I rarely ever fish on Saturday....sometimes on Sunday.

I've fished Fence Lake for a long time. If I head up there I will go in the airboat, cut in and work up toward Vinson's, park it and hike about a mile if need be.

I haven't fished Peyton's or Gladis in a long time. When I started fishing Gladis( I don't think it had a name} most people were afraid to run that far due to the dependability of outboards. Very few had tilt & trim and most boats were "V" bottoms.....

Well played "old man!"

Looks pretty damn good to me.

Beautiful skiff and even better stories!

You drive the home made scooter up there from PM? That's a trek in a small boat! Any idea if you built your scooter before Payton, around the same time?

My in-laws lived next to Payton back in the day. My father in-law said he'd stay up late at night working on boats so he could fish during the days.

sunchaser said:

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A barge wiped out the pier on the land cut about two years later and at the same time several of us acquired a place up near Green Island. I would rent a small aluminum boat at Port M and tow it. I fished mostly around Green Island & the Saucer. I only fished the west side of the spoil dumps near Peyton's.

It was a much harder area to fish with all that matted grass. I started fishing it much later when I had a Shallow Sport drifting over the grass and throwing my tuned Johnson Sprites over the top of the grass in the afternoon.

This was a first wade one morning long ago at Peyton's. It was a tough place to wade.

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Man I'd love to buy you a beer and swap stories. The backside of Green Island is a sightcasting dream. I've waded barefoot on the sand back there sight casting to reds. It almost makes you feel like you've been transplanted onto a flat in the Bahamas or something.

Quick Gladis' hole story. When I was still in college my buddies and I did a trip down to PM one winter determined to catch trophy trout. Over the course of 3 days we had caught hundreds of trout and could probably count the number of trout under 18" on one hand. We caught so many trout in the 25" range it was ridiculous but none broke 27" although we had hooked and lost 2 that would've been close. Well on the 4th day we wake up to gale force winds of a strong cold front rolling in but it was our last day and we weren't going to let that stop us. We decide to run to the saucer where the previous day my buddy had hooked a monster trout that literally ripped the rod out of his hands. We fish maybe an hour without a bite and decide to pow wow at the boat for a beer and to figure out a new plan. Well in our genius we decide to go big or go home and run to Gladis' from the Saucer. We'd stuck some solid fish there and we figured with the strong North Wind we'd find some protection there. So we make that run in a 24' Dargel Skout straight into what had to be a 25mph north wind. Within the first 100 yards of the wade my buddy catches and releases a trout just under 30"



Within an hour my other buddy catches and releases this beauty that taped just over 30". Note the keystone light in the front of the waders.



I unfortunately didn't get on the board that trip with a big trout but it was still the most epic fishing trip I've ever been on. After my buddy caught that 30" sow I caught a trout around 25" and have never been so disappointed catching a trout that size in my life haha. We got spoiled for sure.

I'm a pretty dedicated fly fisher now a days but wading muddy flats in the winter time chunking corkies for trophy trout will always be my exception.

She's a beauty! Gonna be a poon chasing machine next summer!

Man that's a really cool map, I'd love to find a copy of that to hang up.

Maybe you know the answer to this. About 3/4 of the way between port and the landcut there's an area on padre island that has what looks like some old dredged out channels to it, but there's not structure there. I always wondered what used to be there and always assumed it was some old house or GW station but could never find a good answer. It's north of that spot labeled "Old Boiler" on the map. We've always called it Port ****hole. Any idea of what it used to be?

There was a rig at the end of that channel once.


And there are never any flounder in that cut so just keep on drivin.

The boiler was a landmark near the beach. It was the boiler from the wreck of the Nicaragua that was lost in a storm many many years ago. Before GPS and Loran you would take your headings and start your navigation from the boiler to find the snapper rocks.

Shipwrecks and washed up stuff fascinates me. Quick GIS pulled up this:

That map brings back a lot of memories. We used to fish the Bay Area inside the northern circle that says reds and trout. Drifting in about 18-24" if clear water grass beds. We called it Dub's Island. One morning the entire Bay was as smooth as glass very strange for down there. We chased a school of black drum all morning and loaded up the boat. We used to rent a trailer on Ranch Dr. walk down to the gas station in the evening for an ice cream and to watch the deer come in.

On the north one......I always assumed that was an oil cut. "I believe" at the time I fished a lot there that it had a string of small spoil islands along one side. Correct me if I'm wrong CP but I also believe there was roughly a 16-18" abandoned pipeline that was very visible and hit many times. It ran east & west.

