Summer Fishing Report...

Cathy and I made it to the lake yesterday for a fishing trip. We've had some lake trips this summer and as per our summer water activity the past few years we have not been too mad at the catfish but instead spent our time tubing and swimming in relief of the hot weather. We swan yesterday but decided we did not want to get out of practice cooking fried fish. 

Though we headed out in the late afternoon fishing was slow for fillet sized fish was slow and we caught a bucket of these miniature blue cats. The Sam Rayburn Lake record for blue cat is 83 pounds. The biggest one we have personally caught was 32 pounds. These have some growing to do. I think I have found small catfish up to about 8" in the bellies of larger catfish. 

Seems our old favorite place that's usually a go to spot from August through January has dried up the past could of years. I think maybe other fishermen have discovered it because last trip one of the grandkids snagged some kind of bait bucket fish attractor and pulled it up. We let it back down but generally extra fishing pressure means small fish are the only ones left. 

We checked around the area to discover a new spot and nearby we clocked 52' depths which means with the lake being 8' low it's normally 60' deep in this spot and and fished the edges which were 25'deep finally producing enough fillet size fish for a fish dinner for two.  When the water comes up the tie ups to old stumps we used will be under water. 

Here's the what the world needs now is another picture of Cathy with a catfish picture. 

With a swim, a nice breeze and an Astros game on the bluetooth speaker it was a nice afternoon on the lake. Supper was even better with Fried catfish and farmers market okra and collard greens. 

 

More Catfishing...

 Cathy and I along with her brother Matt spent a Saturday afternoon fishing on Big Sam Rayburn. Water is still low and recent rain have the level creeping up with the boat dock at Hanks Creek just barely starting to float. That's evidence of improvement as a few weeks back the boat grounded a few feet short of the end of the dock making it a big step over for a fat guy like me.  

Fishing was slow as our usual spring pattern is catfish on slip corks around bushes but the water is still not anywhere near bushes along the shore. We managed to catch 9 catfish with Cathy again taking most fish and big fish honors on a box of stocky channel cats. I managed one fish so I did have a meager supper while she ate big piles of fillet meat.  

A couple of trips back this was all fat blue cats holding to the shore lines but I think a warmer than normal March has led them to finish up shallow water activity and they have been replaced but the later spawning channel cats. Even thought the weather was fine for shorts on the lake yesterday the sun seem to beat down and after cooking fish in the garage I felt a few mosquito bites so I am predicting a long hot summer. 

Hazy smoke on the lake off down in the direction of a recent 6000-7000 acre fire in the Angelina National Forest. I have not seen any news of a new fire and it seemed to disperse with the evening wind. 

There were several pairs of ospreys in the area, the first we have seen this spring. I thought they were year round inhabitants but they have been noticeably absent. They were engage in feeding, diving and nesting behaviors in shoreline trees but we did notice this nest along the long boat cut. The full pool of the lake is 164.4 feet and the level is 155 right now or 9 feet low. That means with a return to full this spot they chose will be at least 5 or 6 feet underwater. Cathy points out she will probably be disappointed in him for choosing this stump. The nest seemed to be under construction, thinly built with no chicks or eggs. It was a temptation to knock it in the water so they would maybe choose another spot but we decided to let nature take it's course. 

If it ain't fried it ain't food! 

   

  

First Fishing Report 2026...

 The first fishing trip went off without a hitch. The new boat seats were comfortable, the motor ran like a top, the new Bimini top and frame kept us shady, the new rod holders stored our gear safely away, the fish bit and I looked around just in time to see someone poop over the side of the boat. I think the last time I saw that was when I was in high school. I won't name names of either pooper but I will always wonder the eternal question of who taught them how to do that? 

Ezra scored the first fish of 2026. 

