TexasKayakFisherman.com est. 2000

[Dandydon]

Looks like our worst dang freeze since 1989 when we lost millions of saltwater fish. Let's pray it doesn't happen again!

My electrical power went out about 2am. I'm worried about my fish in the kitchen freezer! Even the Centerpoint Energy "Outage Line" is down. I heard it won't warm up until Thursday.

At times like these I wish I'd bought a good generator. Is anybody else out there suffering and urinating icicles like me?

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[Ron Mc]

as soon as I get a reply typed, the power cycles off - TEC orders.

I have a foot of snow here, and a dozen tamales in the steamer to graze through the day - even the power cycling off won't cool down a half gallon of simmering water.

Poor kitty is curling up on her favorite electronics, only to find them cold

[Neumie]

We lost power for about 10 hours last night with it coming back on around 4:30 this morning. My house got down to 50 degrees. We've got warmed back up to 62 and am keeping it there for now. Taking advantage of power by making sure all of our electronics and battery banks are fully charged. I've also filled our bathtubs with water in the event our power gets shut off tonight I'll more than likely have to shut the water off to the house. I took a faucet temp from one along an exterior wall and it was upper 30's . We have plenty of food and multiple was of cooking, so we're in pretty good shape.

Oh, we only got about 7" of snow.

[Dandydon]

My backyard got snow and all I got was a lousy tee-shirt which said "SNOWBIRD" on it.

My power is still off. Just heard on KTRH Radio that it might be tomorrow until it gets restored. Why? We had little wind and lack of heavy precipitation. Just COLD weather. Remember Hurricane Harvey? That was a real disaster.

I'm thinking our leaders are good at closing businesses and wearing Covid masks--but bad at managing electricity.

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[Neumie]

Frozen wind turbines and lack of natural gas supply is the main culprit: http://www.ercot.com/news/releases/show/225151

And it's being compounded by generating units falling off grid: http://www.ercot.com/news/releases/show/225210

[Chubs]

Frozen wind turbines and lack of natural gas supply is the main culprit: http://www.ercot.com/news/releases/show/225151

And it's being compounded by generating units falling off grid: http://www.ercot.com/news/releases/show/225210

Hey, at least we are carbon neutral, right guys!?
...
I hope everyone can stay safe tonight and nobody freezes to death

[shoffer]

Fish kill has begun.

https://fishgame.com/2021/02/fish-kills ... your-help/

[Dandydon]

Thanks, Shoffer.
And the news will get worse...

Memo to Self:
If we lose 20 million Texas gamefish to this FISH FREEZE, can we count on Tx. Dept. of Wildlife to restrict our daily limits even further? Are 3 Speckled Trout a day enough to get you fishing?
How about one Redfish and one Flounder?

How far does it go?

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[SteveRetrieve]

Regulations aside, if that many coastal fish die is it even worth fishing the coast? I’ll probably have to resort to driving up to one of the lakes to get my fix.

Fingers crossed that they all found a deep mud hole to hide in until the end of the week.

Anyone know if there’s a certain water temp that the trout and redfish just can’t handle?

[Neumie]

Anyone know if there’s a certain water temp that the trout and redfish just can’t handle?

Everything I read is 48 degrees surface temperature, which most of gauges along the coast were reporting below that 2 or 3 days ago. I've seen many pictures on social media of dead fish and frozen bays.

[ben_beyer]

Where's Flounder Hole in Port Aransas?

[SWFinatic]

Anyone know if there’s a certain water temp that the trout and redfish just can’t handle?

Trout in general get sluggish and have a hard time swimming at 43-45 surface temp. At 40 they shut down and most will not make it. Most reds can handle a couple of degrees colder. Matagorda, POC, Port Lavaca and Seadrift so far are showing the colder water temp readings. There's been a low of reports of fish kill already. Many shallow water bays and secondary bays will be hit hard. Hope I'm wrong but this looks like it could be catastrophic.

I'm curious to see what TPWD will do and how fast they will react.

[saltykat]

I hope the weather turns for the better soon. 89 was devastating and took years to recover. Hopefully they get your power turned on and the pipes don't freeze. I've got 3 feet of snow on the ground and below zero most nights lately. Up until February it was a mild winter then it was like mother nature flipped the switch.

[Neumie]

Where's Flounder Hole in Port Aransas?150432096_1128696777558776_4309038194583798479_o.jpg

I've never heard of a "Flounder Hole", but if it's where that picture is than that's on the Aransas Pass side of the ferry landing just to the east.

[SteveRetrieve]

34 degree water temps at the Galveston RR bridge this morning. That can’t be good


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[Dandydon]

Good to hear from our Chicago-based TKF member Saltykat...

I've had no electrical power since Monday morning at 2am. My kitchen freezer has now warmed up. I lost several bags of frozen gamefish and 23 bags of precious homemade basil pesto. It's now 41° in my house. Looks like the snow killed many trees & shrubs in my yard. I am officially pissed off.

Add in the epic Valentines' FISH KILL and it looks like the Year 2021 is starting off as badly as most of Year 2020 was. This could decimate or hurt our saltwater Fishing for a couple of long years.

Saltykat, if I were you, I'd be happy up there in Chicago.

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[Kayak Kid]

We lost electricity 3:00 AM Monday morning. Just came back on at 1:45 PM today. Two very miserable nights.

Temp was 14 degrees outside last night. Cold as ............ Inside.

