SeaWolf Park / Pelican Island Flounder Fishing
December 3, 2005
Trip Description: (kayak optional)
The last week of November to the first week of December normally signals the final surge of the annual fall flounder run. This brings the largest, the most and the hungriest flounder of the year thru Bolivar Straits by the Seawolf Park area on Pelican Island by Galveston. Water temperatures have typically fallen to 58 to 62 degrees. Bait becomes scarce in the water (as do live finger mullet at the bait stands). And it's time to wade in for a chance at that trophy!
We'll meet in the Seawolf Park parking lot - it opens at sunrise (around 7:00 A.M.). The fee to park is $5.00 and if you notify them at the gate you are a wade fisherman, there is NO ADDITIONAL FEE for fishing in the park. The park is a safe, clean facility with bathrooms, showers, a pier, snacks and sometimes a bait stand. There are now numerous places inside the park (and just outside) to launch a kayak or wade. But park inside since parking is prohibited outside the park for almost 1/4 mile back up the road.
Visible structure along the Houston Ship Channel shoreline includes a sunken concrete ship, a sunken shrimper and "the green bush". The sunken ship is one of the more prominent landmarks in our bay system. It's the decaying hulk of a 150-foot concrete freighter that ran aground along the Houston Ship Channel in 3 to 8 feet of water several generations ago. It's above water 1/2 mile from the shore we'll be fishing. Teens foolishly have picnics on it and novice boaters go there catching croaker and sand trout. Further down the shore we fish is the boom of a shrimper run aground. It's 15 yards from shore and is below water except for the boom. With a low tide and no waders you can wade around it. In November it's not likely we'll be alone fishing that stretch of shore. The "green bush" is 400 yards further down the shore to the west.
Date/Time:
Saturday, December 3, 2005 from 7:00 A.M. til 3:00 P.M.
Note: The park opens at 6:15 a.m. in case you want to arrive earlier to take advantage of first light. Dick will be there then.
Leader:
Dick McGonigle (cell phone: 713-498-1747, E-mail: dmc@pdq.net)
How to Sign Up:
Contact trip leader or sign up at a monthly meeting providing name, e-mail, and cell phone.
How to Get There:
Click here for directions and maps to SeaWolf Park.
To see an aerial view of the SeaWolf Park area
click here. The park is shown on the right (where you see boats in the channel). If you follow the road backwards from the park you'll see the dirt road that cuts off to the northwest leading to the alternative Houston Ship Channel entry points.
What to Pack/Bring:
Bring warm clothing, waders, snacks/drinks, bug spray and fishing gear. Kayak is optional but if you bring it, also bring a lock in case you leave your yak with your vehicle.
Fishing Options:
Subject to the wind, the primary plan is to fish the shoreline along the Houston Ship Channel, entering the water via SeaWolf Park. The prime fishing area there extends northwest for about 1 1/2 miles, going past the sunken concrete ship, then the sunken shrimpboat on the shoreline with its boom above the water and on until about 300 yards past "the green bush". Fish within 1 to 15 yards of the shoreline for the most part.
As an alternative to Sea Wolf Park entry, you can access the Houston Ship Channel shoreline by turning left 1/4 mile before the park entrance (about 4 miles past I-45 / Broadway) onto the dirt road. Four-wheel drive is not required unless we've had a lot of rain to muddy up the road. Follow that rough road 7/10 mile to a parking area where you can walk to the shore. Or drive 3/10 or 7/10 miles further to locations where you can put a kayak in to paddle across "the pond" to get to the shell ridge comprising the shoreline by the "green bush". "The pond" is a tidal flats that usually has 12" to 2' of water in most of it (part of it is in and out of water depending on the rain or tide). "The pond" is visible on the aerial photo as a dark patch and comprises everything between the road and the shell shoreline we'll fish.
Kayakers can easily paddle the whole stretch of shoreline along Pelican Island but if you beach your kayak take care to pull it far enough up on the beach to keep an occasional tanker wave (they come 15 minutes later) from washing the kayak away.
If the wind is churning from the north, the primary location could be unfishable. We would then fish the protected water of the Galveston Ship Channel on the south side of the island. We'll go 1/4 mile back down the road from Seawolf Park to use a footpath that leads to the channel. It is just opposite from where the dirt road branches off to the northwest. Unfortunately that footpath is too long and narrow to allow transport of kayaks to the shoreline so we would be wadefishing only.
