 30mph winds turned the bay to chocolate milk and made fishing a bit tougher than usual. But we’ll make a believer of him yet; snook are just now moving out of the refuge of the Brownsville Ship Channel and out into the shallow waters of South Bay, Mexiquita Flats and other areas heavy on structure and bait.

A big linesider would have just been lagniappe this trip, anyhow. My son wants to be a battlefield archeologist when he grows up. Fortunately for him, my friend Rod Bates of Rio Bravo Gallery is a passionate and expert chronicler of the Port Isabel area’s rich history.

He told us the story of the 9-mile running battle between Union and Confederate soldiers that resulted in a victory for the South, 149 years ago and more than a month after Gen. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox.

Then he presented Patrick with Minie balls and uniform buttons from the battlefield – items Rod discovered on private land the battle crossed. Rod dug deeper into his collection and into history and found a couple of musket balls – one had obviously impacted someone or something – from the nearby Palo Alto Battlefield.

Palo Alto was the first major engagement of the Mexican-American War. You know, the one that gave the United States New Mexico and Arizona and California, as well as settled lingering border issues from the Texas Revolution a dozen years earlier.

From even farther back in time, he produced a silver coin from a 1554 shipwreck on Padre Island. Three Spanish treasure ships went aground in a violent storm then.

It was the last year of Charles I of Spain (he was Charles V of the Holy Roman Empire), and the coin bears his coat-of-arms and personal motto: “Plus Ultra.” – further beyond. Charles ruled much of Europe at the time, and the motto suggests a sort of transcendence and wide-armed embrace of, well, everything.

Which brings me back to Port Isabel. Looking for the best Gulf beaches in Texas? They’re right there – just a couple of miles over the causeway.

Want to tangle with a tarpon or battle a snook? For the next six or seven months, they’ll be everywhere around the town.

If history is your thing, or birds and butterflies, or antiquing or the best blackened fish tacos you’re likely to taste, Port Isabel has all of that.

It’s a town with a lot of character, and a lot of characters, too. Sort of like Andy Griffith’s fictional Mayberry. Only, by the sea.

At a loss for words

For a little more than a month now, I've tried to find the words to close-out my Ike reportage. They won't come. I've even tried to arrange my thoughts in verse; the rhyme and meter didn't work out either (everyone breathe a sigh of relief).

Today, more than two months after the storm, the Laura Recovery Center still lists the names of 53 people believed to be missing as a result of Hurricane Ike. The Houston Chronicle's list runs to 144 names.

With the exception, no doubt, of the people who lost their loved ones or their homes, the rest of the world has moved-on. Me too, sort of.

Beginning Sept. 11, I drove east three times and spent 16 days in Chambers and Galveston Counties. One of the game wardens there told me, the day after the storm, that an event like that restored his faith in humanity.

"If you're any kind of cop long enough," said 22-year-veteran Bobby Jobes, "you get pretty cynical. Something like this brings out the best and the worst in people, but mostly the best."

True, that. But it also takes a toll on everyone.

For me, part of the process of moving on has been making-up with my old friend, the Texas Gulf Coast -- that magical meeting of sea and sand and sky that has, for almost four decades, been my playground and workplace and chapel.

A week after my last trip to Chambers County, I took a few days off and went fishing at the other end of the Texas coast. In Port Isabel and in South Padre Island, blue tarps still covered the roofs of businesses and homes. Sunken fishing boats and yachts lined canals and bulkheads.

Workers, locals told me, disappeared after Ike hit -- heading north for more lucrative and long-lasting work. Dolly and Ike were the bookends of the 2008 huricane season in Texas. Between the two are volumes of hope and heartbreak, resilience and self-reliance and despair and destruction.

That trip to Port Isabel restored something for me; hanging out with friends old and new, catching fish and just making peace with the raw edge of Texas. It was good.

More on that in a bit, but -- for a while at least, maybe a long while -- I think I'm done talking about hurricanes. My hastily-created Ike photo site got something like 75,000 page views. Many readers wrote comments or sent me e-mails in response to my blog posts. Thanks for that.

Stick around, and maybe we can have a conversation about the happier side of this water wilderness.

[Fly fishing photo by Erich Schlegel.]

Bless these men

Saturday I had the rare privilege of spending a couple of hours on the water with eight wounded warriors at Blanco State Park. The soldiers -- all undergoing medical treatment and various therapies at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio -- were there as part of a "Heroes on the Water" outing.

Heroes on the Water is the first project undertaken by Kayak Anglers Society of America, founded by my friends Brad, Ken and Jim. This was their fourth trip.

Some of the guys told me about their "duty day" at BAMC: morning formation, then various appointments all day long, then back to a spare barracks room. One of the guys admitted that, a lot of times, it's easier to just stay locked-up in that room on a Saturday than attempting to get out and deal with the world.

Maj. Cody Roberson, a Medical Services Corps officer who founded ArmyBassAnglers.com, does a good job of protecting the troops from the raw curiosity of sponsors and spectators alike. Cody knows first-hand some of what they went through in Southwest Asia: he commanded a medical company there early in the war.

Two of the soldiers were amputees; some were injured in blasts, others were burn victims. Some had no immediately obvious injuries; following Cody's lead, I didn't ask.

There's no doubt in my mind, though, that every one of them is in some way broken by his experience; as Jon Dee Graham sings, "not beautifully broken, just broken ... that's all."

The Heroes on the Water program gives these troops an opportunity to get out, almost on their own, for a few hours. Sure, there are therapeutic aspects to kayak fishing -- fine motor skills, balance, strength; it's the sort of thing that is good for anyone to practice, but especially if you're, say, learning to use prosthetic thumbs. Or new legs.

But maybe the best thing about these excursions is the opportunity for the soldiers to simply relax -- away from case managers and appointments and the same ol' same ol' of their barracks rooms. To watch a wild turkey fly across the river, or feel the tug of a fish at the end of a line.

