Completely understand, Fly. I was thinking of you just the other day when my son was here. He fell in love with the area, the fishing and just the general idea of South-Texas. I drove him over to the village on Long Island and he loved that too. I mentioned that you had rented out there a time or two and wished you had been around to give him the inside scoop. I'm sure he will figure out how to network into an info stream somehow and by the next time they come down they'll know a lot more about it than I do.

I'm feeling better all the time. So well in fact I'm feeling naked without a boat....lol I'll curb my feelings and rely on my friends to get me out on occasion. Give our best to Marion and let her know we're pulling for her. I monitor her postings on FB so I can sort of tell how she's doing. Winter is almost over, you only have a 100 more days left. Buy her a new Lincoln and cheer her up.

The water temperature on the lower Laguna Madre has warmed just a little. It is still a couple of weeks behind schedule and our days aren't quite as sunny and bright as they usually are at this time of year but we're getting there. Some local bait shops are getting live shrimp on a limited basis. If you want to fish the weekend it would be smart to get shrimp mid-week and put them on the pump until you need them. Fuel prices are still pretty steep so we probably won't see any substantial relief until those skippers can make a few $$ on local runs. Meanwhile, trout on the flats are hungry! If it isn't one thing it's another. Tight lines bros.

Thanks for all the good wishes, friends. It's really good to be back even if just on a limited basis.

Cold water, Fred. Plus the cost of fuel and the flood of frozen shrimp from Asian shrimp farms. Shrimpers can't make any $$ on short catches so they don't even go out.

Well, after 3 operations and way too many months with doctors telling me I'd better hold off for a little longer, I finally got back out on the water Friday. It was cold in the morning but it was the only day we had as my son and his wife were only in town for three days. I called my buddy, Captain Danny Tamoyo at Port Isabel, Texas and he said let's do it. We fished the flats of South Bay and picked up a couple of Black Drum and two nice Sheepsheads and then headed to the old causeway to see what was happening there. Which was not much but a few dink croakers and then we went to the "Y" and fished the shallows for trout on popping corks. My daughter in law caught a over-slot speck and couldn't quite understand why her best fish of the day had to go back. We did pick up a couple of keepers though and a puppy red and we had plenty of fish for fish-taco's and fillets. Three hours of fishing and I was beat! Slept like a log last night. There are no live shrimp to be had in South-Texas from Brownsville, South-Padre Island and clear up to Corpus. Danny had a friend who took a tank truck up to Corpus the day before so we were one of the few who had bait. I don't know how long this situation will last but I'll keep my ear to the ground.

Getting old is not for sissies and the Padre and I work pretty hard at it. Getting better from all the battles of getting old is even harder I think, and we've both been devoting a lot of time to that lately too. I've got the shakes and couldn't color inside the lines if I were painting a barn so I was completely amazed when he brought this over to me the other day, and a bit choked up if I might ad. I spent the day at the ER yesterday and it probably set my schedule back a bit, but we're not finished yet old pard. We didn't get this far without a trick or two up our sleeves, so I'm confident we'll be back at it soon. Thanks, my friend, I'll treasure this!

That sounds interesting. More notes for my folder.

It looks like your consideration list is very similar to mine.....lol I like what I'm seeing so far. Texas does not have a personal income tax which is a great plus but it lacks, at least in my area, for fresh water fishing opportunities. I'm not sure if I have the strength and stamina to do another "project" boat build but there seems to be plenty of opportunities for it if what I see on Craigslist or Marketplace is any indication. Also, its been quite a while since we've faced an honest to goodness freezing temperature. I suppose we could learn to live with it again though. Our favorite, so far, is Mountain Home.

Thanks Mas fish, Pending a good surgery recovery period I think we are going to try to take a trip up there and check out the retirement home situation and maybe wet a line or two. we've done some preliminary internet browsing. My top choices are san Angelo Texas and Mountain Home Arkansas. The wife is holding out for Madrid and Lisbon but I think she'll compromise....lol A buddy PM'ed me with a place I can get a two part topo map that supposedly has all the info on it and I've ordered the western portion of it. All the info you sent I've made notes of and I'm compiling a good reference file. I'll find one or die trying....lol

When I lived in the lake district of Northern Wisconsin near Minocqua we had over 2,000 fishable lakes at our disposal. There was just no way you could ever get to know them all. Some enterprising individual put together a book of maps that was available at the bait shops in the area for lakes that had improved facilities like launch sites, parking lots, etc. Okay, I might be ready to go after one of my bucket-list fish, namely a crappie over 16", and I think the place I'm going to go to is the Bull Shoals area. I've looked at Amazon for a similar book but haven't found one. Any suggestions?

The two guys who went straight 50 had a sudden-death shoot off and the guy who ended up no. 2 missed on his 21st extra bird. We were younger and steadier then.

A 16" crappie is still on my lifetime bucket list and there is a chance I could still do that. I busted 49 clays in a row in a local trap tournament and came in 3rd place. That too was on my bucket list but perhaps I'd better consider that a lost cause.....lol

When I came back from the Brown Water Navy of Viet Nam in 1970 they thought I needed a year or so to regain my equilibrium so they sent me to Goodfellow AFB to monitor some Air Force courses that the Navy was thinking of using. San Angelo has been a soft spot in my heart ever since that time. I spent most of my time hunting. Dove, deer, boar and rattlesnakes. Now, late in life, I've been presented with an opportunity to renew my relationship with life in that part of Texas.
I bought a boat in San Angelo although the popular saying of the time was "more dams on the river and less water on the dam sites than anyplace in the world." I check the Texas freshwater fishing reports once in a while to see if anybody is catching fish at Nasworthy, O.C. Fisher and I wonder if it might be worth looking at? I can't even imagine sleepy, little, San Angelo with 100,000 people, there were maybe a fourth of that when I was there. Matter of fact we were about 45 minutes late landing while they cleared a big flock of sheep off the runway. I've got some medical issues to clear up but we are seriously considering making a trip up there in the Oct/Nov timeframe to snoop around and see if I've got enough left in me to do it.
I'd appreciate any and all points of view.

Oh I'm not that busy, just things have been a bit hectic. Also we are either in the middle of a monster heat wave or the wind is blowing like crazy and the water is all roiled up. Anyway, things get kicked off this week! The new urologist, after apologizing eloquently, said he would really have liked to accept all the records and reports we have gathered from other doctors but he prefers to look for himself as he somewhat disagrees with the sequencing of events that they had set up - SO - I get to have a whole new cystocopy exam on Thursday of this week. Then, depending on scheduling, the slicing and dicing begins. First the tumor comes out and resectioning of the bladder happens and we take about a two week recovery break. Then the TURP thing with the prostrate happens. Optimal conditions = we should be all finished by mid-late August.

I feel absolutely naked without a boat even if I wouldn't have been able to get out even if I had one. But, Padre's bottom grabber works great. He gave me a copy of the prototype and it is ready for a You-Tube academy award. I always knew he was more than just a pretty face!

Nice catch, Mrs. Rod! Was that a white Gulp I saw? My favorite lure for hungry reds!