A New Camera and a Fishing Report...

I went through a couple of those Canon point and shoot cameras and while I like them they don't stand up well to canoeing, duck hunting, catfishing and tuba playing for extended periods of time. It's usually the little accordion screen lens protector that goes and while that does not keep the camera from operation but without the lens gets scratched and photo quality suffers and we can't have that. For a while I have been using an old Kodak that seems indestructible but it's like stone age tech as far as digital stuff goes and makes the greatest tubing behind the boat photos ever but it has other shortcomings and Cathy has felt sorry enough for me to purchase a late Father's Day present, a Nikon D31000. It's used, bought from the Unclaimed Baggage website  and some might probably consider it old tech but it's the nicest camera I've owned. It lacks the zoom I'm used to but things far away are getting less and less important to me and on our fishing trip yesterday we took the first fish photos with it.    

Cathy with the first fish photo. She's seeing if the new Frida Kahlo bucket hat can catch fish. Lots of digital info on the photo file. I can tell by the upload speed compared to a cell phone pic but then some of ya'll might have a better phone camera than me.  

Grandson Warren has been staying with us all week. I know some of ya'll want AI but yesterday Warren learned where the long boat cut is and how to recognize it, how to ease the boat up to the dock and how to come around and stop for a swimmer in the water without running over them with the boat. If you don't need these skills pass on by. 

One of our favorite spots late summer through the winter is a stump that is on the edge of what I suspect is an old oxbow lake off the river channel that we named the dog walker because when we discovered it there was a dog leash tied to it. It was a poor producer last summer and on trying it this trip we found that it had been broken off (upper part is still held on short stump by the trotline string that is tied to every stump in the lake) but still had enough stump above the water for a tie off. The fish have returned and we had a good bite. 

I marked a GPS way point incase this stump breaks further and as long as my depth finder lasts longer than a Canon camera it is saved so I can remember it as WP025 so I can anchor and fish this spot. Big fishing secret revel: always tie to those stumps barely sticking out of the water. Human nature says everyone else is going to tie to the tallest stump. It's easy.  

Final count was 16 cats in less than an hour. Back of the boat where the transducer is said 39 ft with fish 4 reel turns up.  No great size but we could have had all we wanted. Cathy does not skin catfish anymore because of a shoulder replacement and arthritis and I told them I felt like I'd clean 20 today. They got pretty close.

Blue heron photo with head bent attending to his grooming as I learn to work the new camera. 

 

 

Beach Front Camping Season 2025 Opens...

 We opened beach front camping season 2025 on the Gulf of Mexico this past week arriving on a Sunday afternoon as Jeep Weekend, which is mostly centered on Boliver Peninsula and Galveston wrapped up and the usual weekenders on the Brazoria County Free camping beach were packing up to park in our usual spot with the camper and settle in for  few quiet days. 

Conditions could have been better. It was windy. There was seaweed washing up on the beach. The wind blew the sand all up in our gear so much that we stopped at the carwash before we ever got home. Like Cathy said though, "I'm glad you get the beach," we both enjoy it no matter what.

This stretch of beach, which on a weekend is host to the great Texas freedom and pastime of driving on the beach can be bumper to bumper on a weekend but by Sunday evening/Monday Morning it's empty as when Cabeza de Vaca washed ashore and that's how we like it.    

   

Going back last year we have caught fish three out of five camps here at Carl's Secret Spot and this trip produced about 15 hard heads, under size sheepshead and whiting which though they don't get much acclaim are a good eating panfish with no restrictions. I'd like to have a bucket full of small ones, cornmeal and a pan of hot grease. We threw these two on the grill.

Hopefully hurricane season will be calm because though Cathy will beach it anytime I like the calm, clear water of late summer for better beachfront fishing right where I camp. I think I have the tide heights figured out. When predictions start to get above two feet the water is coming close to where the camper is parked. At 2.6 it's time to get out. The high water mark in this photo is 1.9. 