I've always had a soft spot in my heart for soldiers. As a kid, because I looked-up to them and admired them. As a young adult, because I was one. Now, because I remember.

I remember the difference it made to me when someone actually showed they appreciated my sacrifices.

I wonder at the kind of courage and strength it takes to even attempt to become truly whole again after the sorts of injuries -- and experiences -- these men have suffered.

Awe is not too strong a word for what I feel for these "warriors in transition," now that I have met a few of them.

Cabela's donated rods and reels for the outing, and the Blanco American Legion Post provided a late lunch. Blanco State Park staff opened their arms to the group and waived entry fees. Brad and Colleen Harvey of Heart of Texas Kayaks brought the boats. Such generosity is always humbling.

But a lot of it still comes out of KASA's -- Brad's, Cody's, Jim's and Ken's -- pockets. You can help sponsor the next Heroes on the Water trip (there's a waiting list 20 soldiers deep now) by donating online at http://www.kayakanglerssa.org/. Or, if you or someone you know would like to donate products or services -- fishing stuff, ice chests, transportation, PFDs, fishing garb or hats -- send Brad an email.

KASA is a non-profit corporation (501(c)(3) status is on the way), and donations are tax-deductible.

She's down!

Ten years and more than $4 million later, the dream of preserving the USTS Texas Clipper (ex-SS Excambion, ex-USS Queens) as an artificial reef off the Texas coast is now a reality.

After several weather delays this week, the ship was successfully sunk on the reefing site at 12:35 p.m. Saturday. What hasn't been reported -- or not enough anyhow, is just how much everyone involved in this project cared about this ship.

People actually get teary-eyed talking about it. Those people include me. No kidding.

Something else that I'm sure we'll be talking about more in the future is the science that will be conducted at the reefing site -- everything from monitoring biological communities to studying the pace of corrosion.

Here's the video of the sinking, courtesy of the Associated Press (courtesy of my colleagues at TPWD, actually).



And here is the AP story on the finale:

The 473-foot, 7,000-ton Texas Clipper went under the rough wind-tossed waters about 17 miles offshore at about 12:35 p.m. and took about two hours to sink, said Bob Murphy, a Texas Department of Parks and Wildlife reef specialist.

The operation to turn the Texas Clipper into an artificial reef cost $4 million and has taken a decade.

"For those of us who have been working on it for ten years, the delays were frustrating but today was great," Murphy said. "It was good to see her out there on site, taking on water and going down."

The Clipper, pulled by a tugboat, left its dock in Brownsville and headed into the Gulf of Mexico on Friday. The departure had been delayed a couple of days because of bad weather and high winds.

The Texas Clipper, the largest vessel in the care of the department to be sunk, is expected to become an attraction for divers and fishermen, and to provide an economic boost for the South Padre Island area.

The ship, which began life as the USS Queens, was commissioned as a Navy troop transport ship and was among vessels in the Pacific at the battle of Iwo Jima. It was used in the American occupation of Japan until it was decommissioned in 1946.

It then carried cargo and passengers between New York City and the Mediterranean as the SS Excambion until 1958.

In the mid 1990s, the ship was decommissioned after almost 30 years as a classroom at sea for about 200 Texas A&M-Galveston students each summer.

[Photo courtesy of Earl Nottingham, TPWD, distributed by the Associated Press.]

Why is this man smiling?

That's Bob Murphy, a colleague at TPWD and native of Texas' Golden Triangle. Bob and I are both in South Padre Island for the sinking of the USTS Texas Clipper -- which has now been delayed twice.

After the last flurry of phone calls letting folks know we were pushing-back the scuttling of the ship, Bob and I had just enough time to head down to Isla Blanca Park at the south end of South Padre Island to do a little rock-hopping.

We were looking for snook on a strong incoming tide. The water, pre-cold front, was in beautiful condition.

A few bumps -- missed fish, and not snook from what I could tell -- and I look up to see Bob hooked into something. He lifts his rod tip and swings a shimmering, shivering Atlantic cutlass fish (we call them ribbon fish around here) onto the rocks.

I hook into something small -- a pretty little Rock hind (the diminutive, polka-dotted member of the grouper family) -- followed quickly by my own ribbon fish.

By this time I am fishing the calm, northern side of the north jetties; Bob is working the tidal rip on the channel side just 20 feet away from me. We're chatting as the last glow of a pretty nice sunset lights the skies.

Suddenly, Bob's rod bows and I see him fumble to get a good grip as line sizzles off the reel. I'm sure it's a big snook and open my mouth to tell him to hold on tight (why do anglers offer such advice? Like he hadn't thought of that ....) when a huge, silvery shape rockets out of the water.

Tarpon!

And not just any tarpon, but a better-than-man-sized fish well into the triple digits. The fish crashed back into the water with the sound of someone dropping a 2-ton granite jetty boulder into the channel. Bob's reel sizzles again, then: slack.

The fish "came unscrewed." That's no surprise since tarpon have notoriously hard, bony mouths, and the majority of hook-ups for any angler typically result in lost fish.

"Jumping" a tarpon is the thrill, the rest is just a slugfest for the most part.

Bob whooped and yelled and jumped up and down on the rocks, then suddenly went silent.

"Sorry for all the noise," he said, a bit sheepishly.

I laughed.

"Sorry? Man, if it was me, I'd still be laughing/cussing/crying -- all at the same time. I nearly had a heart attack, and I was just watching."

It was Bob's second tarpon. The first came years ago, on the very same set of jetties.

Those are some pretty good rocks.

Nuts for the Nueces

Driving south from San Antonio on Interstate Highway 37, the first hint of the city of Corpus Christi is the gleaming profusion of refineries off in the distance: scaffolding and gas flares, storage tanks and distillation towers. At night, the lights look like a cityscape in their own right.

