Captain Rick Hammon of Bay Flats Lodge put this guest on a solid red while attending an employee rewards fishing retreat September, 2012.

With the everyday hustle and bustle associated with our daily lives, many of us all too often fall victim to the common drudge we have come to know as the standard way of life. Large corporations and organizations impact our lives in ways we never truly notice. They also have influence over us in ways others could never imagine. Take a minute to think of how your job affects you, or how your parents’ job affects them. We are raised to base our lives around work. When we were young, we learned it a good thing for us to have our homework finished before going out to enjoy the outdoors with our other young friends. In the same way, many of us adults still value this belief. We do not think it strange to base our life around work, following strict guidelines and long days spent away from the places that we live and the people that we love. We generally answer to authority, and place work as a priority over that of our leisure time.

Today’s advanced technologies have played a significant role in our mindset of the 21st century. Everything is bigger and faster over that from years past. The computer you buy this year can process information twice as fast over that of the one you bought last year. The new vehicle you drive can now get you where you are going in a shorter period of time because it outperforms your previous one in horsepower, torque, and fuel efficiency. And today, if you so desire, you can even fulfill the majority of your shopping responsibilities very rapidly via the Internet, allowing you to spend more time doing that which seems to be so very important to you – work.

I recently recognized a necessity for slowing things down a bit, specifically surrounding our clients’ ambitions for targeting San Antonio Bay’s summer time trout action. We find so many times that people who venture to the Lodge, especially for the sole purpose of taking advantage of its laid-back atmosphere and all else it has to offer, arrive while still fully under the influence of life-in-the-fast-lane. This is quite understandable given the nature of the times we happen to live in, but being convicted of an FUI offense (Fishing while Under this Influence) can be hazardous to your health, and repeat offenders can, and will, certainly realize a definite and negative impact to their daily bag. The summer time trout can be a peculiar, if not downright finicky, specimen.
On those occasional cooler mornings when the thermometer reads only 80-degrees or so, trout can be ambushed on the flats as they warm themselves in the approaching daytime sunlight. But on those warmer mornings that are so much more typical of our Texas summer months trout will continually traverse the various water columns available to them throughout the course of the day, zigzagging side to side and laterally and horizontally in their search of that ever comfortable, and a bit cooler, water temperature. It is for this reason that it is so very important to remember to tighten the reigns a bit on your advancement as you happen upon the bite. Once the bite does begin to occur, you are going to catch them. But you simply have to stay in one place to do it – do not move. Because the fish are constantly on the move, their paths will crisscross with yours. When you continue to move you are simply reducing your odds for success in doing so. Keep in mind that the trout are not (have not been) living-out the same hectic lifestyle you may have become accustom to, so don’t be afraid to stop and smell the roses once in a while, especially in such a serene and beautifully quiet environment as that which has been offered up by Mother Nature herself in the form of our native Texas bay shores. Who knows, you might just discover you like fishin’ in the slow lane!

www.BayFlatsLodge.com
1-888-677-4868
Seadrift, Texas overlooking San Antonio Bay

What a nice looking red, while fishing with Bay Flats Lodge Guide Harold Dworaczyk in the back country with live bait, September 2012.

Guide Cooper Hartmann placed 1st in the heaviest stringer while fishing a corporate customer appreciation event at Bay Flats Lodge.

Captain Chris Martin’s dog Sadie from last season “Redhead down”.

“Add us to your Favorites List or Bookmark us!”

The Port O’Connor Chamber of Commerce is working on updating–www.portoconnorchamber.org–. We are trying to keep an updated list of events on our home page. I encourage you to email your information about an upcoming event or email a flyer about your event and it will be posted on Facebook and sent out to everyone in our address book. Our Facebook friends are growing each week. We welcome your pictures and articles about things going on in our community. This way the community will feel more involved with what’s happening. Just email to poccc@tisd.net. There has been a link added on our homepage http://www.weather.com/, so no matter where someone is, even the people in other states, they can check our weather and may decide that we have such amazing Fall and Winters they may come on down and join us.

In the past several years there have been many friendships made with our visitors from the northern states and we certainly want to welcome them back and also invite their friends. Port O’Connor has always been a friendly community. I think this is one thing that draws people into returning here to do their fishing, hunting, birding and just plain relaxing and enjoying life. This is also what has caused so many people to decide to retire here and make it their home.

The next Chamber meeting will be October 8th at 6:30 p.m. at Port O’Connor Community Center. Everyone is invited to attend. We realized that in this day and time most have very busy lives. There are numerous new neighbors in Port O’Connor. The reason I know this is when I go into the Post Office, out of five people, I may know one person. So take an hour and come out.

We need people to help with committees and also people with ideas to aid in making our projects bigger and better each year.

Thanks to 10th Street Lodge for their 2012 membership.

