Sunday, June 24, 2001

Booming bay fishing

ROCKPORT - With one hand gripping the chrome steering wheel of his Majak, Danny Adams Sr. lowered his other hand into the bow spray as we scooted past the southern mouth of San Antonio Bay.
   I began counting the shrimp boats in a fleet that bobbed on the open bay before us. I stopped at 32.
   Meanwhile, Adams had lifted his hand to his mouth and tasted the brine dripping from his fingertips.
   I couldn't tell from his expression what the veteran guide had concluded by his impromptu salinity test. I later learned that the trawl-churned water was salty enough, though its murky color gave me a different impression.
   Greener water awaited us.
   Out of the way bay
   Rains and subsequent drainage from the watersheds of the Guadalupe and San Antonio rivers can make the bay sweet, brown and unfishable for brief periods. But muddy or not, the slightest salty taste is a signal to stay, Adams said.
   San Antonio Bay is one of the wider expanses of saltwater between Rockport and Port O'Connor. It's not one of those off-the-beaten path bays either, though anglers might consider it remote.
   It's at the end of a 30-minute boat ride from Goose Island State Park, straight up the Intracoastal Waterway. You can't miss it if you follow the channel markers.
   Or, for a shorter boat ride, access the bay from Hopper's Landing, a marina near the entrance to the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge. Either way, the journey can be worth the effort, depending on wind direction and season.
   The north shore, or Seadrift side of the bay, is protected during a north wind. During an east or southeast wind, the backside of Matagorda Island is relatively calm. And the southern shore, along the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge, is protected during a south and west wind.
   A bay for all seasons
   A light wind opens fishing at San Antonio Bay's 100-plus oyster reefs, which provide contour and structure at nearly every depth the bay offers.
   The best time of year for fishing San Antonio Bay is the dead of winter, Adams believes. But spring is good too for sheepshead, drum, trout and reds. Good fishing continues through summer for trout, redfish, gafftop and scattered drum.
   Fall, when the sheepshead return, is fair for trout and reds.
   According to local lore, the mud-shell trade of the 1950s and 1960s assured San Antonio Bay's legacy as a fisherman's bay. A crude but lucrative mining operation left huge craters on the bay bottom where a mixture of whole oyster shells, crushed shell and sticky mud had settled.
   The material scooped to create these holes was used mostly as foundation for local roads. Fish and fishermen have benefited ever since from the holes and channels left behind.
   Finding your spot
   No, these remnants of a dead industry are not flagged for your convenience.
   Find them however you can, by electronic means, push pole or by wading.
   Incidentally, Texas Parks and Wildlife recently restricted shrimping in the Hines Bay (extreme western San Antonio Bay) and Seadrift areas, which should help water clarity in these spots. You should not see shrimpers trawling west of a line drawn between Mosquito Point and McDowell Point. A Top Spot map clearly marks these areas, as well as most reefs of San Antonio Bay.
   Even during murky conditions, pockets of clear water and fish exist at various locations throughout the bay.
   Adams found neither at our first stop, an old shrimp boat wreck near an open-water reef, marked by the boat's rusty superstructure extending above the surface. So he turned the bow southward toward Panther Reef.
   Between plugging and croaker fishing, several trout made it onto the stringers of Jim Norman, a Nacogdoches doctor, and his young angling protegees, Brian Mixon and Travis Hildebrand, also from Nacogdoches.
   Not making our stringers were a fair number of stingrays with a taste for croaker. Now's a good time to mention that the Kevlar-lined, stingray-resistant Predator Boot has a companion by Hodgeman on the market. Each sells for about $100 a pair.
   Shuffle those feet to avoid the stingray's barb.
   First fish
   By mid-morning, we had waded or drifted about a dozen scattered reefs, with varying results, between Panther and Chicken Foot, which extends from the south shore not far from the bay's mouth.
   As midday approached, dark clouds had formed in the northern sky. But Adams didn't seem too worried.
   Instead, he stopped at a deeper reef called Magnum, marked by a crooked channel post without a number in the southwest part of the bay. The younger anglers and I caught several trout in the 20-inch range as Norman waded into deeper water.
   By now, we all were using croaker. Give me a break.
   While I played casting director, the sound of a singing reel reached my left ear. It was coming from Norman's direction and it was a long song, which culminated in a redfish that tickled the 28-inch mark.
   No sooner had the good doctor strung his prize than the shadow of Adams' Majak darkened the waters of Magnum. Or could it have been the looming thundercloud that blocked out the sun?
   "Get in the boat, guys," Adams ordered. "I think I can skirt this storm if we hurry. But we might catch the edge."
   He was right on both counts.
   One last stop
   But before we called it a day, Adams had one more spot to try. The craftiest and most resourceful anglers always do.
   Adams hung a right just before Goose Island and ventured deep into narrow St. Charles Bay. About the time large widely spaced raindrops stopped stinging my face, Adams slowed, then anchored, the boat at a nondescript shoreline on the bay's northern bank. All I know is that we were near the mouth of Salt Creek, or so I was told.
   Rockport veterans can be quite stingy about the secrets of St. Charles Bay. So you know it holds good fishing.
   We scattered along the high banks in waist-deep water and cast toward an obvious line of seagrass about 20 feet from the shore. In a short time, this spot yielded some of the largest trout of the day, up to about 26 inches.
   The boat ride back to the ramp took barely 10 minutes.
   So why hadn't we stopped there in the first place?
   You'll have to ask Danny Sr. that question.
  
  
  

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