The refineries exist because of the Port of Corpus Christi -- the nation's sixth-busiest -- and the port exists because of the Nueces River.

Shortly after the refineries come into view, the interstate crosses the river. Here it is a slow, silt-laden stream crawling between muddy banks choked with mesquite, willow and scrubby oaks. Just downstream, the river meanders into spartina marsh before emptying into the shallow, reef-strewn reaches of Nueces Bay.

That's the Nueces I grew up with.

It is a distinctly different river some 300 miles upstream at the western edge of the Edwards Plateau. Uvalde, about 50 miles from the river's headwaters and a good four-hour drive from Corpus, is the only other town on the entire river with a population above three digits, and it boasts only around 17,000 souls.

Last weekend, with four friends, I set out to explore that difference, and the river that has long been calling to me.

Marc McCord, writing for SouthwestPaddler.com, reports that: "The spring-fed, crystal clear water flows through the limestone bluffs of the Edwards Plateau, and is one of the most scenic river trips in Texas."

McCord also reports that some 45 miles of the upper Nueces, from north of Barksdale to near Uvalde, are navigable nearly year-round.

Not so, said Marilyn Stoner. Marilyn and her husband Tom own Clear Creek Outfitters in Camp Wood. From the paddling shop-and-antique store on the main drag, they rent kayaks, provide shuttles and counsel kayakers on current river flows and conditions. The advice and help with route planning is free to all comers.

"There is a lot of outdated information on the Internet," Marilyn told me when we stopped in Friday. "I don't recognize some of the things I read about the Nueces. This river changes all the time."

Marilyn warned us that the river is shallow in many places and we'd probably end up dragging the boats part of the way.

"There are rocks in some of those rapids that will eat boats," she said.

Of course, the same is true of most Hill Country streams. The classic pool-and-drop configuration of these spring-fed rivers, with the hard, limestone bedrock of the Edwards Plateau, mandate carrying a strap or line with which to pull boats and decent footwear for the portions the paddler will be forced to walk in ankle-deep water.

On the Nueces, even more than some other Hill Country streams, rises can come quickly. The river's watershed is huge -- it drains something like 17,000 square miles -- and a downpour out of sight and sound beyond a ridgeline can translate into a sudden wall of water under bright sun and blue skies somewhere else minutes or hours later.

To my surprise, I found the portions of the Nueces we paddled -- at what Marilyn and Tom said is average or just below-average flows -- to be more easily navigated than most Hill Country streams farther east.

On one six-mile reach I was forced out of my boat exactly once, and then only because I chose the wrong channel at the head of a riffle.

There are few legal camping spots along the river bed, and an even smaller number of comfortable ones. But with frequent county road crossings between Camp Wood and Uvalde, daytrips with overnights in one of several private campgrounds in the area is a good strategy.

We chose Big Oak campground just south of Camp Wood, where tent camping sites include water, electricity, fire rings and grills.

A trip like this isn't all about the paddling, after all, or fishing, for that matter.

It's also about leaving workaday concerns behind. It's about the joy of watching a belted kingfisher hover above a riffle, dive and emerge with a minnow in its beak. It's about the play of light and water and limestone, and a flock of wild turkeys coming down to drink.

It's about good friends and good food and the lies guys tell around the campfire.

Vince (an old college buddy of like mind who I'm just now really getting to know) brought venison fajita meat -- and his Big Bend staple, Easy Cheese (I'm now a convert); Ken, my regular coastal paddling partner, provided a flask of apfelkorn. Danny -- my fishing partner of more than decade -- and Schu, another Houston friend, kept busy passing icey cans of Pearl Light around the fire.

After a full day of paddling -- and with well over 100 fish caught between us -- Saturday was an early night. After coffee and campfire eggs and sausage in the morning, we decided to break camp and enjoy the scenery on the way home rather than attempt the three-hour paddle we had planned for farther downstream.

For Vince and me, that meant heading 20-plus miles cross-country from Barksdale on an unpaved county road that wound through large ranches along the canyon carved by Bullhead Creek. That road connected to Ranch Road 336, which plunges south to Leakey.

From Leakey, it was left on my old friend FM 337 through Vanderpool and down to Medina.

Between Leakey and Vanderpool, Vince and I pulled off at a picnic area high atop a ridge to stretch our legs and grab a quick bite to eat. As we carved chunks of venison sausage onto saltines liberally spread with Easy Cheese, we heard a voice: "Good job! You're doing great! Just a little farther now ...."

We turned to see a young boy -- probably only 9 or 10 -- coast to a stop on his bicycle. Behind him came a man on a triple-seater, two younger children behind him.
I was amazed they had all pedaled up the hill we would soon coast down in my truck. Iwas even more amazed when the man told me they had come all the way from Medina, and their destination that evening was Camp Wood.

A Team Cyclone support trailer pulled in a few minutes later, so I guess they probably knew what they were doing. But still. Wow.

Closer to home, a quick stop at a top-secret fossil hunting site yielded the most numerous and perfect clam casts I have yet seen, as well as a handful of fossilized sea urchins. Family obligations kept us from lingering long, but we plan to take the kids back Saturday.

It's a fine coincidence that Sunday is one of two "Fossil ID Days" UT hosts each year. Look for a report on that expedition here after the weekend.

[The Nueces at LaBonte Park, alongside IH-37 just north of Corpus Christi. Note the dead crab in the foreground; still life with boats on the Nueces River near Big Oak River Camp; this view of Ken's right foot gives a pretty good idea of both the water depth and quality in the upper Nueces (photo courtesy KendalLarsonPhotography.com); Schu and Danny negotiate a snag in a tight bend on the upper Nueces below Camp Wood; A nice Rio Grande perch, the only cichlid native to Texas; Danny, Ken and Vince show-off a largemouth bass triple-header; Vince admires a nice Nueces River Guadalupe bass; Ken goes for broke with the Easy Cheese; sitting around the campfire; You never know what you might see on the roads through the Hill Country. Here, two camels kiss; Five tired but happy bikers at the top of the ridge between Vanderpool and Leakey ; even if you don't paddle, or fish, the trip to Camp Wood is worth it for the amazing scenery. We figure the more warning signs, the better the drive (photo courtesy Vince Terracina, TAG Marketing).]