About 4:15 p.m., Sunday, September 16, this water spout was over Matagorda Bay. At times 3 were sighted at the same time, along with lightning. Photo by LaJune Pitonyak

Ever encountered a weird sea creature that defies description? Caught a saltwater fish but don’t quite know what kind it is? Now there’s an easy way to identify whatever it is you’ve run across.

Launched this summer, the Identification Guide to Marine Organisms of Texas has been compiled from decades of data by TPWD Coastal Fisheries biologist Brenda Bowling and is a great resource for anglers, biologists, beach combers and others who want to know more. The new online tool uses photos, detailed descriptions and other descriptors so that users can identify and learn more about the mystery creature they have found.

Hosted and supported by Texas A&M University Galveston, the site offers detailed photos and descriptions of fish, crab, shrimp, mollusks, marine vegetation, sea turtles, and other marine organisms. Each species is represented by photographs, and brief habitat descriptions, distinguishing characteristics, differences from similar species, maximum sizes, and other pertinent information.

The designers took into account the varying identification skills of any given user and developed a query system – easier to use than technical taxonomic keys – that allows the user to narrow down a species based on general features, such as mouth type, tail shape, dorsal fins and other distinctive features. A glossary of technical terms used with drawings and photos of specific features and diagnostic characteristics of each group of organisms is presented to assist in identification.

The site offers all the tools necessary to allow anyone from the layman to the marine biologist the ability to identify just about any marine organism someone may find in Texas. And for anglers, there is an easy-to-use length and weight calculator than can provide the average weight per a given length for more than 100 species of fish.

The site currently contains descriptions of 422 marine species and is considered a living document. It will be updated as more species, better photos and new information are documented in the future. Anyone who still cannot identify the sea creature they have encountered is encouraged to send clear photos to Brenda Bowling at txmarspecies@tpwd.state.tx.us. To access the site go to http://txmarspecies.tamug.edu.

Automne est arrive…

It’s almost that time again, when the leaves will start to fall from the trees (late October for us spoiled here on the coast) and the night becomes cold enough to see our breath escape into the chilly night air.

Farmers also look forward to this time of year as it is traditionally the season of the harvest and a time of plenty. Pumpkins and the cornucopia, that symbol of harvest also known as the horn of plenty, featured on so many items of fall décor, represent to us this time of plenty.

The season of Autumn gained it’s name from a French word, Autompne, which essentially was taken from the Latin word for the season, Autumnus or Auctumnus. However, it would be three century’s before the word Autumn replaced the word harvest as the accepted name of the season.

The other common term we use to give name to the coming of chillier weather and pumpkin spice lattes becoming available at a friendly coffee shop near you is Fall, which was actually culled from the phrase ‘fall of the leaf’ or ‘fall of the year’, which was popular around 1545 in British circles. Later, when the American colonies were established, the term came with the British settlers and stuck, despite the fact that the slang term fell from favor in England over the years for the more traditional Autumn and now is strictly an American term.

Of course, as with all human traditions that span many centuries, the ‘fall of the year’ has taken on some new aspects for a modern world.

Football season begins at this time of year, and you can almost feel the anticipation across the great state of Texas as it approaches, men waiting with excitement and promise for a new season and a fresh start.

Baseball seasons ends, as most of the country says goodbye to longer days and hello to shorter nights as we move forward from the days of hot dogs and soda and into the days of pumpkin pies and hot cocoa.

Halloween is just around the corner if you have not noticed it in the stores, meaning that Thanksgiving and Christmas and all that comes with the Holiday Season is coming. Fast.

Beyond the common themes and commercially promoted trappings, there surely is an almost magical-like quality in the season. It is the time each year that leads us from the death of one year and all that has passed in it, to the birth of a new year swaddled in cold and discomfort, waiting to arise out of the Spring thaw with promises anew and a different direction, like a rare flower pushing it’s way up to the sun from the cold Earth.

Fall is a time of reflection, a time to cast out and forget the old ways that you might still be clinging to. Like a leaf on a tree, you realize that you can let go of the past while still surviving and persevering the hardened frost glazed days, even in the harshest months of Winter when the air is cold and the clouds make scarce of the sun early in the day.

Others, of course, cannot stand the season, as the eternal heat, fun and freedom of long Summer weekend’s are over, to be replaced by being stuck in the house and a new Fall television lineup to help you whittle away the hours you once spent on the beach or on the water.

Some even get depressed by the shorter days and longer nights, a condition known as Seasonal Affective Disorder.

So, if the feeling of Falls arrival fills you with dread beyond the normal ‘heebie jeebies’ associated with Halloween, you just can’t bare another pumpkin flavored or shaped product or you just miss the sun being up late, let me leave you with the words of infamous poet John Keats, who in another September, way back in 1819, had this to say about this much misunderstood and under appreciated season in his poem To Autumn:

“Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,- “