There is always something to do though. I subscribed Cathy to the Major League Baseball Radio app. We listened to an Astros game everyday. I started a good book by Cormac McCarthy. We watched the birds and these gulls, I think they are mostly Bonaparte's Gulls, pick little shrimps out of the seaweed washing ashore. We didn't see any big ships, maybe the limited visibility or the Trump Tariffs so I didn't track who they were or when they were coming from. There was a chlorine leak at a plant 10 miles away, contained by the time I heard about it. 

World class hard head catfish, which are good for exactly nothing. They will fin you with their flopping, steal all your bait and they do not even make a good cut bait to catch sharks on.

Oh yeah we sat by the fire. 

We have other, bigger, more exciting trips and visits to friends planned but we will try to hit the beach between these adventures whenever we can. 

 

  

  

High Tides and Alligators Forever...

 I always say I'm one of those life long learners. Earlier this summer camping at the beach, we were still in the Rpod and I learned that winds gusting to 20mph would nearly take the pop out tent off the back of the camper. This trip I learned that the combination of a gusting NE wind, a nearly full hunters moon and probably a storm down south around central America will produce tides 2.76' high which is enough to reach the dunes where we have camped 3 times already this summer when the water did not even get close.  

We made a good day of it meeting Jim and Sandy and Rose and Tim and crew at the beach for some good hang time. This set up is pretty close to the edge of the water and when we left the occasional wave was washing under our camper in the background. There were more campers up and down the beach, none close, than other trips and one guy drove by to say the waves washed sand out from under his tires the night before till the slide out was on the ground.  

At least I did not get skunked on the fishing with the score one whiting which was one more than my brother in law caught. Whiting are a pan fish, no limit or size and while not the glamor of trout, reds or flounder they are decent eating. I'd like to fry up a bucket full on a cool fall afternoon and serve them up with a horsey cocktail sauce. 

The water approaches. Jim had moved his truck three times at this point. 

The tie eventually forced us to withdraw to Rose's driveway in Lake Jackson. Electricty and water is free there, I run the black water tank into a neighbor's flower bed and S'mores taste the same there as they do at any camp ground. 

Brazos Bend State Park is just north of Lake Jackson. We have tried to reserve there before but like most state parks near metro areas the weekends including day passes are often booked. No problem getting a Monday night campsite. We stayed the one night and enjoyed the park trails and sightings of many birds, humming birds, butterflies, deer, squirrel and alligator.   

The park is famous for the gators and though there are many swampy lakes, creeks and old river oxbows it's no boating or swimming allowed. I always find this a curious rule because locally I'm boating and swimming around gators already. Great place for the bikes and I wish we had had ours.  

Any questions about why signage in two languages is a good thing? 

How another life long learner be looking when she realize there's also a bigfoot in the park. 

More Beach Camping and Shark Fishing...

We made another beach camping trip to the spot by Brazoria County Free Beach beach access road #3 (here's a tip) that we are calling Pop Pop's Secret Fish Spot. This is the third trip of the summer here, once in the old Rpod and now the second beach trip for the new camper which if I see some kind of bumper sticker that says "beach house" I may purchase it and sick it somewhere prominent because that's how we feel down here camping. Some almost always stops and asks, "Is it just free to camp here?"  

We could see a few other campers down the beach but not close enough to feel crowded as people that camp here are looking for solitude and the weekend beach traffic was also low.   

Fall is the time for the Texas Redfish run but while we caught no reds there was plenty of ankle bier shark action to be had. Final total was four sharks, three lady fish (poor man's tarpon), a sting ray, a small pompano and several whiting. We ate the biggest shark, a 27 inchers (gotta be 24") cooked on the iron cooktop with Jamaican jerk spices, peppers, onions and cheese as fish tacos and sometime I'd like to catch enough whiting for a meal as they are good and I also like to eat the pompano if big enough to fillet.    

