A sample of trash picked up on beach clean-up day

With summer comes more beach time. It brings visitors and guests to our community as well. Some of those beach goers are behaving badly! Tons of trash and loads of litter accumulate on the beach and in and near our coastal waters. It is not just ugly, it is also dangerous. Children playing can get cut on glass or metal. Wade fishermen can get injured completely unaware of what is under the water. And sadly, our fish, fowl and wildlife are at risk of injury and death from refuse in their environment. Shore birds can eat non-digestible items or get tangled in trashed fishing line and die. Cigarette butts and plastic bottles are common items blamed for injured wildlife. Fish, porpoise and other water dwellers can be fatally wounded or poisoned by the rubbish we humans leave behind.

In April, local volunteers and corporate helpers spend a Saturday cleaning up and cleaning out beaches all over Texas. They gathered and bagged loads of trash. Here in POC Roxanne Ochoa led a team to clean up Kingfisher Beach front and Alexa Cordova of Victoria Electric led an impressive array of VEC Volunteers to deep clean Boggy Park. These hard workers will be back to do it all over again in the Fall.

Until then, do your part. Pack out what you pack in, pick up behind yourself and put trash in its place. The motto of take only pictures and leave only footprints won’t quite work because we hope you take fish that are legal to catch, shells to enjoy, a sunburn to remember the fun and a little sand in your shoes to help you remember the fun. But please, do not leave anything on the beach or in the water that does not naturally live or grow there. Trash cans are provided most places or if you must leave it somewhere make sure it is not the beachfront or the water. Our wildlife, our humans both local and guests, and yes, our conservation volunteers will thank you for your beneficial beach behavior. Enjoy it and allow others to also!

Roxanne Ochoa led local volunteers cleaning up King Fisher Beach

Every Tuesday at 11:30 a.m. you can find good food, good friends and good fun at the POC Community Center during the weekly Senior Lunch.

The Heritage Senior Center in Port Lavaca offers lunch Monday through Thursday with games and coffee on Friday, but here in POC our special senior day is Tuesday.
POC Locals love lunch being local, and want to see it continue. Seniors, loosely defined as over 55, gather for the fun. After lunch, they play Bingo for prizes, and catch up on all the local news.

Both the Heritage Center and POC lunches are supported by federal and state funding, Calhoun County contributions, United Way assistance, grants and proceeds from the neighboring Outpost Resale Shop.

A suggested donation of $3 at the lunch helps with the cost of providing lunch in POC weekly.

The future of the program could be at risk if funding is cut. So, encourage those you know to pitch in and do their part. Donate if you would like. Shop at the resale when it fits your need. And please, join this fun group of smiling seniors each Tuesday at the POC Community Center. You won’t be disappointed.

As a full time, fishing guide at Bay Flats Lodge in Seadrift for five years now I have had opportunities that I had dreamed of for most of my life. The day I received my driver’s license I remember hooking up my dad’s boat and trailering to the ramp! Since that time, I have been lucky enough to live on or near the coast and take advantage of our many coastal resources. Whether it was boat or wade fishing, live or artificial bait, soft plastics or top water, morning-afternoon-evening, or any day of the week, I found time to be out here on the salt water in pursuit of Speckled Trout, Redfish, Flounder and on and on. This was instilled in me from the days growing up in Pasadena since my dad was an avid fisherman and took the kids to walk the Galveston Jetties and then later on to fish the bays out of a boat that we were fortunate to afford. Today I have that same passion and drive to be out on the water but now I get to teach what I have learned and share the precious resources with not only friends and family but customers too! I had always heard the saying “Do what you love, the money will follow”, but never really understood it. Now being a fishing guide no matter what will not put you in the headlines making a fortune…what it has done though for me is allow a modest living in the outdoors! My lifelong dream!

Most of my trips these days are taking customers in the boat with bait. We experience a lot of corporate customers entertaining their associates. Most have some experience fishing, some freshwater only, some saltwater, and some no experience at all and this is their first time to wet a hook. I will take them all and my goal is to teach them something that works for them to catch that fish! Most times I learn from them too and then apply that to my next group of anglers. Sometimes like the other day I get anglers already fluent in the art of wading with lures! This is my preferred method of catching these spots and dots down here and hopefully the requests of lure trips will rise.