I did everything correctly to prepare for freezing temps. I covered the plants, had the sprinkler system winterised, turned all inside faucets on, and put the dogs warmest sweater on him (he sleeps in the bed). Yet, the water pipe in my attic froze, burst, and proceeded to water down two upstairs rooms before I turned the water off. Hows a South Texas boy supposed to know that you should turn the water off when it gets below 20 degrees

Most of my neighbours, unfortunately, had the same bursting pipe experience. Yet, though uncomfortable and quite expensive, everyone is safe and healthy.

[SWFinatic]

Man I hate to hear that! Glad you at least have heat back on. We have a busted pipe upstairs and a ruined ceiling. I'm ready for this crap to be gone.

[Neumie]

My wife and I have been extremely fortunate and have had to go without power for 16-18 hours since about 6:30 pm Sunday evening.

Leading up we made a big pot of chili, pot of potato soup, and a large casserole to feed us through the cold. We also took necessary steps to make sure we had adequate alternative fuels for cooking, extra groceries, and charged all of our back up battery packs. I also filled up both my bath tubs in case we lost water.

About every 2 hours I flushed my water lines and measured the temp with my instant read thermometer so I could keep tabs on everything. My house also has PEX for the water lines so I feel that has helped me.

Again, we have been extremely fortunate but I also feel we were prepared as best as anyone could have been. We've had family and friends over to help as much as we could.

Stay safe TKF family.

[karstopo]

Saw a video of Pringle Lake, video from an airboat I think and the footage looked real enough, but things are real bad in Pringle Lake, tons of dead trout, dead trout everywhere, footage that made it hard to imagine there were that many nice trout in one place and for them to be all dead. Looked real bad.

Most of the coastal NOAA stations were reading water temperatures way into the 30s for an extended period and that cannot be good.

My wife works for State Farm Insurance. Their whole system essentially went down yesterday, the 24/7 “Jake from State Farm” so that if people called in with a claim, the process wasn’t working. Her boss closed the office Monday and Tuesday due to the weather, but they will be open today and it will be a total $h*t show, especially if the computer system that handles claims is still down.

Lots and lots of busted pipes and flooded houses. Uninhabitable houses from pipes that ruptured flooding the house and people had left the houses to go to a neighbor or family member or somewhere that still had power.

Cannot understand why, but we have never lost power for one second at our home in the Centerpoint service area. Makes me wonder who or what is also on this particular grid. Does Centerpoint or any of the other entities have a “thou shall not turn off this grid” list?

All over the commercial area of town power was out, but except for one section with among other things a Target, a Jack in the Box, and a Raising Cane’s. Never have I seen such a long line in the drive thru of a Jack in the Box. The HEB was closed and people with no power to heat up something to eat, not a mystery on the drive thru.

But, 2021 has not been so very impressive so far. Hope the inshore saltwater fish did much better than the fears and things get back to tolerable for everyone real soon.

[SWFinatic]

I saw that video too. Sickening!! I also saw a report out of East Matty. Not looking good there either.

This weather event looks like it could be the equivalent of Harvey for the Texas coast. It's too early to tell but I could see TPWD shutting down fishing or at least catch and release only for a while until they can get an assessment on the damage and determine how bad it really is.

[TrumpkinTheDwarf]

New to the forum, didn't see anywhere to introduce myself, so I'll just start chiming in where I feel like it I guess.

I'm a MT transplant to TX so I have no frame of reference for how bad these fish kills are. In a worst case scenario, is this going to have a 2 year impact? 5 year? 20?

I just caught my first redfish back in January and was getting really excited to start figuring out the coastal fishery.

[ben_beyer]

Where's Flounder Hole in Port Aransas?150432096_1128696777558776_4309038194583798479_o.jpg

I've never heard of a "Flounder Hole", but if it's where that picture is than that's on the Aransas Pass side of the ferry landing just to the east.

That was a post by Port A on Facebook. I looked around and I found a Flounder Hole down close to Harlingen.

PEX has helped in our house. I had faucets running but lines still froze up and thankfully thawed out yesterday. To my knowledge you are generally OK with PVC as long as the water pressure has a way out (I.E. part of a pipe freezes but somewhere else in the house a faucet is still running so that the ice can have room to displace water in the line).

I know people that have been without power for days now and are running low on propane. Not good and I'm worried about the fallout from this for both people and the fishery. I'm hoping Flounder are OK since most of them have moved offshore and if they are, then I'll for sure keep them if I catch them over the next few years. For trout and probably Redfish given the probablilty of a big kill, I will be catch and release for the next 3 years. I may even consider going all fly rod just to lower my catch rate even more.

Just an idea at this point though on the fly rod deal.

[karstopo]

Redfish ought to be in much better shape than trout. Most all the big breeders are safe in relatively warm offshore waters and redfish are tougher than trout in the cold anyway. Looks like a wipeout for trout in many mid coastal bays, maybe Galveston area came through it without too much of a kill. Big trout, some of them, maybe most if not all in some more shallow areas will likely have been killed.

https://youtu.be/rb748whw674

Here’s a video from Pringle Lake. Not good. Saw a photo of a shoreline at Rockport littered with trout. Not good.

[ben_beyer]

Yes, that is a good point about the breeders for the Redfish population. Also they are easier to raise in a hatchery.

My main concern is the Redfish recruitment would've been in the bays where temps in some places dropped into the low 30's.

But hopefully they found some warm places to ride this out. Chances are we won't know for sure until maybe this weekend at the earliest.