Final voyage

For all sorts of reasons, I don't often write here about things that go on at my day job at the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, but I feel compelled to write about a project I'm currently working on.

In two weeks time, on Thurs., Nov. 15, workers will open a series of valves and flood the USTS Texas Clipper, sending her 134 feet down to the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, about 17 nautical miles from South Padre Island, Texas.

The 473-foot ship, ex-USS Queens, ex-SS Excambion, will become Texas' newest artificial reef.

Wednesday, she'll be towed to the reef site, and I expect there will be a crowd at the jetties lining Brazos Santiago Pass: former crewmembers, interested locals, some of the department's staff.

Some of those who sailed aboard the ship have told me that's the only part of the event they want to see -- the final voyage; they said seeing the grand old lady slip beneath the waves was not the final image they wished to hold in their minds.

Ships have lives.

The Texas Clipper was born at the Bethlehem Steel Works shipyard at Sparrows' Point, Md., in 1944. She got to the Pacific in time to be the first attack transport ship to resupply U.S. forces on Iwo Jima, and ferried troops to the occupation of Japan. She then brought nearly 4,000 war-weary soldiers home.

Refitted at Bethlehem's Hoboken, N.J., shipyard, she was renamed the S.S. Excambion, one of the American Export Line's grand passenger-cargo combi-liners.

As the S.S. Excambion, she was the first fully air conditioned combi-liner in the world, and plied a New York - Mediterannean route for more than a decade. Mothballed as jet airliners became the preferred mode of transatlantic travel, she was loaned to Texas A&M University-Galveston as a maritime training vessel.

Painted Aggie maroon, the USTS Texas Clipper made 30 summer cruises, a gentle teacher to generations of Merchant Marine and Naval Reserve officers.

Even with her funnel and masts cut down, the Texas Clipper today remains recognizably the same ship she was in 1984, in 1964, in 1944. Her fine bow and graceful counter transom hark back to an era of shipbuilding when beautiful lines still counted.

As an artificial reef, the ship will provide critical structure and the foundation of a diverse and complex community of corals, sponges and other organisms. They, in turn, will draw fish. The ship, and the life surrounding her, will bring people.

Such a rush of divers and anglers, in fact, that local economies can expect to see a boost of $30 million a year, each year for the next half century.

It's not a bad end for a grand old lady. In fact, it's not an end at all. Many of my colleagues refer to it as the Texas Clipper's "fourth life." I think of it as a sort of afterlife.

I wish her the best.

[To see the electronic press kit for the Texas Clipper reefing project, go to: http://www.tpwd.state.tx.us/newsmedia/releases/news_roundup/texas_clipper/. The illustration at top is by Paul Hammerschmidt, TPWD; the photo of the USS Queens on patrol is a U.S. Navy photo, courtesy of the National Archives.]

Big water, big fun

Paddling, lately, has been work. I'm either on the coast, paddling north to complete the coastwise journey (the Cabela's Kayak Safari) or paddling a river or stream somewhere for the Falcon book.

This week I went paddling for fun. Oh, okay ... it was for fun and profit; there will be a magazine article too.

Ken and Dean drove down from LaPorte and Aransas Pass respectively. TSJ Senior Editor Steve Lightfoot and I carpooled from Austin.

We all met at Getaway Adventures Lodge, my Port Mansfield home-away-from-home, where we joined Temple Fork Outfitter's Jim Shulin and Capt. Brandon Shuler for an offshore adventure.

So what can you look forward to in Texas Sporting Journal? Hmm ... well, we caught some fish. We got beat up and beat down by rougher-than-predicted conditions. We participated in the open-water barter economy. We all marvelled at the surreal, serenely cerulean sea.

There was some tomfoolery, too. It's tough to schedule a fishing trip with Dean and Ken and not get some of that. Fortunately, Jim and Brandon fit right in -- held their own quite well, in fact. So did Steve, which was no big surprise.

Kinda scary, considering these guys are all real, live professionals.

The trip confirmed something I've known for a long while; just getting out there is the best thing about these adventures.

It doesn't matter whether the trip lasts a day or two or a week. And whether and what we catch comes in a distant third to the opportunity to immerse oneself in wild and beautiful nature and the camaraderie of good friends.

An update

I've been asked, urged, begged -- okay, not really begged -- to update this blog.

Some folks want to know how the last leg of the Kayak Safari was. Not much fun, but more in a moment. Some people want to know if I'm still alive. Yep. At least one person just wants to be amused. No promises there ....

This weekend is a busy writing weekend; I'm wrapping up my contractually required "sample" chapter for the FalconGuides book. It's actually quite a good exercise as it reminds me of all the things I need to pay attention to when I'm out on the water.

Here's one: Don't Leave the GPS on the Tailgate of the Truck.

So. The last leg of the coastwise trip was tough. Day one: 17 miles in a quartering gale, water the color of chocolate milk. Day two: 22 miles up the ditch. An overnight thunderstorm nearly blew us away. Day three: North winds. Day four: North winds.

I think we ended up catching maybe 10 fish between us -- nothing really noteworthy. Saw some birds. Built a couple of nice campfires. And we were really happy to step ashore at Bird Island Basin after four days and 70 miles on the water.

It was such a challenging leg of the trip -- such a grind -- that I joked more than once that it would be the Haiku feature story.

