TexasKayakFisherman.com

Ocean Kayak Frenzy I bought April 2000, as a celebration after I got my employer to move me from contract to salary by reminding him I was about to finish my masters degree and would soon be a lot more marketable. Twenty three years later the employer is a faint memory, but the Frenzy, I still own a...

I pull reds out pretty regularly, but yeah, a lot of sandies in our canal, which suits me; when fresh they taste just like specks.

That’s a pretty cool setup, impulse. Although I think we’re going to stay with no lights. We live at the end of the canal, and the lights tended to attract people in pickups or golf carts who would drive on our lawn and rut up the grass and break our sprinkler system to fish over them.

I own a house in Pirates Cove, you’re going to find a lot fewer underwater lights than there used to be. We got tired of replacing ours when they went out a couple of years ago, just got too expensive, and my guess is that’s the same reason so many other’ lights went out recently. It felt like every...

I don’t think the world “turned into “ anything, people have been stealing since the beginning of time. And this kind of casual theft of anything unattended isn’t limited to certain races or socioeconomic levels. My stepson has been a counselor at one of the venerable old Hill Country summer camps f...

Three friends from high school and I camped in Guadalupe Mountains National Park the last weekend in March/1st in April, and climbed Guadalupe Peak, the tallest mountain in Texas, at 8,751 feet. Took us about 3 hours to get up, and about 2 to get back down. Some pics from the summit.

I agree with Neumie, I like to keep a shrimp boil simple, but I am even more purist about it. Also, I prefer boiled shrimp to be cold, and cold sausage is unappealing (Neumie's idea of cooking the sausage separately is a great tip if you're going to have a hot boil, though), cold corn on the cob isn...

Stringers were and still are an alternative method to icing fish. A fish kept alive on a stringer is going to stay fresh, and ostensibly a fish that dies on a stringer is going to stay fresh for at least a little bit submerged in cool water (though risky). Old-school stream trout flyfishermen would ...

If you like chicken piccata, then the flavors of this classic French dish, usually prepared with skate, a close relative to stingrays, will be very familiar to you. This elegant, tasty, yet simple and easy recipe is a nice change of pace from standard methods of preparing stingray like using cookie ...

Definitely, whether you have a gps on board or not, have a compass and chart, and know how to use them. And while it probably won’t be of a lot of practical use to a kayaker, if you have a larger boat and ever think you might do some offshore cruising, I encourage you to learn celestial navigation. ...

I still have a handheld Garmin receiver I bought in the mid 90s. It's not my primary but I use it on occasion. It survived the 1999 rollover without any patch, will be interesting to see if it survives this one. All my other receivers have been bought post-2010.

If I want frozen fish I can get whatever species I want from the store, so a five-fish limit for specs is more than enough to enjoy fresh fish for me. The fisheries biologists who determine what limits are needed don't set them to spite fishermen (most of them are fishermen themselves) and work hard...

This weekend I was down at the house on the west end of Galveston that my family has owned for over 35 years. It is at the end of the canal (the "cul de sac" of the canal, if you will), and our property line meets that of the house across the canal from us at the midpoint of the end bulkhe...

Everything OrangeQuest said is right on the money. Check out ACA's website to find a certified instructor in your area to start out learning the right skills fast:

https://www.americancanoe.org/search/newsearch.asp

I don't have a Yeti, though there have been two times in the last 10 years it might have been nice to have one, first was a summer camping trip to Big Bend, second was a summer camping trip to Grand Canyon. Having the Coleman out on my trailer hitch cargo carrier in the summer sun, I was buying a go...

Yeah, the most basic safety tip for waders has always been to wear a tight belt over them.

Reef Donkey wrote:

Hey, I think you're infringing on my username trademark!

Anyone been out there during Christmas break or Spring Break? My wife, daughter and I'd be driving straight through from Houston (did similar drive to Big Bend a few years ago, so know we have the endurance) and car camping. My big concern is driving all the way out there, and given the fact that th...

Occasionally I'll do real cooking while car camping, and then on the other end when doing certain ultralight backpacking I do no more cooking than heating up water on an Esbit stove, but most of my camping food falls in between these two extremes, where I want a hot meal but not a lot of cleanup or ...

With softshell, you might want to mix in some flour to the dredge.

This is a favorite summer dish of mine, and a specialty of the Texas coast from the Sabine (border with Louisiana) down to Galveston. It was made famous by a restaurant in Sabine Pass called Grainger's which started making it back in the 1940s. I never got to eat at Granger's as it burned down in th...

Spec-tac-u-lar wrote:Thanks reefmonkey...really great post and information. I will definitely use bow/stern lines. I will be going to buy some straps this weekend. Thanks again!

Excellent, you're making a wise decision.

I definitely wouldn't run though those handles, I wouldn't want to have to rely on the rivets not pulling out from the stress over time. Just strap it down over the hull. And there is really no reason NOT to use bow and stern tiedowns, especially on an Explorer, where it'll be easy to find places to...

This is why I have sharpied my name, address, cell and home phone numbers to all my paddle craft. This way if they got loose (like they did during Ike, for instance) and are found by an honest person, I can get them back, and if found by first responders, they can call me and I can say I'm fine and ...

I would also note, I think it's not a legal means to catch them with a net for consumption, only as bait. But I could be mistaken. Looking through the outdoor annual, looks like you're right on that, my bad. Though in this case, I was preparing it for "research and educational purposes" w...