There was a lot of junk in the water. A good while after I left the valley I read that they had promoted some type of cleanup effort and a man was killed when he hit an obstacle.

There was another unmarked channel just north of Green Island.

I would always be at Gladis or Peyton's at daylight. A flashlight in those days was good for finding socks and not a whole lot more. If I ran up toward Gladis I knew there was a single huge post sticking out of the water about eight feet. I would run several miles and slow down and point the flash light. It would always appear straight off the bow of the boat. Your internal compass seems to take over.Once I passed it I could get back on plane.

As soon as Centerpole promotes the annual Port Mansfield Aggie get together I'll see if my internal compass still works.

You wouldn't need a compass anymore sunchaser; you can just see all the boats and get in line. They should put a traffic light in at the main entrance to Gladis. I prefer to come in from Little Bay when water allows - you scare some boats that way... 'Where the F did HE come from?'

I remember the bay cleanup even if I don't remember what prompted it. Bank owner, outdoorsman, and Aggie Dial Dunkin was a big organizer of that effort.

The channel you're talking bout north of Green Island is still there; the spoils still top the water. I was thinking why it's not marked on the map - probably because when those maps were printed if you were fishing from Mansfield the world ended at the saucer. There wasn't much need to go south from there and the water was too shallow for deeper draft boats. Then when the shallow draft scooters became more prevalent fisherman started venturing farther south. But if you recall, before then MOST fishing was in deeper water: saucer, where the weather station is now, targets, along the East Cut, and the potholes up north. None of those required a super skinny boat.

I'm ready for the big TexAgs fishing invitational - I just need a certain someone to get the boarding house built.

Is Little Bay the area you can cut into a couple of miles from Gladis? If it isn't that was a great place to hem up some reds...water permitting.

Yes

Since the threads taken a LLM turn. .. My dad and grandparents used to always lament the drastic decline in #s of doormat flounder at the Arroyo Y after the hard freezes in the 80s. Kind of sad I never got to experience that. We almost always ran South out of Arroyo city to fish around gas well flats, but every once in a while we'd go North for some green island and saucer action. The spoil banks on the NE side of greens were always a favorite of mine.


And the Texags saltwater meetup that keeps getting kicked around... Is 2018 finally the year? Have push pole, will travel.

Set a weekend and I'll be there.

Centerpole90 said:

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Username checks out.

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If you only knew how bad I hate my job.

The guy from Arkansas I mentioned earlier loved to tinker. When we went fishing at the land cut at night he and I would flounder using Coleman lanterns. He came over one day and said, "I've got an idea."

We wound up taking a couple of pieces of 4" irrigation pipe, more 1-1/4" aluminum pipe, electrical wire, gulf wax, motorcycle lights and made some underwater flounder lights.

We tied a rope to an inner tube, strapped a piece of plywood on top and bolted a plastic battery box to the plywood. Loaded the car battery inside and headed out. The lights were awesome.

Of course when we got back to Port M we decided to revise our use of the car battery.

sunchaser said:

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The guy from Arkansas I mentioned earlier loved to tinker. When we went fishing at the land cut at night he and I would flounder using Coleman lanterns. He came over one day and said, "I've got an idea."

We wound up taking a couple of pieces of 4" irrigation pipe, more 1-1/4" aluminum pipe, electrical wire, gulf wax, motorcycle lights and made some underwater flounder lights.

We tied a rope to an inner tube, strapped a piece of plywood on top and bolted a plastic battery box to the plywood. Loaded the car battery inside and headed out. The lights were awesome.

Of course when we got back to Port M we decided to revise our use of the car battery.

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The first recorded underwater gigging light haha.

One of the most epic days of flounder fishing w/ rod & reel I've ever had was one fall in the land cut. We were posted up on a corner where one of the King Ranch cuts meets the land cut. The current was ripping through the land cut hard than I've ever seen it and we stood and dragged plastics on the bottom from the deepwater up the ledge of that corner and murdered flounder. There were 4 of us and we all caught our limit casting to one spot that couldn't have been bigger than about 20' x 20'. To that point I'd never caught a limit of flounder (10 at them time) and I had a stringer of huge ones.

I'd totally be down for a Texags 2018 LLM hoot.

Salt of the water said:

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Well if sunchaser won't share some skiff pictures, I have some of a much less purdy boat for y'all.