Here are a couple from the trip:

Waves roll, cockpit fills.
Wind howls, pushes petulant;
Riding chocolate milk.

Coyote watches:
Ears pricked, eyes keen, nose scenting;
What creatures, these boats?

Sunlight burns water
Bright; stroking, stroking onward.
Miles to go ‘til night.

Rain like bullets splat.
Tent walls tremble, folding flat ...
Sleep, at last, ‘til dawn.

Liquid sky below
Ripples, rolls, clears, surprises:
Raccon tracks in mud.

Green water, red fish
Grubbing mud, tail tasting air;
I cast ... not hungry?

Sand: spilling, slipping,
Racing to the water’s edge,
In cool repose rests.

Journey ends, paddle rests;
Strangers offer cold beer:
A good day at last.

That's not to say, of course, that the article won't be worth reading. One of the things a near-fishless 70-mile stretch of S. Texas did was give me the opportunity to talk more about the fascinating history of the Wild Horse Desert.

The next leg of the kayak safari brings me to my home waters, that stretch of bay and beach that I've roamed since I was a child. I'm looking forward to it.

Here we go (again)

Leg two of the Texas Kayak Safari starts Tuesday.

Tomorrow I'm driving to Rockport, picking up buddy Kendal, and then on down to Port Mansfield. We'll launch where we took the boats out of the water after our paddle from South Padre Island: Getaway Adventures Lodge.

From there, it's about 90 miles to Snoopy's at the island foot of the JFK Causeway in Corpus Christi.

Ninety miles and no towns. King Ranch to the left, South Padre Island National Seashore to the right. Wind at our backs, we hope.

We'll need to average about 15 miles a day to arrive by Sunday afternoon. The first day -- Tuesday -- will be the longest, a 17-mile paddle to a spoil island just south of the Landcut.
Along the way we'll fish for reds and trout and flounder and enjoy the sights of the Wild Horse Desert.

Once we hit Corpus Christi, I'll have completed about one-third of the coastal journey. From Corpus north, the towns are closer together and there are a lot more of them. We'll start doing shorter legs there -- weekends, mostly.

See y'all in about a week.

The Perfect Weekend

In his gripping, true, tale, The Perfect Storm, Sebastian Junger describes a combination of meteorological phenomena that came together in a way so rare as to create the type of storm seen only once a century, if that.

Thankfully, my perfect weekends lately come more frequently -- if not entirely routinely -- but they also rely on a combination of disparate elements that, together, create something rare.

And unlike the storm that swallowed the Andrea Gail, my perfect weekends are things of great joy. Take this past weekend, for instance.

It included an easy Friday-night dinner date with the adult I most like to spend time with. It was the perfect conclusion to a long work week.

Saturday, we paddled eight miles of the upper Guadalupe River with friends -- work, because it will be one of the stream segments profiled in Paddling Texas -- but the kind of work I'll take any old day. It's one of those perfect second jobs you hear about.

Saturday night it was off to Kerrville for a house concert at the home of cousins Paula and Marty. Bonnie Bishop put on a great show and I'm completely sold on house concerts as opportunities to hear live music. People actually listen!

Plus, Aunt Kathy and Uncle Bob were there, as were cousins Ray and Jordan ... good beer flowed freely and the food was great. Perfect.

Sunday, after a leisurely breakfast featuring the time-honored family recipe, "Snappy Eggs," Tam and I headed out for a Sunday drive.

Initially, I just wanted to see the Hill Country folding in on itself in the mist along the edges of Texas 16 west of Kerrville. From the top of the hill down to Kinky Friendman's Echo Hill Ranch is my favorite part of my favorite drive in the state. And it was beautiful. Perfect, even.

Since we were already there, we stopped at the first Hwy. 16 crossing of the crystal-clear Medina River.

I caught a beautiful 15-inch bass and a couple of sunnies, and Tamara caught two smallmouth bass -- her first. Honestly, we could have stopped right there and it would have been a perfect day.

But we kept going.

At Lost Maples State Natural Area, we hiked through a light rain up to the ponds on Can Creek and fished a little more.

On the way up, we spied a white-lined sphinx moth -- the so-called "hummingbird" moth -- sipping nectar from purple Prairie verbena along the edge of the trail.

Uncle Bob, not a dozen hours before, had described this intriguing little insect (he had seen it in Colorado) as we watched the hummingbirds at the feeders on Paula and Marty's porch. Perfect timing.

On the way back down, we watched for a while an unafraid Scrub jay go about its business, and then saw the jewel-like Indigo bunting on a feeder near the parking lot.

One bird I hadn't seen before, and one I hadn't seen in a very long time. Perfect.

Later, unwinding after the long road trip, I heard an Eastern screech owl trilling its "A" song over Bull Creek. What a lovely night sound, especially with a chorus of frogs in accompaniment. It was kind of the perfect end to a perfect weekend.

Sweet, live water with kayaks above and fish below; glimpses of nature's glory, primarily in blue -- blossoms and feathers; music, soulful and fresh and not 15 feet in front of me; catching up with family -- people I've known, and liked, literally all my life; the company of someone I've met only recently, a beautiful woman I'm proud to call my friend ... these are some of the things that, together, can make for a perfect weekend.

[About the photos: Happy paddlers on the upper Guadalupe River; me, with a Guadalupe bass-Smallmouth bass hybrid; Tamara in front of a spring falling into the Guadalupe; a white-lined sphinx moth sipping nectar from Prairie verbena; raindrops caught in a spider web; Blue-eyed grass, a member of the iris family.]

Patrick 1 -- Daddy 0?

Sunday afternoon, and I decide to take Patrick down to the lake to kill a little time. We belly up to the railing behind the LCRA's headquarters building at the bottom of Lake Austin, and before I have the fly rod unlimbered I see the first carp: it's a big one, playing hide-and-seek with the shadow of the dock at Hula Hut.