There was a bit of wind but not too much to be dangerous. A good wind usually puts us to slip corking for fish chasing bait on windblown sandbars and in the backs of coves but with wind comes the challenge of seeing the cork and timing the hookset which can be difficult for younger fishermen so we elected to fish near drop offs in 25' to 30' water with the bait dropped over boatside straight down. The action was just fast enough and we landed 17 fat keepers. 

We also threw back a bucket full of this size blue cats. The Sam Rayburn lake record for blue cat is 83 pounds. This blog notes that by mid April spawning blue cats had moved out of shallow water and were being replaced by swarms of egg laden channel cats. None of the fish we caught this trip had eggs so the question is how old is this fish? Maybe 10 months old. If so that means slower growth than I would expect for a fertile southern reservoir or a more recent birth than last February or March.. Maybe the scads of small blue cat are simply a food base for the big double digit fish that we know are there but we rarely catch on rod and reel.   

The lake is still low, maybe lower than our last camping trip. I like it like this for fishing but be forewarned that if you launch the boat with your compadres backing it off the trailer after you park you will get you feet wet as there are no good pull up spots without grounding the boat 5' from shore around the Hanks ramp.  

I'll put off camping till the lake comes up as there is not good access to my favorite camp spots by water but looks like the fishing year is off to a good start.

Those cats are now swimming in our belly. 

Camping and Fishing Report Hanks Creek, Sam Rayburn Lake USA...

 If I counted up right as I reviewed back through this blog there have been 10 camping trips this year. For #10 we did not range too far from home as we set up at Hanks Creek which is about 20 minutes from our house and the jumping off point to our favorite fishing spots. As blues man Taj Mahal said "many fish bite if you got good bait" and bite they did this weekend. 

Though we camped by ourselves we were joined by daughter Katie from Chicago who was in for a funeral of a friend's mom, the Zamora family (there was fried catfish to eat) and our friends Sherri and Peter. Final total for catching fish was 42 for this three night trip with is right in line with a trip we had 15 years ago this weekend where we tent camped, it was colder, rained and we caught 48 fish. 

By the way, all those fish were eaten.

The lake is almost 9' low as you can see from the large exposed beach in the background of this photo. The fish were holding in the creek channels about 7 feet deep so they are still hanging in the same areas but it's worth a note that we have caught 100s of fish on that exposed sandbar behind these fishers. 

Yeah mama, eat it every day if I could. 

I don't think I got a photo of Katie or Miguel but they might not have fishing licenses and in a surveillance society no need to incriminate.   

Big gator living in the campground cove. This photo taken in sight of our boat docking spot. 

Bikes always fun on a campout. 

Not many campers in the park. We saw maybe 6-8 sites occupied but many are still closed from hurricane damage last summer or spots where you could pull a boat up are not close to the water with the lack of rain and dam repair draw downs. One bathroom is closed. All camper we talked to were catch catfish but I think they were mostly fishing deep so take your pick. Fish are everywhere. 

No trips currently on the books but I'm open to suggestions. 

 

Beach Camping on the Gulf of Mexico...

 I always keep an eye on fishing reports and our recent travels have kept us from good beachfront conditions but we managed to make it to Surfside beach this weekend for clear water, calm winds, cloud cover to keep it a bit cooler and biting fish. 

Here's 7 whiting and one speckled trout that I caught on dead shrimp under a popping cork. Those big ones are about as large as they get. They are like a panfish with no restriction. We ate them and then I caught another little bunch of whiting which we cleaned and froze to bring home for another day.   

All I ever really wanted to do was play tuba and camp on the beach with a girl and that's pretty much where we are at these days. The Brazoria County part of the beach is free camping. There are no hook ups but with our solar and a generator to run the AC at night we get by. There was one day when it was a bit cloudy and we had to turn on the generator earlier in the evening but that's ok. One propane tank runs the AC 12 hours. I'm up fishing long before that but the afore mentioned girl usually sleeps 12 hours. 

