# Boat Ride.



## JR Parks (Jul 28, 2021)

*Some friends wanted to just take a ride to the Port Aransas jetties. Nice calm day( that means hot with no wind). Took some gear just in case. 40 inch red on 1/2 menhaden shad. Put him back where he belongs after a grand fight. Jim



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Reactions: Like 3 | EyeCandy! 2 | Great Post 1 | Way Cool 6


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## Nature Man (Jul 28, 2021)

Into a frying pan? Chuck

Reactions: Agree 1


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## Alan R McDaniel Jr (Jul 28, 2021)

In Texas you get to "Tag" one per year over 28". If you then send the used tag in to TPW they will issue a "Bonus" redfish tag. The legal limit window is longer than 20" and less than 28" and three per day may be kept. By the time a redfish gets to be 40" their frying pan days are pretty much over. Unfortunately the best sized redfish for eating is 15"-18". Louisiana still has somewhat reasonable regulations 16" - 27" and one per day over 27". My personal belief is that many fish are killed by catching them and tossing them back. Reds caught out of deep water usually have to have their swim bladder punctured so they can return to deep water and not just float on the surface. Do it wrong and it's just stabbing a fish.... 

Alan

Reactions: Like 1 | Agree 1 | Informative 2 | Creative 1


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## Karl_TN (Jul 28, 2021)

@Alan R McDaniel Jr , What’s involved in tagging one over 28”, and how does one puncture their swim bladder the right way?


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## Wildthings (Jul 28, 2021)

Karl_TN said:


> @Alan R McDaniel Jr , What’s involved in tagging one over 28”, and how does one puncture their swim bladder the right way?


On the TX fishing license there is an oversize red tag. If you elect to keep one then that tag is removed from the license and filled out. Then attached to the redfish

Reactions: Agree 1


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## Alan R McDaniel Jr (Jul 28, 2021)

The TPW preferred method is to wrap the tag around the tail. The TWP hunting and fishing guide (when there still was one. Now we have to print it our ourselves) had a diagram showing how to do it. Personally, I have only seen it done. I have also seen it not done, and not done correctly, and the fish floated off. When the reds run at certain times of the year boats will be lined up at anchor in the jetties fishing for them. There are lots of big fish pulled out of 40' - 60' feet of water. 

I don't fish salt water much (or at all) any more. I fish because I like to fish and because I like to eat fish. I don't do "sport fishing" or tournaments. As the restrictions increase the fishery declines. 

Both #1 wife and I grew up in South Louisiana. I learned to fish and she learned to cook them. The days of going out and catching a mess of fish that are actually good to eat are gone in salt water Texas. And, in a few months all of this unprecedented amount of fresh rainwater is going to hit the coastal bays and wreck havoc on the nurseries. Speckled trout used to have a limit of 10 with one over 25. Now it's 5.
Reds were 5 at 20-28+1. Now it's 3. black drum, flounder, and sheepshead regulations have also stiffened and instead of things getting better, they are getting worse. 25 years ago I could spend $50 on gas, bait, drinks and food and catch a mixed bag of them all. 10 years ago when I stopped doing much saltwater fishing I can't count the times I came in with nothing but a sunburn. And to top it off the fish counters were waiting at the dock to add insult to injury. "No, I didn't catch anything."

Growing up in LA, I caught specks by the ice chest full with nothing but a lantern and a bare hook. It didn't take me long to stop doing that because cleaning an ice chest full of fish is a lot less fun than catching them. There were huge natural gas flares out in the bays and the specks and everything else would swarm them at night. We didn't even keep reds, they were considered trash fish. Black drum, sheepshead? Hopefully they got off the hook and we didn't have to touch the nasty things. I asked my dad once if he thought gars would ever be a game fish. He just looked at me like I was nuts... Uh, There's no length limit now but you can only keep one a day....