Patrick, meanwhile, is busy contemplating an earthworm someone left to dry on the concrete bulkhead. I cast between gusts of wind and one of several large carp -- a couple are in the 30-pound class -- mouths my fly before I strip it away. It will be the nearest-miss of the day.

Patrick decides he'll fish and makes a great first cast, right into the shadow of the dock, alongside a large, waterlogged tree limb. Several cranks into his retrieve and he announces something heavy is on the end of his line. I look down and see a flash of silver.

"Like, maybe a fish?" I ask.

"Oh yeah," he answers, "I have a fish!"

Patrick does a masterful job of keeping his rod tip high and his line tight as he negotiates the steps down to the lake-level landing. By himself, for the first time, he lips the bass and holds it up to be admired.

Lunch-goers at Hula Hut break into cheers and applause. Patrick gives an "aw-shucks" grin. I talk him through releasing the fish. I cast a few more times at the now utterly uninterested carp, Patrick observes the progression of crustiness in the discarded earthworm before deciding to commit it to the lake's food chain.

"You could use it as bait," I suggest. "It might catch a catfish."

"Why would I want to catch a catfish?" Patrick (now a many-bass-redfish-drum-trout-rainbow-and-speckled-ladyfish-mangrove snapper veteran) asks me.

My son has a point, I must concede, and rather than explain that some people fish for catfish, in fact pursue catfish with the fervor of a dedicated snook or striper angler, I silently pack up our gear.

On the way back to the truck, four times Patrick is stopped and congratulated on his catch. The shy grin reappears, and about the time we hit the parking lot he claps me on my lower back, as high as he can reach, and says: "It's okay Daddy. You usually catch a lot of fish."

He's done this before, provided comfort as eau de skunk wafts off me.

He's turning into the kind of angler I'll want to fish with. Not because he's my kid, but the kind -- like my friends Kendal and Dean and Brandon and Bobby -- who rejoices in another fisherman's good fortune and manages to remain modest about his own.

Which really makes the "score" irrelevant; we all win.

Where we are

Late last week I took a cyber-stroll by this site and realized it had been nearly a month since I'd posted anything new.

Kinda made me feel guilty.

So, below, you'll find a recap (with photos) of the most recent leg of the Texas Kayak Safari. Most of that information also lives at http://www.texassportingjournal.com/, so if you bopped on over there last month you probably already have read it.

There's more, and a different version, coming out in the magazine in the May/June issue. Pick it up at Barnes & Noble or your local news stand, or -- better -- go to the magazine Web site and sign-up for a subscription.

Weather forced a postponement of the Easter weekend paddling leg from Port Mansfield to Yarborough Pass; we had sleet and snow in Central Texas, and gusty north winds and temps in the 40s and 50s on the coast. It was a good weekend to do other things.

Hopefully that will be the last big blast of cold air until sometime around Thanksgiving. Bay waters are warming, spanish mackerel and kingfish already are showing up on the middle coast and with big bait balls moving along the shore the tarpon shouldn't be far behind.

Speaking of tarpon, I recently read an unpublished manuscript by Hart Stillwell. Stillwell was a legendary Texas writer who penned Hunting and Fishing in Texas and Hunting and Fishing in Mexico along with a novel and more. Back in the day, you could find his articles in True and Cosmopolitan (I'm not making this up) as well as Field & Stream and Outdoor Life.

This book, unearthed in an attic box at Texas State University's Alkerk Library by my colleague Steve Lightfoot, was to be titled Glory of the Silver King.

It's a fascinating look at changing conservation ethics and -- especially interesting to me -- the tarpon and snook fishery in South Texas and northern Mexico from the 1930s through the 1960s.

Flotsom and jetsam

From Wikipedia: Traditionally, flotsam and jetsam are words that describe goods of potential value that have been thrown into the ocean. There is a technical difference between the two: jetsam has been voluntarily cast into the sea (jettisoned) by the crew of a ship, usually in order to lighten it in an emergency; while flotsam describes goods that are floating on the water without having been thrown in deliberately, often after a shipwreck.

Lots of folks have questions about various aspects of the TSJ kayak journey, and I thought it might be helpful to provide answers here, and to wrap up some loose ends … bits and pieces of information that have been bobbing about in my brain for the past couple of months.

One question – or maybe it’s an observation, and it often goes unspoken – is whether this is truly an epic journey.

In my view, the answer is both yes and no. More than 380 miles from Mexico to Louisiana under paddle power … well, it’s a long way. Many segments, such as the one just completed, will include multiple days of paddling and camping miles from civilization and supported only by what we can carry in our boats.

But I’m not the first to try something like this. Swedish mountaineer and adventurer Renata Chlumska took just 32 days to kayak from Brownsville to New Orleans as part of her “Around America Adventure,” which began in July 2005.

Gene and Rachel Gore of South Padre Island paddled 404 miles of Texas coastline on the outside in May 2004. They did it in just 19 days. On surfboards. Rachel survived a mako shark attack on her board north of Port Mansfield.

In February 2003, Arthur Hebert and Larry Koenig of Louisiana set out to circumnavigate the Gulf of Mexico. From Grand Isle, Louisiana, they actually paddled as far as Isla Mujeres on Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula in 139 days.

Chlumska, Hebert and Koenig all did their paddling in traditional, decked touring kayaks – the kind many folks suggested I use if I want to cover long distances quickly and comfortably.

I admire the beauty, speed and load-carrying capacity of sea kayaks, but they are very few paddlers’ first choice for fishing platforms.

My thought? Do this trip in the kinds of boats most of the nearly 8,000 members of the Texas Kayak Fisherman community use. Do it in a boat someone can go buy for $800 or less, and nearly anyone can paddle.

But, even this has been done, and done big. Just not in Texas. In 2005, “Kayak Kevin” Whitley completed a solo, 1,800 mile kayak fishing odyssey from Big Lagoon State Park in Pensacola, Fla. to his home in Norfolk, Va.

