Corpusfishing.com

[Towboat Trash]

"And it's too late to save, what might have been.
It's over, and nobody wins."

--Kris Kristofferson, "Nobody Wins"



"Well, that's it, we're stuck! Oh well! Dont worry though Billy, even though it'll be dark in a few hours, I got plenty of stories I'll tell ya if you behave so you won't get bored while we sit here waiting for help to come sometime tomorrow morning! Plus, I got a jumbo size can of black beans we can eat for dinner!" We sat there at the entrance the Back Island road exit as Billy Sandifer only looked out the passenger window of my Ram 2500 in silence, covered in some kinda wintergreen lotion akin to IcyHot. With any luck, my antics would get him to blow his top. I watched him carefully out of the corner of my eye to see his reaction. Slowly, he said, "Co-Linn, let me out I wanna see something," looking out over the fore dune ridge with a faraway look on his face. "Well, alright, come-on then." It was a strange look in his eyes. Standing on the dune looking out over the old Chappele's House and Back road in silence, he stopped and looked directly at me. "Co-Linn something about this has changed. This is NOT the same. Charlie and I abandoned a car right over there. I don't see it. This whole area has changed. "Now Billy, we aren't at the old exit, we're at the new one that came in later in the 80's...." And before we left that day we talked old island roads, and old times, and he told me the story of the old "Panama Road" and the ranger that performed his dirty deeds back there back in the day. And he had me from hello, but he knew that, and that was our last trip ever down island before he passed. Rest In Peace Cap.

--2017 beach trip with Captain Billy Sandifer, old guide on Padre. Rest In Peace.





"Oh yes, years ago. Years ago we fished in the hole. But in the late 20's, the early 30's, there was no way to transport the fish out--chickens walked over that way. That algae on this side all around the hole is a mix of Facia type algae, what they call a mixture Facia. And the da*n stuff is a labyrinth, you know--the water flows over it and back. You step on it--if you put all your weight on it, you could go through it. But you could start, when you hit it, just like you were skating. And I'm down in the Hole and I picked out six or seven big trout that weighed 10 or 15 pounds and I was starting back with them. I'd get--oh, he**, --maybe half a mile and I'd throw one down, and before I got back to where I'd come from, I wouldn't have but one.

We couldn't get them out. We didn't have the transportation to get them out. And then a seismograph crew came down there in the '30's and they'd take them out on tractors and take the wheels--the lugs that were on the wheels--off, and they'd take 2*6's, about that long, and bolted them on--you know, so they cold get across there.

There's one of them still down there--I can show it to you. But it didn't work and we bought about the same thing, 'cause, he**, if we could have got them out of there...You could go over there--I'm not lying to you, Bob--you could go over there and one person could take two or three thousand or whatever you could gut and gill and haul back before they spoiled. You couldn't walk in there barefoot because there were so dam* many bones from fish that had died--you know, got trapped there. It was solid. Oh, yes, I know that--we called it the Graveyard. Now they just call it The Hole on the map. No we called it the Graveyard. Dam*, if I'd had the transportation they have now, I could have taken 10, 15, 20 thousand pounds out of there in a day."

--1978 oral interviews with Louis Rawalt, WWI veteran and one of the first to fish and live on Padre Island.








Guess I knew what I would find this week after such a terrible freeze event. We've heard it's a 100 year freeze, we've heard it's been way worse up north around Matagorda with the mortality rates. With that in mind, I took off this week for a few days to put some miles in on my old boots on the algal mats down south from the old Murdock's landing, the Meadows, Nine Mile Hole, and down around the old Chappelle House on the back side near the old clay Pleistocene outcropping covered in Huisache. I've never understood or agreed with the money and time spent on air boating up every green turtle that washes in during the winters. Times are so hard and food is so scarce down south that the coyotes let no part of the green turtles go to waste. For years a man can find their empty shells, a meal for a critter just trying to survive, and maybe that's the upside of the freezes that hit us so hard in some years. But like always, a man better go see for himself before forming an opinion, and to understand the Island, I knew I'd better go get after it.

And Yarborough.




Just about all trout.



And I left there and went south.


Before I even got out walking I saw the death.


And our friends the Coyotes were already prowling, no one is going hungry down south right now.


Sorry, these were from the camera phone.


And to my shock, every last fish but maybe 5 to 10% were trout.


And I mean TROUT. Some of the biggest freaking trout I have EVER SEEN.


And it was awful.




And a lot of juveniles as well, a LOT of juveniles.


And black drum even.


And green turtles.






The coyotes always get the intestines.


Gone...




Just all trout.


Yes, this too is ALL trout...


It was just astounding.




Son of a *(&*


Just nonstop trout for miles.


Trout, perch, croakers, drum, and turtles....


Just pointless? What sense did this make? And it was dam* hard to understand, easily differentiated from the minor cold snaps I've seen before this.


Just destruction.


Washed in all over at the high water mark from the storm.


And I saw TROUT like I've NEVER seen before...I've been hunting these big girls for years around the old Murdock's Landing, Meadows, the Middle Ground, and in The Graveyard. But they're DANG smart, and they're DANG savvy, and they don't let you make mistakes and they don't care for my bright yellow Ocean Kayak but here they were, the ending of trout in the 30 inch category.


The largest I measured went 31 inches. Darn near awful.








And the coyotes had their pick that day.






Son of gun!!!!




And the wind blew and the does ran and the birds were gone....just about absent other than pelicans and one rogue scissor tailed flycatcher dipping and dodging through the grasses and depressions.


