TX City - Dolphin Encounter

[engineer]

I wanted to fish Moses Lake, but my friend bailed on me and it’s a pain to haul my kayak back up the hill by myself, so I decided to chance Mosquito Island. I normally don't fish this spot because I feel it just has way too much pressure and is overfished. I usually don't do well there anyway. I got there around 6:00AM, on the water by about 6:30AM. Conditions were cloudy, low wind until about 10AM and it started to really pick up. It was cloudy all the way to about 11:00AM.
I started off the morning with Gulp minnows and caught small croaker and sandtrout. Had a couple of bites that took out some drag but I just couldn't set the hook. Later on in the morning I decided to fish the extreme northwest end of Mosquito Island. I started getting bites and then all of the sudden, I hear a loud "POOF". It surprised me so much that I almost fell out of my kayak. Well I look over to the left and I see a large dorsal fin not more than 5ft away from me. My first thought "shark!" Well, I see a second dorsal fin and another "poof", and see water spraying out of a blowhole. There was a small pod of dolphins feeding right next to me. I stumbled for my camera as quickly as I could, but by the time I got it, they were about 20-25ft away. I wish I had my GoPro with me and running when they came over to visit. Anyway, you can see a short video below (set it to 1080P HD for better quality):

http://youtu.be/MdikBqHpuIs?hd=1

Around 10:30AM, it was abundantly clear that my fishing day was just going to suck, so I paddled in and called it a day. As always, love being out on the water and the dolphins were a treat to a very slow fishing day.

[texasrush]

WOW! I would have freaked out if they were that close to me. Thay may have been the reason why it was slow in that area... ?

[dorkfish]

My Father and I were wading in the area and had the same initial reaction - first we were like , then we were like . My dad has been wading that stretch for over 20 years, he said it was the first time he has seen dolphins over there. As far as fishing, we threw just about everything except live bait to gettem' biting. Topwaters, twitch baits, sw assassins, and corkies were on the menu and after five hours in the water we had one croaker and one speckled trout to show for it. Slow fishing, but quality time.

[engineer]

My friend said that fishing often shuts down for him when dolphins show up. It sure seemed that way to me yesterday. I can say that the bite pretty much shut off completely after their appearance.

[Bayoutalker]

I had the opportunity to swim with wild dolphins several years ago. They would approach within inches of us and stop and look at us before scooting off. The wild thing was when they would turn and shoot off, you couldn't feel any water movement at all. It was as if they could move through water without disturbing it at all. If I could figure out their secret and transfer it to my yak, paddling would sure be a different animal.

[Eddie Mac]

That's a common occurrence for me at B&R. I have had them sneak up on me and scare the mess out of me close enough to touch and have seen them feeding, getting closer and closer until they literally dive under the yak chasing their prey. It freaks me out either way. There are so big ones in those pods sometime and they are all going crazy when they are in a feeding frenzy. I know one of these days they are gonna knock me over.

[engineer]

Dude no joke! They get huge. They ain't no Flipper for sure. I was actually shocked at how large one of them was.

[Roofish]

A few yrs ago my sons & I were crossing the channel @ LHL just down from Crabman's headed to the shells & marsh, well right in the middle of the channel 3 came right up to us, 1 was a baby or quite abit smaller than the other 2, they came up blew air & dove well after a few times doing this the largest one was slapping his tail really hard as if he was angry. I told my sons hurry up let's get away from them, my son said they came up to us, which I agreed w/him but it did seem as if the larger one wanted us away from that baby. What a truly neat experience it was w/my sons though, wish it could have lasted alittle longer but they do get very big I was in my Ride & this 1 was easliy as big as that if not bigger

[Pond Scum]

I've had them chase away a good bite more times than I could count. I don't know if there's any truth to this at all but I had an old timer tell me that if you keep a couple of the 99 cent beach balls with ya and toss em I'm the water when the dolphin show up that they'll start playing with em and stop feeding long enough for ya to do some fishing. If that actually worked I'd probably stop fishing just to watch.