All that said, Dean made an observation as we were sitting around the campfire one night between South Padre Island and Port Mansfield: “Not many people – even people a lot younger than us – do this kind of thing anymore,” he said. “This really is an adventure.”

Another feature of this trip that makes it different – and it’s a decision we just made – is to paddle nearly all of our miles on the “inside,” behind the barrier islands. It’s almost counter-intuitive, but the most remote waters on the Texas coast are in the bays. It also removes from the equation the one variable that’s difficult to overcome: big surf.

Finally – and this has come up a lot – while it would be cool to knock-out the entire trip in 30+ paddling days straight-through, I have a day job. So do my regular paddling partners. So we’re making the trip in segments or legs, mostly long weekends.

What’s the point of all this?

Well, we’re paddling the entire Texas coast for a couple of reasons. The first, and the one that keeps me going, is that it’s just plain fun. I enjoy kayaking. I enjoy fishing. I have a longstanding love affair going with Texas’ inshore waters, and I truly believe there is no better way to experience that environment than in a kayak.

As we began planning this trip, it occurred to us that a lot of folks are going to the same old launch points and paddling the same old water … week after week, year after year. Granted, some of those spots – Lighthouse Lakes comes to mind – are primo paddling areas by anyone’s definition. But they represent just a fraction of the more than 3,000 miles of tidewater coastline in Texas.

We figured that, by paddling the entire coast and writing about it, perhaps we could inspire other kayakers and anglers to sample some of the more remote waters the Lone Star State has to offer.

Finally – and this has been an important consideration from the beginning – I wanted to get a sea-level look at the entire coast at the beginning of the 21st Century. Because changes, they’re a’comin’.

As I’ve hinted before, we can be hard on our land and our water here in Texas. The Gulf coast and in particular our bays and estuaries face some truly vexing challenges in the coming years. Among these are booming development, freshwater inflow from increasingly taxed rivers and streams, energy development and point pollution from industry.

The news isn’t all bad, and the state of our red drum fishery is indicative of that. It’s better now than it has been anytime in the past 30 years.

Yeah, but why you?

Well, I thought of it and then presented the idea to a publication that was just crazy enough to take a shot at supporting the notion.

To be honest, I really don’t have any special qualifications.

I’ve been mucking about in boats and chasing fish since I was in grade school. I’m a second-generation native of Rockport, on the middle Texas coast. I’ve taught windsurfing and sailing, and I’m a state-certified Boater Education and Angler Education instructor.

I’ve been paddling for about the last seven years, much of that time on the Texas Gulf Coast.

But, part of the beauty of this project is that just about anyone in decent physical condition and with moderate paddling skills could do it. That’s part of what I hope to demonstrate.

You could do this. Probably.

What about safety?

Safety is something we are taking very seriously as we paddle up the coast. In addition to carefully planning our pack list to include first aid supplies (and someone who knows how to use them), we also carry GPS units, VHF radios and cell phones.

Prior to each segment, we file a detailed float plan with the magazine headquarters, and provide approximate check-in and landfall times.

We have a powerboat on standby during each segment, too … someone we can call in the event of an emergency, or who will come find us if we go missing.

Even in the Lower Laguna Madre, with average water depths of 3 feet, we habitually wore our personal flotation devices, or PFDs. It’s a good habit to get into, and habits are born of repetition.

Where does the equipment come from?

The only way I can afford to make this journey is with help from sponsors. In some cases, the sponsors also advertise in Texas Sporting Journal. In others, they simply provide products for us to use.

Hobie was first to sign on, and has provided two Hobie Mirage Adventure kayaks for the trip. Ocean Kayak was an early sponsor with the Ocean Kayak Prowler 15 models, and my friend Scott Null at Wilderness Systems arranged for delivery of two Wilderness Systems Tarpon 160i boats.

An off-route, offshore segment will feature the super-stable X-Factor and Mini-X kayaks from Malibu.

As we discussed which models would be suitable for this trip, my focus was on speed (which usually translates into hull length) and load-carrying capacity. That narrows a field of dozens of great sit-on-top plastic boats to just a handful of great, long boats. I think we have the right models.

Paddles were donated by Bending Branches, and the fiberglass Slice and Slice Angler models I’m using are good all-around rec paddles with enough power to brace in big surf and enough flex to be comfortable for hours at a time.

NRS provided dry bags, including their Expedition DriDuffel, a commodious and tough bag that turns a Tarpon tankwell into a secure and watertight storage area.

Temple Fork Outfitters, a fantastic (and not-so-little, anymore) Texas fly rod manufacturer, donated fly rods and reels, and my old friends at Pflueger-Shakespeare sent me some more of the reels I actually buy (Pflueger Presidents and Supremes) to match with All-Star rods.

If they’ll handle 40-pound tarpon and 35-inch snook, both on 12-pound test line, you’re not going to have to worry about how they perform on redfish and trout.

Garmin sent me a GPSMap76Csx handheld GPS unit, along with BlueChart cartography for the Texas coast. It has performed flawlessly.

Cabela’s provided inflatable PFDs and camping gear, including a Deluxe XPG tent and XPG Backpacker sleeping bags. GSI Outdoors provided our camp pots and pans, as well as a hand-powered coffee grinder and French press coffee pot. My footwear was provided by Bite.

In seeking and accepting sponsorship offers, I looked for products I already know and like, or products I believe have a high likelihood of being useful, durable and successful in the field. If it doesn’t work, I’ll let the sponsor know why, and you won’t be reading about it here.

But the fact is, all of the stuff we’re using does work, most of it very well. That’s why we’re using it.

What other fish are you going after?