So, I stick to my freshwater lakes and canals. TPW seems to leave them pretty much alone. I found a gill net across the creek end of one of the lakes I fish. I called the game warden right then. He asked it there were fish in it. I told him it was loaded with white bass. Then I pulled up a tag. It said "Property of Texas Parks and Wildlife". They had put it out to count how many white bass were going up the creek.... I'm still dumbfounded by that one. An act that would have resulted in loss of license and immeasurable fines for the citizen fisherman was being employed by TPW to count the fish (dead fish)....

There are still a few places I know where I can catch fish, but I'm not telling where they are....


Alan

Reactions: Way Cool 1


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## Alan R McDaniel Jr (Jul 28, 2021)

But, @JR Parks has the right idea on head wear. You can't get enough shade out on the water right now... And you can dunk that sucker down in the ice chest and have instant AC!

Alan

Reactions: Agree 1


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## Alan R McDaniel Jr (Jul 28, 2021)

12.5# Blue cat I caught yesterday in ............... Texas.....

Fried some of his younger brethren this evening for supper... Blues this big are still pretty good eating but I like the 2.5#-3#ers the best. 

Alan

Reactions: Like 3 | Agree 1 | Way Cool 2


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## Karl_TN (Jul 28, 2021)

Alan R McDaniel Jr said:


> The TPW preferred method is to wrap the tag around the tail. The TWP hunting and fishing guide (when there still was one. Now we have to print it our ourselves) had a diagram showing how to do it. Personally, I have only seen it done. I have also seen it not done, and not done correctly, and the fish floated off. When the reds run at certain times of the year boats will be lined up at anchor in the jetties fishing for them. There are lots of big fish pulled out of 40' - 60' feet of water.
> 
> I don't fish salt water much (or at all) any more. I fish because I like to fish and because I like to eat fish. I don't do "sport fishing" or tournaments. As the restrictions increase the fishery declines.
> 
> ...



Curious what you might do differently if you were in charge to get the fish population back up without such severe catch limits? Has China started fishing in the gulf decimating fish population like they have in other countries by chance?


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## Tony (Jul 28, 2021)

Nice red Jim!!

Reactions: Thank You! 1


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## Alan R McDaniel Jr (Jul 28, 2021)

I don't know about the Chinese. If they thought they could they would I suppose.
What I would do differently? Well, for starters it would piss a bunch of people off because it would put an end to a lot of things that make a lot of money.

1. No more fishing tournaments. Tournaments kill fish. No getting around it. Take a fish, make it fight for it's life (it doesn't know you're going to let him/her go), drag it up out of the water by it's jaw, jostle it around in a live well for a couple of hours, put it in a sack, more jaw holding, and dump it back in the water with hundreds of others in a place where there is no shelter of forage, miles from where it was taken and give the fisherman a pat on the back for "catch and release".... in addition to this, numerous other fish are caught and traded out all over the lake/water disrupting the whole fish structure. I came in from fishing one afternoon and found a group of guys sitting at the ramp. They asked if I had caught anything and I said, "enough for supper". they kinda looked at me funny and then told me they had a little fishing club that had a minnie tournament on Thursdays and if I wanted to I could let them take some of my money to be in the club. I declined and stated that it was my opinion that tournaments killed fish. They took great umbrage at this remark and gave me the standard spiel about how they were letting the fish go right there, blah,blah, blah... I just pointed to the opposite bank where the wind was blowing and said, "You can lie to me, but you can't lie to those buzzards over there". There were 15-20 buzzards lining the bank just looking at the water waiting for the fish to float up. They know what a fishing tournament looks like and there were flocks of them at every one. I've been told that it's a sin to kill and eat a bass. Well, I think it's a sin to just kill them and leave them lay.

2. Food is at the core of all hunting and fishing. Anything other than that is off limits. Fishing is for fun but most of all it's for food. There is really no purpose other than ego to justify going out and stressing out 50 fish a day for the enjoyment and bragging rights of the fisherman. Catch your limit if you want or only catch what you will eat in the near future. I stated earlier about catching an ice chest full of trout. Well, it was doing that at 14 years of age that I learned to Limit Myself to what I was prepared to clean. Yesterday I brought home 6 Blue cats. That's all I wanted to clean yesterday afternoon (the limit is 25) and three of us ate three of them tonight. Of course the big one will feed more.