Here's the catch of the trip. It's a 25 inch Spanish Mackerel. Spanish macks usually like a flashy lure and because of the teeth you better have a short steel leader. This one hit a dead shrimp under a popping cork. It made several runs stripping line from my reel but I landed it, filleted it and we had it for supper. 

I think last trip the fish wanted all baits fished on the bottom but this trip the popping cork was the ticket as everything was swimming high in the water column and wanted the bait suspended. 

I think that mack makes the 13th species I have caught this year. I hung several ladyfish which is a member of the tarpon family and not good eating but with their twisting and jumping never added them to the catch list.  

Friends from church Peter and Sherry joined us for a day. Sherry grew up on south Padre and Peter is a long time surf fisherman. They are beach people like us and after talking up the beach while we stood around in the church foyer we finally made a day and piled up the whiting and they shared our mack supper. 

Late summer is clear water time. River flows are down and so far tropical activity is non existent for the middle of the Texas peak season so the water was swimming pool clear. Photos don't do it justice. 

We never had much rain but thunderstorms rolled all around us and we saw a double rainbow and clouds were like paintings. 

We have a big trip planned the end of September but hopefully we can make one more beach trip before this. Maybe the pleasant conditions and fishing will hold. 

 

If I Tell You What I Eat You'll Want to Eat it Too...

 Sometimes after I cook and I do most of the cooking except for scrambled eggs, fried chicken, spaghetti and fried wild duck breast which are Cathy's specialties and if the results are pretty I make a photo of the finished product. I rarely do this in restaurants unless I am eating with close associates Suzy and Charlie or Scott and Ellen and everyone has ordered something where they had to go out and kill the animal to make the dish special just for us but instead preferring to make photos of food I have cooked.   

The food I have cooked and photographed is often fried catfish or maybe a nice piece of otherwise healthy grilled catfish that has been topped with a cholesterol elevating cream sauce or a heavy marbled  fat beefsteak. Usually not apparent in the photo but hiding in plain sight is butter. I've began to feel a little bit guilt about all this. 

By all reports from my doc (who wishes he had hair as long as mine) I'm a healthy elderly man (ex smoker, that's their way of saying even though you quit 30 odd years ago it will kill you) and none of this heavy eating is having much of an effect on me. What if you ate it though and had a heart attack. It would be like us taking a dose of cocaine that I tolerated well but it fried your brain. I'd feel bad about that too. 

So I decide to confess here (not that I do cocaine) but that I usually eat one and sometimes two veggie meals a day. Breakfast is a bowl of fruit, yogurt and crumbled dried plantains and lunch is a salad. Here's the salad.

It could be considered a little on the big side and I did have the guilty pleasure of crackers with it.

Here's supper last night. Maybe the first time I have cooked a fish I didn't catch but I recently had grilled salmon at a friend's house and it was good and the fish in HEB looked tasty so I broiled in butter sauce and accompanied it with French bread, sautéed veggies and sliced avocado. Cathy likes salmon. 

Probably not too bad a meal if I cut a bit of butter and ate half of it. 

If I tell you what I eat I know you will want a snort of it too. Just be careful. 

   

       

Fishing Report Catch and Cook...

 I sometimes get to where I hate to say it, especially when so many people in the world are having their cities bombed, but we had a pretty good day at the lake the lake swimming, catching a few fish and cooking them when we got home. 

Cell phone out of her pocket, glasses off, suit on and Grandma jumps in the lake to cool off. It was warm but we only needed a couple of these cool offs. 

I checked the blog before heading to the lake and for the several random Junes of past years seems like we were doing more traveling than fishing but photos show us still taking a few fish under slip cork rigs even though the prime slip corking months of March, April and May had passed. The lake is high and the wind was out of the south just right to try a spot that has been a favorite for a few years. 

We ended the day with 9 cats, nothing spectacular, lots of small through backs and decided we would head for deeper water the next trip we try. As much as I love slip corks in the shallows it's time to hang it up for now. 