 

There's always a variety of opinions as to whether shark is good eating. This was a very mild tasting black tip, not all kinds of shark meat is created equal, and I think it's important to fillet the shark as soon as he is caught. When they die the body fluids pollute the meat so don't haul one around in the bottom of the boat, the ice chest or on a stringer till you are finished fishing. If the good fish, trout, reds and flounder are biting toss the shark back but in this case I was able to tend to the cleaning properly.  

By the way this shark was in the first gut, or the first little deep spot you come to on wading out, very close to the beach. 

Plenty of good bait was available and all fish caught on live finger mullet on a falling tide. So many mullet left in tidal pools that the grandkids Warren and Coraline got good experience throwing the cast net. 

Here's a sting ray, which they say this makes good hut bait for shark but I removed the barb so he's harmless incase I step on him the next trip. I've been stung and it took 9 weeks for the wound to stop draining. That could be considered the mildest outcome you can expect from something like this.  

Coraline with mullet. 

Cathy and friends

Warren was much more interested in fishing if he caught the bait. Note the clear water. It's the time of the year to hit the beach.  

If the fish aren't biting take a note from the seagulls. Sit around until they start again. 

The Doing Holidays Right Catfish Blog Post...

It was a pretty quiet Labor Day Weekend Saturday on the lake. Not many boats out at all. Our favorite boat ramp was back open after a couple of spring incidents that involved 25 inch rains and Hurricane Beryl but looks like after the flooding and due to fallen and standing dead trees the campground will not be open for months. There was a pretty good chop on the water when we arrived but we motored up the lake to be sheltered and after a good blow it calmed.   

 After a fun live music show yesterday and fishing trip this holiday weekend made me feel that in our retirement, after careers that involved working weekends, holidays, nights and sometimes 24/7 attention we are finally learning how to do holidays right.  

This is our first real catfishing trip since spring though there has been lots of swimming, tubing and beach fishing. For the yearly total we had 17 cats caught in 30' of water suspended just a little off the bottom. We weren't in our usual spot because I saw some guy on the internets said he always fished in sight of the bird nest. We threw back a bucket load of small ones. 

We been catfish hungry and Cathy's eyes were bigger than her appetite because she wanted them all fried and swimming in her belly. I managed to save a couple of packages of the biggest fillets for grilling another day and fried up the rest with hushpuppies and homegrown okra. It was good and there are some left overs. 

Think I'll really get with the holiday and grill ribs tomorrow. 

First Trip in the New Camper...

 We bought a new camper. It's from Baily's RV here in town and it's a Wolf Pup BHSW model. That's really not the big news. We bought it because our son Morgan, wife Ali and grandkids and moving because of his job to Greenville, South Carolina and in the coming year we will be on the road more often and something a little bigger and nicer will serve better. Morgan's job is really a move upward and what the heck, we deserve a promotion also.  

This past weekend we broke our camper in with a trip to the Brazoria County free camping beach. We both love the beach and with school starting it was not as crowded as a previous trip this summer.  There's no hook ups out there and with it's solar panel and off road package we felt in the lap of luxury.  

This rig has a 12 volt fridge compared to the the old three way conversion unit on the old camper and the solar panel kept pace on the sunny beach with the fridge and the indoor outdoor speakers playing the famous Carl and Cathy Radio mix tape/usb drive. Once the sun went down we switch on the Champion 4650 dual fuel generator for sleeping under the air. 

A few months ago when we bought that generator it seemed like it might be overkill for the rpod but it's just right for for this unit. A tank of propane last 10 hours running air, fridge and outside (you don't want a drunk driver to not see you at night on a beach without roads}

  lights. Since I sleep about 7 hours or less a night we might could squeeze that a bit but somebody sleeps 10 hours each night and we will just have to charge that to her passive income stream. 

