Fishing the Marsh at Galveston Island State Park...

I have owned the canoe about 5 years or so now. It was one of those bucket list things to have before I got too old and my strength decreased so much I was not able to load and unload the thing. I know that kayaks are more popular for this type of fishing but although I was alone for a couple of trips last week into the bay side of Galveston State Park I like the canoe because it can hold two or three people. I have seen early American paintings depicting a canoe full of indigenous peoples coming down the river to meet the white man which probably was the beginning of trouble but the kayak falls in the the category of one of those popular to do by yourself things of modern life that separates us from each other.

Galveston State Park was a good place to cross off another bucket list thing paddling and fishing the Texas marsh. Entrance to the park was free with the purchase of my annual Texas Parks Pass and it would have been free for any other savages I might have had with me.       

This is the path to the Dana Cove paddling trail. It's not too far to the water but it was handy to have the canoe dolly to reach the launch. All trails seem to be well marked with big pvc looking white pipes sticking up from the water.  

While there are big open water bay areas I like discovering the narrow paths through the grass. Unfortunately my fishing report is poor. I tried every lure, the fish bites power baits and was able to net a bucket of frisky finger mullet and there was a world of bait swimming in these back waters but other than some kind of bait stealers pulling at my popping cork rig I caught nothing. Coastal fishing is so governed by wind direction and tide that on the couple of trips a year I'm lucky to make I don't quite always hit the bite.   

Lots of birds to see in the marsh. If you zoom this photo you see a large V of the brown pelicans passing over. In the 60s DDT use nearly wiped them out on the Texas coast and Cathy recalls few if any sightings during her childhood of coastal fishing. In 1972 the environmental protection agency banned DDT use and although still listed as endangered in Texas nationwide populations have rebounded by the mid 80s. A success story of scientist at work. A good que that we should take other science and act on it also.    

Speaking of the solitary things of modern life I did watch a couple of Youtube videos of kayak fishing in the state park. I noticed this bird observation platform in the background and said if I can find that I'll line it up and fish. This tactic did not pay off but I recall my old friend Joe who was in medical school in Galveston a few decades ago taking me to similar areas where the tide ran around little grassy islands and we caught croaker and sand trout so I attempted that also but those tactics did not work either.  

Maybe I'll put painting on the bucket list because this could be a typical Texas coastal landscape scene. The marsh, a gas flare burning off in the distance and the homes of the bay side of the Jamaica Beach Community. 

It was surreal to watch the movement cars and humans way over in the flat distance on the roads of the community but have the dead quiet of the marsh in your ears.  

I can't recall where those spots me and Joe fished were but I bet they are built over by bay homes and the marsh channels are boat canals. 

With all this mankind going on it is amazing the birds and fish are here and I can only imagine what it was for the first human eyes that feasted on the sights of the bay nature had to offer. I see houses in Galveston built on beach and bay areas that in my lifetime I reasoned to be unsuitable because of wind weather and waves. Oil and gas probably only has a few more decades to go and while it won't be used up it will be like the home sites, unsuitable and better left in the ground. The fish and birds will then have free reign again.

As you see the marsh is all a short grass which I forget the name of but the more you pick out a spot and watch it the more birds you see.   

I just knew this cut from the marsh to the open bay would hold some fish but no such luck and after I passed here a wade fisherman walked down this bank fishing the area which is at the Oak Bayou launch. Later we compared notes in the parking lot and he said he had expected flounder and redfish to be active. 

I guess I did as good as everyone else in my first marsh fishing trip. I'll have to put catching a fish here on my bucket list.