3 nights in the Texas tropics.
Up front, I didn't get any photos of Texas Jim, who was there with his skiff, taking advantage of the dock boat lift. He was out every day, and both evenings, fishing outside dock lights from his skiff. He caught a huge gafftop catfish.
We had a wonderful trip - and a superb bike ride.
Fishing was not great - in spite of balls of glass minnows in our dock light, schoolies never arrived, and we only had one snook slurping the surface behind our dock piles.
We caught a good stringer of nursery trout 15" to 18" (2 more stringer trout in following nights), and I caught a 19-1/2" black drum which made huge fillets.
Susie cut them small to add to our last-night fish fry, along with oven fries, perfect cole slaw, and peach-blackberry cobbler. We ate like kings.
Keep in mind, for every stringer trout, we each released 6 under 15".
I always fillet in the morning after a last nap and breakfast.
My 94-y-o dad made this trip.
again, another trout was on the 2nd night stringer
filleting 3 to 5 fish was not a terrible chore, and Tony kept the work area policed for me.
No words for the bike ride. My goal was to see the Cayo below the dam,
10.5 mi to get there, on the bike-only roads in Laguna Atascosa NWR.
Rumors abound that if you can get a kayak up the twisty channel from the Arroyo, you'll find snook and redfish stacked in the holes below the Cayo dam. We tried access from the county park last year - those gates are locked - only way in is NWR visitor's center at the south end - or make the long paddle from the county park.
From this signpost, to the left is the dam across the Cayo, right is Horse Island, where Steve, Lou and I beached our boats on a paddle to Rattlesnake Bay 7 years ago. Straight ahead (behind me) is North Point on the Arroyo.
Below the cayo dam is a fishy place - a tidal basin limit with big holes - we saw gar and surface slashes.
I had a rod, Lou didn't - now that we've found it, we'll go back with rods.
Behind the dam, the Cayo was mud.
For this reason, we decided to go back the way we came, rather than following the Cayo shore, and adding 7 mi and an extra hour on our ride to finish the Cayo loop.
Our 21 mi burned 1500 calories, though I imbibed 700 along the route.
The giant front bag holds a 15-l Ice Mule.
While we were out, we also had to complete a grocery list for Susie.
I fished the last night and last dark hour, while taking down tackle when I was done with it - lost count of tourist trout - everyone else slept in - except for Tony, who got up at midnight, caught and filleted 2 fish to take home.