I caught one trout which then escaped my old floating fish bag, lost a good size trout at the net and had several more hook ups but no landings while fishing Thursday evening. The water was calm and green. The trout chased bait fish everywhere and dolphins swam nearby. Really beautiful setting. I used to thrash the water to a froth every time I saltwater fished but I am mellowing and just enjoying the opportunity to go. The odds will line up for a big fishing bonanza sooner or later. 

It was no hardship to settle for pork chop and hamburger suppers.      

Rose and family are nearby in Lake Jackson and they came out. It was nice to have a visit from family but with the added people and the extra foot washing with the convenient outside shower to keep the sand out of the trailer it depleted our water. The rpod trailers don't have much of a shower and most of their owners don't even use it preferring to shower at the campground facilities which is where we are most of the time. We were so enjoying the various extras we were not used to that in addition to outside shower use Cathy took two indoor showers and I took one. At 26 gallons the water tank is actually 7 gallons less than the rpod and I drove into town to purchase 6 gallons at $1.34 each. I think at the end of the trip we had a hat full of water left.      

It was a really great trip and we look forward to another beach trip. September is a good time to catch the redfish running in the surf.   

I do still have the rpod. It's a 2010 model and as you might expect it's not perfect but I have camped it for almost two years and would not be afraid to go anywhere with it. Bluebook is $4000-$5000 and I'll sell it for a little less. 

Congrats to Morgan on the new job. See you in Greenville. 

Brown Pelicans at the Beach...

There is usually a camp animal on our trips. Most of the time it's the catfish but sometimes we camp in places where we watch the alligators swimming by, the deer come up to be hand fed or maybe there are armadillos waddling through the underbrush. I guess on our beach trip the camp animal was the brown pelican. Cathy says that in her youth when she was fishing with family in the Galveston area these huge birds were almost extinct due to pesticide use by humans and the first attempts to protect the species from hunting were when Teddy Roosevelt set aside Pelican Island in Florida as a wildlife refuge in 1903.   

Cathy caught some good photos on her phone but I managed to get a photo of her talking a good photo of the pelicans. They seem to line up to fly in single file sometimes out over the water but they seemed to also like following the dune line which ran right behind our camper.  

Birds are a big deal to us and we see many kinds during all the times we spend near the water. We and most of our dirty hippie tree hugging friends have an app on the phone that identifies bird calls. That's kind of hard to use when it's noisy like from wind and surf but around the house when sitting on the deck is when I get the most service from this technology. It seems to be very accurate and when it IDs the call and shows a picture of the bird I have usually already visualized it so it helps match call and species. 

The weather is just turning hot so we have the air on but just a week ago we were still sleeping with the bedroom door open to the deck and in the mornings I would wake to busy bird calling. A split screen, it's opening held together by magnets to keep it shut to bugs hangs in the doorway and hearing these calls I dreamed I slipped my hand holding my phone through the opening to try and pick up some of the sound. I looked at the phone app and it identified the call as coming from a bird called a Joy Jamar. 

Cathy later told me that in the eighth grade her and a girl named Joy Jamar got sent to the principle's office. I think she's gaslighting me. Not about the trip to the principle's office but about the girl named Joy Jamar.      

I don't think these birds are good to eat but Teddy protected them because they were hunted for their feathers. In Latin America, the Caribbean and occasionally the U.S people still collect the eggs to eat. The banning of DDT basically saved the species but the thing most likely to do a pelican in is discarded hooks and fishing line.      

 

Slow Fishing But We Managed a Few...

The American White Pelican nests as far north as Alaska and the Northwest Territories of Canada. Some go south in winter to Costa Rico like my friend U.S. Tico but a big bunch of them can usually be found on the lakes of East Texas through the winter. They eat about four pounds of fish a day and I usually see them moving and feeding on deep open waters for shad and minnows. Yesterday we spotted this group of birds and laid up in the warm sun on a little nub of an exposed sandbar instead of fishing and it proved what we found out. The fish were not biting, at least not at that moment in time.     

