Sports

If you’re going to enjoy the outdoor lifestyle, you’re going to have to embrace a little bad weather every once in a while. It has been an unusually rainy summer in South Texas which has had us reaching for the rain gear quite often while we are out there on the water. Fish like bad weather, or maybe they just like to see us struggling while we pursue them, but either way foul weather seems to turn on the bite. Rain that falls in South Texas during the heat of summer is always welcome and the influx of freshwater that the plants and trees enjoy so much will also enhance the life of the bay. Freshwater is a part of the chemistry of the bay and many species out there actually require a little fresh water to thrive, so we take the bad with the good and just keep the rain gear handy.

Aransas Pass Panthers take the field Friday night in Rockport. Photos by James Granger

The big freeze that hit the coast of Texas earlier this year had devastating effects in the short term with so many gamefish and baitfish being killed. The long-term effects of the cold, as well as fishing the pressure of summer, has definitely taken a toll on the fish populations. What I have discovered over the past few months is that the areas where speckled trout and redfish were once intermingled are now inhabited mainly by redfish. Before the freeze, when we drifted vast expenses of seagrass flats, the expectations of seeing multiple species was a constant. There are speckled trout to be caught but I have found them along migration routes that are predictable for those fish in the summer pattern, but not widely dispersed across the flats. In previous seasons which were relatively uninterrupted by disastrous weather events, we had enjoyed many areas where you had a 50-50 chance of trout or redfish on every cast and the two species were definitely intermingling throughout the year. Recovery will take a few years, but we will get back to that level as each individual bay system up and down the coast faces its own challenges.