Fishing offshore with Ladd and Petra Hockey of Port O’Connor is always exciting. Not only do they love fishing but Petra is an avid bird watcher. On our recent trip in August we caught some nice king mackerel and spotted a lot of seabirds. In Petra’s own words she describes her bird sightings as follows:
“A total of 182 MAGNIFICENT FRIGATEBIRDS, several males with inflated red pouches, females and juveniles were perched on oil platforms and shrimp boats. They were attracted to the huge slick of bycatch floating in the water. About four miles due east of the Matagorda Island Lighthouse clouds of BLACK TERNS (in the thousands) were feeding over schools of fish. A larger all dark tern passed by, a juvenile SOOTY TERN that might have come from a local breeding area. While fishing around a shrimp boat that had 68 MAGNIFICENT FRIGATEBIRDS on the rigging an adult BROWN BOOBY came by to check us out. And yes, we also caught nice fish.”
-Dave Pope