Finally got my panga back from the glass guy. Hope to have it rigged and ready for poon by the end of this year.





Had 10 ft rod tubes installed on the port side. Going to make cutouts to slide in a fly rod/reel and twist the reel down to seat it. Chose protection over convenience since the hull is rolled gunnel, hopefully it's not such a pain that I regret it.

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Dude! That is awesome. What are the hull dimensions?

19' long, 5' beam. Haven't taped out the sides of the hull, but before the glass work it was drafting about 8-10 inches and had about 10-12 inches of freeboard at the transom.

Hoping the added glass didn't kill my draft, but the new layout is going to make me have to fiddle with trim for sure. I have a 20 gal fuel tank in the stern now so I'm going to be pretty heavy in the back. Thinking a couple heavy trolling motor batteries under the bow deck will help. If the batteries and a 200 lb angler wont trim it out while poling, plan B is to add cooler tie-downs to the front deck and move a cooler up there once I'm on the flats. If that doesn't work I'm just going to have to only fish with Finn


I'm working on getting dual batteries, lights, gps, vhf, and bilge pumps rigged up to get me back on the water. Planning to follow up with a poon chasing trolling motor, hopefully I-pilot, after I get everything else sorted.

Currently I'm accumulating all the junk I need for rigging / wiring so I can try and put a dent in it over Thanksgiving. I'm trying to do things so they meet AYBC standards so it's taking lots of research because I don't know squat about rigging. The wife is about to shoot me because I took up a spare room and spread out everything to get a terminal / mounting bolt count. I think about 80% of what I need is in the mail.

Did some prelim layouts for the panels inside the console set up last night. I got a tiny console because of the narrow beam so I'm trying to do as much prework on starboard panels as I can to minimize the wiring work I'll have to do in the enclosure.







The gheenoe... it can wait.

Well, IIRC both times we've fished together we've found and caught fish. Not a ton but still.

Even if the second time out I was nursing a hangover and pretty much got heat exhaustion.

Nice work. I was about to ask about the gheenoe. Well if you find yourself bow heavy I'm 180# so hmu.

Looking for recommendations for a 11 wt. rod. Any thoughts on 4, or 2 piece rods? I will be pairing it up with a Tibor Gulfstream.

I have several trips planned over the next 2 years. I will be chasing tarpon; beachfront in Texas, Florida Panhandlle, 10K Islands in Florida and Belize. Also, going to shallow blue water in Texas to the rigs for; amber jacks, jack crevelle, ling and what ever else I can find blind casting to the rigs.

No need to convince me to buy a 10 or 12 wt. My brother has all the even wt. rods for 4-12. I have all the odd wt. rods from 3-9. I can borrow any of his anytime. Just got the itch for a new tarpon set up for Christmas.

I have looked at the;

• Scott Meridian MS81011- 8'-10"- 2 Piece for $865.00
• Scott Meridian MS90011- 9'-0" -4 Piece for $865.00
• TFO Bluewater LD -9'-0"- 4 Piece for $335.00

Any others out there?

TIA

I'm a big Scott fan. I've got 2 8wts and a 10wt Scott but in all honesty they do have a reputation for breaking on tarpon. Unless you managed to hunt up an old Heliply.

My go-to tarpon stick is a 12wt Hardy ProAxis and I think Rick Sawyer throws a Hardy Zephyrus (replaced the ProAxis line) in 11wt. I would highly recommend looking at the Hardy sticks in the 11-12wt category.

As for the TFO line, they're durable and strong but that's about all I can say.

Lots of closeout $800 sage sticks selling for around $500 right now. I don't have any direct experience with them, but quite a few people seem to like the salt model for poon.

Does the Belize guide you plan on using have rods? Driving or flying to Florida? Seems like those two questions should drive the 2 peice vs 4 peice.

Speaking of rod suggestions, does anyone have any experience with Colton rods? I'm thinking of getting a new 10wt setup for TX nearshore and these rods are usually priced 50% off around this time of year. From what I understand they tradewind series rod has a really powerful butt section for lifting which sounds like it'd work great for TX jacks and tarpon in deeper water.

We will be flying to Florida and Belize. Our guides certainly have rods to use. I just like to have a rod so when I go without a guide.


I will check the sage rods.

I thought the 2 piece rod would perform better than a 4 piece Rod. Or is that just a old technology concept?

Thanks Finn, I will look at the Hardy rods.