It was just us on the boat today and it seemed like it sure was quiet and easy to load the gear up to go and in fact not much extra gear was required. 

Last weekend was a tube weekend and there will probably be more of those before you see catfish again. 

Last night we took a wild hair and drove over to a restaurant called the Fisherman's Galley on Toledo Bend just over the Louisiana border. Cathy got a fried platter and I had the Cajun grilled catfish with etouffee. Both meals were so good and such large servings we needed to go boxes and it made us want to cook fish again today. 

I divided up the cats into two portions of fillets. One to cook, one to freeze and I also froze the filleted backbones because that's what mamma likes fried up crisp. I thawed a few shrimp for a garlic cream sauce with a dash of New Mexico chili pepper, broiled the catfish and served all this over air fryer zucchini. I was so good we forgot to cut up a fresh garden tomato.  

Cathy claims better than Fisherman's Galley but I'll take either dish whenever I can get it. 

I have fished on Sam Rayburn Lake since I was a child and I guess it's been partying and tubing since I was old enough to get ,myself to the lake on my own. I pray that all people in the world have the nice things I have had in my life. 

 

 

Grandma's Campout Birthday Weekend and Catfish Massacree...

Cathy's birthday is coming up (hint, hint) and all she wanted was a big campout. We loaded up the Wolf Pup camper (don't worry we made two trips to get the boat) and headed 20 minutes down the road to Hanks Creek, a Corps of Engineer Park on Sam Rayburn Reservoir. We stayed 5 nights and the Zamora family including their friends, Travis, Veronica and kids reserved a campsite across the road for one night. Rose and grand kids Warren and Coraline drove up from Lake Jackson and stayed at our house a couple of nights for some good family fun had by all.   

 

Final count on the fish was somewhere in the neighbor hood of 42 catfish and 20 white bass. Anyone that picked up a fish rod caught fish. The catfish bite was red hot in 4' of water next to the bushes and I found the white bass schooling on flats in the exposed north wind, busting up schools of shad in half acre sized schools that quite biting about 7:15 AM every morning.. Naturally on the third morning I talked Cathy in to joining me but the wind shifted to the south and they were gone. Fortunately the catfish had missed us and bite faster than you could bait a hook. We ate all we could and brought home three frozen packages of meat. There's a really great freezer in our camper and we will probably eat some of this on trips this summer. 

The white bass liked a little crank bait from my dad's old tackle box that's probably 45 years old. I call the color pattern "Parrot." 

Even Miguel, who is not all that mad at fish till they are served hot from the grease caught a fish. Amazing thing is that we saw only a couple of other boaters in this pass behind Miguel in the photo during the whole trip. I've fished here going on 50 years and depending on the time of year it's full of some kind of fish just waiting to be caught. 

Boys out on the boat. The girls gave us an hour counting drive time and we boated 5. 

Milo, who was holding a rod or be damned like everyone else actually hooked a fish his mom had to reel in but in this photo he has the "man, my cousin caught a big one" look on his face. 

We had a great site. The trip began with a storm that prevented us from fishing Friday evening (camper is cozy) and was followed by three days of sun. Today as we left storms were rolling in again. We met some locals stetting up for a 12 day fishing extravaganza. One was an old co worker and we had friends in common with the others. We will see them again. 

Many sites at Hanks Creek are closed. They were wrecked last summer during Hurricane Beryl and the flooding also left many dead and leaning trees. Sites that had been fixed with nice new pads since the last flood several years ago had the RV hook ups set in concrete housings that were toppled off their foundations. Due to limited sites and the popularity with locals plan ahead for reservations.   

We love our camper but naturally the Zamora family wins coolest camper award. 

Water temps were 75 degrees and I asked Mary if she would let the boys swim. She said, "How to I keep them out of it?"

It was a good trip and I think a good start to Cathy Week. 

If plans hold next camping trip is the beach.