Hello my friends. I'm back again for just a short while to visit with you...




And like always, the Island remains a study of an ecosystem never to be focused on only one species, but on the whole. So hours later further south, one of our old friends, the 20 mm Autocannon shells from the WWII Navy flight trainers when the Island was a bombing range.





And the makeup down south was more perch and croaker, less trout, which was interesting in and of itself.




And of the few reds of the day was found.


Moments like these remain why I love this Island so much.


And, of course.




This huisache ridge outcropping is very remote and always chock full of life. Been quite a few years since I visited.




And there was movement miles and miles away.


And I followed Billy's old unused for the last 25 years road back, and sat for several hours. Watched the fog come in. Thought about what I'd seen, what it taught me as far as where these big trout were at when the storm hit. And while the fog set back in from the surf to the back of the island, waited for ghosts.


And I suppose the ghosts came and sat with me a while, of old Louis Rawalt, and Billy, and even my dear friend Ralph Wade. Every last one and others too, gone but not forgotten. And only God Himself could see me or bothered to look down or watch.


Fly high my friend.


I don't pretend I understand the way nature deals out the cards. But she plays the dealer and we play the hand we're given I guess. Nature is a cruel master and she can be brutal, and the reality is, it is up to us to conserve what resources remain. Will you eat what you take, or will it spoil in the freezer?

You all take best care.

--Colin
_________________
Protect Padre at all costs for future generations to use and enjoy and never forget our freedoms aren't free.

www.padreislandexpeditions.com

[BayFly]

Thank you for sharing this sad experience. I too hope few make it to the freezer any time soon, but from the reports I have seen the last few days it may not be from choice, but from availability. I'm wondering if the big girls and turtles went shallow by choice or did the wind push them there after they were stunned? This is definitely my least favorite trip down the island with you Colin. Take care, and better times will come. Sorry about the name change!

[roberino]

Thanks for sharing. I hope populations in other areas that reportedly faired better are able to help replenish the shallows off landcut. One Baffin guide reported running 60 miles of shoreline in Baffin without seeing a sizable kill and credited the deep barge channel in the bay that rarely sees traffic. Others reported water draining at the bottom of landcut at 39 deg ten feet down, with out of state barge traffic through during the worst of it and dead fish with silt in their gills. These photos are terrible, but hopefully its a local event like the Pringle Lake kill 3-4 years back that saw a quick rebound.

[ziacatcher]

Thanks for sharing to about. Sad to see those big trout succumb to the cold

[Wileycoyote]

Thank you for sharing your stories and pictures, I always look forward to your post.

[lifeaquatic]

Gone pre-spawn.

I really applaud the guides that promote "empty stringer" as an option. And I'd like to see more of that. (vote for me and your wildest dreams will come true)

Collin, thanks for taking us along. Do you think Mr. Rawalt personally coined the name Graveyard? Excellent reference for the story.
_________________
kick your shoes off and cast a line

[Towboat Trash]

[Towboat Trash]

[lifeaquatic]

You do some impressive research. I didn't know it would have dated back that far. I always had the impression the term Graveyard came from those walking in before the ICW construction by approaching from the Laguna. It never occurred to me that access would have been made from the island.
_________________
kick your shoes off and cast a line

[HungerBuster]

Most do not know that all of those flats are from the sea-side dune migration. The dead grass then fills in with the detritus from the dead fish/animals. The tide flattens it out and flushes. Always a fun read and I learn from them. But the pictures...they tell the story. Awesome.
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Fish ON!

[Rebecca of Sunnybrookfarm]

thanks for the report....missed you at the clean up
becky
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[Bryhn]

Thanks for the report. This will definitely be a catch and release year for me.

Toughest part is to see so many 20-30" trout gone. That really hurts.


Question:

What is everyone's estimation of number of days or weeks worth of kept trout this kill would equal (trout only since that seems to be the main loss)? I think about a normal weekend on the water and the number of boats out there... Not everyone limits out or keeps their limit, but there is still a lot of fishing going on. Just thought it would be interesting to see everyone's guess and what kind of perspective it could give us..

I have not been down there, so it would be difficult to make a good estimate..

[Rebecca of Sunnybrookfarm]

[roberino]

Fish kill report comming next week:

https://www.tpr.org/bioscience-medicine/2021-03-07/texas-parks-and-wildlife-department-assesses-widespread-death-of-fish-due-to-winter-storm

[roberino]

guess they released it early:

https://tpwd.texas.gov/newsmedia/releases/?req=20210310c

3.8 million fish...

"Recreationally important game species accounted for the other 9% of the total. Of that 9%, the dominant species included Spotted Seatrout (48%), Black Drum (31%), Sheepshead (8%), Sand Seatrout (7%), Red Drum (3%), Gray Snapper (2%), and Red Snapper (<1%).

Both the Upper and Lower Laguna Madre bay systems were hit particularly hard by this event.

The Lower Laguna Madre had the highest mortality of Spotted Seatrout with an estimated 104,000 fish killed. That comprised 65% of the total estimated Spotted Seatrout killed and when combined with the Upper Laguna Madre, it comprised 89% of the total estimated Spotted Seatrout mortality along the Texas coast. Similarly, the Upper Laguna Madre had experienced Black Drum mortality at an estimated 82,600 fish and comprised 78% of the coastwide Black Drum killed.

Historical Comparison

... the overall number of fish killed in this event appears to be lower than any of the three freeze events in the 1980s.... However, the Spotted Seatrout mortality in the combined Upper and Lower Laguna Madres is comparable to the events from the 1980