Our old friend Jongy was with us on this trip. He's going to catch one sooner or later if we keep taking him out because he did get a bite but his luck is not much worse than Cathy's total of one fish. The last trip Cathy invited people to the fish fry before we left for the lake and like most people who work well under pressure was able to back all that up with some fat blue cats landed in the boat. No pressure on this trip she claimed.  

Matt took the most fish this time out. We caught zero fishing deep which was where they had been last trip and found the catfish about 4' deep under slip corks. The lake was up after the rain but there are reports that it will go down again. There's work being done on the dam rip rap. When flows on the Neches River slow going into B.A. Steinhagen Lake the water from Sam Rayburn Lake which goes down the Angelina River to join the Neches out of Rayburn will be released for the work to continue.   

Note in these photos that after all the rain water color is about like how I like my coffee. 

I took big fish honors. Two big fillets off this fish worth $8 a pound. The smallest 8 fish probably worth $40 at the grocery headed, skint and sold bone in. 

Despite the slow action the total was 11 fish and they were decent size. That's 56 fish for the month of January. Things will probably slow in February because of non fishing plans but March is a solid slip cork meat in the boat month. 

 

First Fishing Trip of the Year and the 10 year Log...

It started out a tough day on the lake this past Thursday. A little windy, from the West, not dangerously so but brother in law Matt and I stayed up to the north rather than head south to bigger waters. It was where we had the best bite last time out but it was slow going. It might have been because we felt a little under the gun since my daughter Katie was planning on coming from Chicago this weekend and wanted to practice her fish frying skills and we needed fish bad. 

Nothing is so inspirational as being in a bind like this and our deep water holes along the old river channel were just not giving up the fish. We were working a few out and by keeping everything were slowly building a meal. Then we decided to give the shallows a try and sure enough the fat blue cat and big channels were feeding up before the polar vortex that's expected in a few days.   

Last hour of the day was the magic hour as we found the cats about 5' deep under slip corks in the inlet we call "Old Ginormus Cove" in honor of the biggest catfish we ever caught which weighed 32 pounds there.   

Matt with a nice blue. 

This bird, a limpkin shuffled in the shallows all the while we fished the area and paid us no mind. I have seen a bunch of these lately, on the lake at at the Big Slough Wilderness Area also. They are mussel eaters. So are blue cats. I've gathered the freshwater mussels during times of low water like this, shelled them and baited trot lines for good catches of catfish.   

All those bass fishermen pay big money live scope these days. He has it built in 

Look over my shoulder to the right and see the hump and the dark spot in the woods. That's the spot Cathy calls "the horseshoe" because of the shape the trees make as they follow the edge of the water when the lake is up. Usually a good 5' deep against those trees Cathy has pulled 10 pounders out of there. Check the left of the photo at the log horizontal close to the bank. 

I think that log is the same one where I photographed these nutria rats  sometime about 25 to 30 years ago during another period of low water. It has about rotted away and only shows it's self about every 10 years when we have a good drought. Comparing the photos Mother Nature has made some other changes to the area but the fish still follow these old creek channels looking for their supper which feed out to the deeper nearby submerged Angelina River channel. 

I originally had that nutria rat picture on an early internet photo hosting site where one day I noticed it had something like 9000 views. Go figure. I think I also have hard copies of other photos from this day of the rats up close that I may have to dig out and scan.  

Another good blue. You can see the nutria log laying horizontal on your right. That's an osprey nest on the left behind me.  

Final total was 23 good fish. I culled some of the first small ones we kept throwing back at least 5 fish. Katie, Peter and kids got snowed in with all flights out of Chicago canceled due to blizzard. I saved about 6 big fillets for broiled catfish and cream sauce and bagged a big ziplock of frying pieces. 

Good work under pressure if you can get it. The catfish count is off to a good start but I'm tucking it in for a few days.