June is upon us and that means the fish are agreeable to most presentations of lures. I have been successful though in the water column versus on top and with 1/4 to 1/8 oz. jig head weights with a combination of soft plastics including the TTF Trout Killer, Killer Flats Minnow and the Killer Hustler. It hasn’t mattered that much on the color but I have been trying to stay with a dark color body and bright tail like the morning glory/Chartreuse combo, red/white and purple/chartreuse and they have all produced. The key has been to work the water column entirely and that means (CAST-COUNT-TWITCH-REEL)! Cast the lure downwind to get the most sensitivity having a straight line to the lure. Count to three, then Twitch the rod tip up twice, letting it fall while Reeling up the slack. I have used this simple method for countless years and it works well for me. The fish usually will pop that lure on the downfall which is perfect since your next move was Reeling anyway-it’s easy to set the hook and Reel that fish in. Keep your rod up in the air and feel the pressure of the bow in it. So many times, I will see an angler set the hook then reel and set it again with slack in the line-and they lose the fish. Keep that rod bowed up, and pressure on the hook which is stuck in a nice trout’s mouth! If you are on a keep fish mission have a wade fishing net with you. The floating nets are good because they’re not wrapped around your legs under water causing you to trip on the tangled mess. These also work as a temporary live well if you want to leave the fish without sticking a stringer through its mouth. However, the ring foam donut type floating nets may be a better bet for you, they are bulky but hard to beat on a long wade. I see guys making a big mistake consistently on the method of adding the fish to a stringer. Those things don’t come with instructions as far as I know but do this and you will have the best chance at keeping the fish alive (and not spoiling) until you get back to the boat. Use the sharp end of the stringer stick to punch into and through the fish’s thin flesh under its mouth near the center…avoid running it through the mouth and out of the gills. This way the fish swims more freely and can get the oxygen it needs and will not usually float beside you stiff as a board!

I have heard enough stories of waders having run ins with stingrays to scare me into donning the most protection I am comfortable with. That said I am wearing ray guards around my lower legs now just to be sure. I still have boots that can be punctured but at least I feel a bit more protected. Also, the menacing varieties of jellyfish and man o war are prolific especially the deeper we get into Summer, so wear some protection for those guys too. Simply put on long pants and ease into the water. Three of my waders this past week were hit by these fiery globs and were sent into different degrees of pain lasting too long and making their wade very uncomfortable.

There are so many ways to get out and enjoy our coastal resources but the key is to find the time to go! I say today is the day so get out and join us on the water and see what this sport is all about.

Wading and fishing topwater plugs is about as good as fishing gets on the Port O’Connor bays. Photo by Capt. Robert Sloan, www.luckystrikeguide.com.

Big lures catch big fish. It’s rare that an angler hasn’t heard that phrase before. And most of the time that’s a pretty true statement. But not always.
Case in point is Bud Rowland’s state record 15.60-pound speckled trout. He caught that big girl on a crab imitation fly that’s about 2 inches long.

Two of the most popular lures for trout in the five-pound-plus range are a Super Spook and Top Dog. The Spook has been around for decades, and the Dog has proven its worth time and again.

Guide Jim West is well known for catching big trout and has done well fishing big trout tournaments. He’s partial to Top Dogs and She Dogs.

The heaviest trout I’ve ever caught weighed right at 10 pounds. She blew up on a Top Dog with a black body and chartreuse head. Needless to say I’ll never forget that strike. When she hit the lure was sitting dead still.

On most days fishing a topwater plug for trout can be a waste of time, unless you’ve got the right water. By that I mean a semi-green current, lots of mullet and calm water. It’s tough to get a trout to pay much attention to a lure that’s being worked in choppy water. But it’s definitely not impossible.

The thing that makes a Top Dog and a Super Spook so unique is that they are big lures with built in rattles. Plus, on a steady stop and go retrieve, they go from left, right, left, right creating a pretty good disturbance on the surface. Combine that with a built in rattle and you’ve got a plug that’s making enough commotion to get a lot of attention, especially on a slick surface.

A few years back I was out on the water with bass fishing pro Billy Murray. We were fishing the backwater areas out of Venice, La. The wind was howling, the skies were black with storm clouds and things didn’t look too good. Murray suggested we fish the narrow oil canal cuts. It didn’t take long for him to put on a show with a Super Spook.

“The trick is to fish them slow when the action isn’t exactly overwhelming,” said Murray. “I like to cast the lure out, let it sit, then work it back with a very slow retrieve, one that allows the bait to stop for a split second each time it goes from left to right.”

Of course colors of lures make a difference. And scaling down from a big lure to a smaller one can often be a factor. But getting a heart stopping blow up on a big topwater is what makes fishing worth the effort.

To book a Port O’Connor fishing trip with Capt. Robert Sloan check out www.luckystrikeguide.com, call 409-782-6796 or email sloan288@aol.com. We specialize in wading and drift fishing the bays, as well as fishing the jetties and the surf.