Ah … the fish. Fishing is a big part of this trip, and we were ambitious when we drew-up the list of species we’re targeting. Happily, we can scratch one of the most elusive – snook – off the list already. My 35-inch linesider from March 2 in Brownsville tied the state catch and release record for rod and reel.

It also was a hell of a lot of fun.

Other fish we’ve already caught include jack crevalle, red drum, ladyfish and spotted seatrout. We’ll be looking for bigger reds and speckled trout as we move north.

Also on the list are: Southern flounder, Spanish mackerel, King mackerel, Blackfin tuna, Bull shark, Blacktip shark, Atlantic bonita, Cobia (ling), Tripletail and Tarpon.

Yeah, you read right; Blackfin tuna. Stay tuned.

And I’m sure we’ll pick up some incidentals; in fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if we end up with something in the neighborhood of 20 species before all is said and done.

We’ll be pursuing all of these species primarily with artificial lures – soft plastic jerkbaits, topwater plugs and flies. Not because we frown on fishing with bait, but because it’s our preferred method of fishing and it relieves us of the task of catching and keeping bait alive, or carrying dead bait where we might not have ice.

I use Norton Sand Eels with great success. All of the fish I caught during the first segment – snook, jack crevalle, speckled trout, redfish and ladyfish – came on the “salty chicken” (pink and green) 6-inch sand eel. I switched to flies for a few of the ladyfish, just to exercise my casting arm.

After fishing with Capt. Danno Wise and Lonnie Stanley of Stanley Lures late last week, I’ll also be trying out some of Lonnie’s wedgetails and swimming jigs. They look great in the water and I’m betting they’ll catch fish.

Can I come?

Maybe. I’m happy to paddle with cheerful, irreverent, observant folks who have something to offer the expedition.

You should be an able swimmer and capable of paddling 15 miles per day in a fully loaded kayak. You have to be able to unhook your own fish. It helps if you know how to use a camera.

You’ll have to keep up, or have your own evacuation plan if you can’t, and you’ll be responsible for your own boat, paddle, PFD and most of your groceries. We can help with shuttle service.

If you’re truly interested, drop me an e-mail at AReed at TexasSportingJournal.com.

Landfall

Wednesday dawned calm and bright, but the first stirrings of that friendly – and until late August, likely persistent – southeasterly were not far away.

Before Dean Thomas and I had left the shore, Ken Larson landed his first trout at the edge of the Intracoastal, just off our campsite. We landed two more before paddling in earnest up the western shoreline of the bay.

Today’s agenda: cover about a dozen miles and reach Capt. Bruce and Shirley Shuler’s Getaway Adventures Lodge in time for happy hour. With an early start and a tailwind, that still left time for fishing.

I got just one more shot, a late morning redfish foraging in the turtle grass on a shallow flat. I spotted the fish about 10 feet off my port bow and stopped paddling as I reached for my rod.

Momentum carried me past the redfish, and I turned to cast over my shoulder. The soft plastic lure landed just beyond the grass bed, and I saw a swirl as the redfish lunged. Then my line came tight. A 26-inch redfish is entirely capable of towing a 16-foot kayak.

Kinda makes you think, doesn’t it?

After Dean snapped a few quick shots, we released the fish and continued north at a steady pace. Before long, the Port Mansfield water tower crept into view. We stopped once to stretch our legs, then continued on in what had become choppy bay waters.

Just after 3 p.m., we turned left around the levee and paddled into the protected waters of the harbor. The lodge was clearly visible ahead of us on the right, but so was the Port Mansfield Marina, where I suspected we might be able to grab a cold beer or two.

We tied-up in front of the gas pumps on the seawall and were greeted by friends from the TexasKayakFisherman message board. They had been following the pre-trip discussions, and knew we had launched from South Padre Island Monday.

I was abashed to see that they were genuinely surprised we’d made it.

At Getaway Adventures Lodge, Bruce helped steady the boats as we climbed out and relished the notion of cold showers and soft beds. After dragging the boats across the rip-rap and onto the lawn, we sprayed-down rods and reels and sat down to swap stories.

Capt. Brandon Shuler, Bruce’s son and a fine fishing guide in his own right, swung by to say hello. “Man … my dog smells better than you guys,” he quipped. “Looks better, too.”

Landfall, I know from my sailing days, always brings with it a sense of accomplishment. To climb into a boat – several very small boats, in this case – and arrive some days later at a destination over the horizon is one of life’s great joys.

In our shakedown leg of the TSJ Kayak Safari, we covered exactly 45 miles of water, all under paddle power. We put a bit more than 37 of those miles behind us in three days of paddling without any outside support.

I was happy to find that my mileage estimates were pretty close to what we could comfortably accomplish in a day and still have some time to fish. We packed most of the right stuff, and enough of it.

With some help from my friends, I even made some good decisions that did not come easily to me. I know from past experience – and from TPWD sampling data – that the Lower Laguna Madre is truly a world-class fishery. In our first leg of the kayak journey, it disappointed.

Fishing was tough. Catching was rare. But we still have miles to cover, and some of the best redfish and trout waters still lie to the north of us.

In April, we’ll return to Port Mansfield and launch our kayaks from Bruce’s dock. From there, we’ll paddle up the Laguna Madre and through the Land Cut, ducking over into a large, shallow bay known as the “Graveyard” for the last stretch to Yarborough Pass on the back side of Padre Island National Seashore.

It’s about 50 miles, and we hope to cover it in four days of paddling. If all goes according to plan, my brother and other friends will meet us in four-wheel-drive trucks and we’ll return to civilization for another working break before continuing the journey.

RobRoy McDonald, associate editor of Texas Sporting Journal, told me he’s “giddy to gear up” for the next leg of the trip. I had supposed that, after 10 days on the road and on the water, I’d be just plain whupped and wouldn’t even want to think about returning … not for a couple of weeks, anyhow.

But I find that I’m ready to giddy-up and go myself. It’s just that much fun.