3. Boaters... There are no restrictions except the size of a bank account on who can buy a boat. And, indeed there shouldn't be. It is incredible the way some people go about boating though. Hundreds of boats running around at breakneck speeds churning up the lakes and bays. Shallow running boats that cut huge scars through the flats destroying the places where fish like redfish and trout feed and the food they eat grows. One boat cutting across the flat isn't going to hurt much. A thousand will. I have a welded aluminum boat with a tunnel. It will easily run in 10" of water at full throttle. I have it because I fish alone. It's not so that I can go into places that are too shallow but rather so that if I find myself in 10" of water I can get out of it and back in the channel where I'm supposed to be. There used to be a thing called boating etiquette. It didn't really do anything to enhance the fishery except that it said a lot about the character of the fishermen. Ethical boaters are usually ethical fishermen and they tend to not abuse the resource.

4. Stop killing the structure and forage. I started fishing a local lake in 1990. The boys and I could go out catch a few fish and be home early. It wasn't a competition. The lake had lots of weeds and lake grass. Those water plants kept the water oxygenated and provided shelter and forage species for the larger bass, crappie, white bass, hybrid stripped bass, and the three species of catfish. Then the jet skiers and water skiers started complaining that they couldn't do their thing in the part of the lake with no grass. So, the powers that be, began a program to eradicate the grass. First they tried physical removal with a big water combine thing. That didn't work so they poisoned the grass, but only in the main body of the lake. Well the poison didn't get the memo and it pretty much denuded the lake floor. I went out there last week and caught one bass in 6 hours of fishing. One. Not surprising though, there's nothing for them to eat except each other.

I could go on but it's late and I'm tired. I told you it would piss a bunch of people off. There is way to big an industry built up around fishing (and hunting) for this type of thing to ever work. I priced new boats about a month ago. Just the basic little aluminum fishing boat like mine is $25K. I have $25K easy, but I'm not spending it on a new boat. I rebuilt the carbs and it'll do just fine for my purposes. The companies that have huge amounts of money invested in sport fishing are not going to walk away from it because it's the right thing to do...

Alan

Reactions: Agree 2 | Great Post 4


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## Alan R McDaniel Jr (Jul 28, 2021)

Oh, 

5. Stop killing fish to count them....

Alan


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## DLJeffs (Aug 9, 2021)

Totally agree with your post Alan. Fishermen need to get over themselves with all the bragging about "numbers" and "hawgs" and all that BS. The hero grip & grin shots are a joke. And holding any fish so you're supporting its weight by its lower jaw is essentially killing that fish. Even small trout, that method tears ligaments, ruins joints, and that fish won't be successful catching prey because of it. It might swim away looking all healthy but you just condemned it to starve to death. Just like the fishermen who gaff hooked tarpon through the mouth and swearing that hole would grow closed and the fish was fine. Not. And when people fins a school or feeding station and camp out catching fish after fish...there's no skill and they're destroying those fish. Catch a couple and move on. That's what happened to the toothfish (aka chilean sea bass, they found the feeding station on sea mounts and caught every single one of them).


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## Alan R McDaniel Jr (Aug 10, 2021)

I texted #1 son to ask how his day was. He said he worked till 3:00 PM, then went fishing. I asked how he did.... He sent me this picture. 

Alan

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## JR Parks (Aug 10, 2021)

Looks like a great day of fishing!!!!

Reactions: Agree 1


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## Alan R McDaniel Jr (Aug 10, 2021)

JR Parks said:


> Looks like a great day of fishing!!!!


Trouble is that he only fished for about two hours..... He was catching the crabs with a dip net on a crab line and then catching blue cats while waiting for more crabs. That boy (39) has a lot more energy than I do...

Alan


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