Recommended Fishing Technique:
Curly tail touts on 1/4 oz head work fine, with some favorites being the white/glow with green tail, rootbeer with green tail and red with white tail. A dead 2" shad hooked thru the eyes added to the rig can be irresistable. Live finger mullet, shrimp or mud minnows are popular, also. Short casts with an EXTREMELY SLOW retrieve, bumping on the bottom until you feel weight, is a productive technique. Sunup or a moving tide is critical - outgoing is best.
Trip Report - December 3, 2005
Sea Wolf Park / Pelican Island Flounder Fishing
PACK conducted its only trip without kayaks this year as a surly group of PACK members met at SeaWolf Park on Pelican Island in Galveston at sunrise Saturday, December 3, 2005. Like looking for "speed" on Buffalo Speedway, we were all looking for the "run" of flounder at this renowned fall fishing destination.
Conditions were a bit balmy for this time of year, with the air reaching near record mid-70's and the water at over 65 degrees. But it was a comfortable fish, well protected from increasingly breezy south/southwest winds that had susbstantially affected the water clarity. Though equal numbers of the fishing masses out that weekend were fishing on the Houston Ship Channel and the Galveston Ship Channel sides of Pelican Island, we all tried the more protected Houston Ship Channel side. The choice gave us a much more spacious fishing area and direct access from inside the park. Several kayakers put in at the park, but none from our group.
Our luck was classic "Ya shudda been here yesterday"! From the fellow flounder fishing addict serving the jalapeño sausage kolaches at Shipley's at 6:00 a.m. to "Big Al", a regular customer and regular at the flounder hole, limits were had by many Friday, the day before. JIm Richards and I had pre-fished the locations on the previous Wednesday, with conditions and results resembling the following account:
The assault on the flounder population began with Joel Berry drawing first blood -- his own!. Taking extra care on entry, Joel slipped on the rocks taking a bad fall, ripping up his Hodgeman Wadelites - and his forearm. With the onset of additional pain in his neck and no bites to sooth it, he left the water around 9:30 a.m. Barry Sandler, Jim Richards, Lisa Bell and I waded out together initially, with Lisa catching the first fish, a fat, 16 1/2 incher. Shortly thereafter, I caught two flounder almost as big, with Barry giving thumbs up in anticipation that the bite might be "on." Red and white curly tails with shad hooked thru the eyes accounted for all three of those fish. Wading up the beach I soon bagged one more. I met Bob Roesing who had a big 19" flounder he caught on a green artificial. But with the bite slow, he bummed a couple shad from my large stock. It wasn't 2 minutes before he produced another fat 19-incher to match, whereupon he consented to take the rest of an extra bag of shad I had. Jack Klinger, who arrived a little later than the rest of us, tried fly fishing for the flounder, but had no luck. The water color was just too bad for the fish to pick up on his clouser. Tim Donnelly got a late start also, coming in from Austin. He didn't connect with the rest of us and fished down by the pier. He used live mud minnows but couldn't buy a bite.
Lisa and I continued the 1 1/2 mile wade into the tide to the mythical "green bush", where we saw Dennis Balko, Jack Parkinson and Terry Brown - three "guru" flounder addict friends of Jim, Lisa and mine. They were leaving with 8 - one over 20 inches. The water had gotten too muddy. A ride half way back down the beach in Terry Brown's Jeep was welcome relief to my tired legs, and we waded the rest of the way back with one throwback. Jerry Blose later informed me that he had waded to the green bush earlier but without success - except if you count one small flounder viciously threatening to attack his front midsection. In defense of the flounder we have not addressed possible provocation on Jerry's part - he may be calling Jimmy Carter to talk about enraged rabbits for character evidence. More at the meeting? Things kind of degenerated from there. Barry relayed that Ken Jennings had a very large, acrobatic flounder working hard to get free of Ken's hook. Barry waded over to take the picture as Ken held his ground. Just prior to the photo the fish broke free, JUMPING 3 FEET STRAIGHT UP IN THE AIR AFTER A TAIL DANCE! It was pretty lean fishing. Barry worked up two keepers. Jim, an avid trout fisherman, was heard to couch descriptions of his two undersized flounders with some legal sounding stuff like "breach of warranty..." and "mental anguish...?" The trip ended at 3:00 p.m. with me crawling out of the water and up the rocks with my three hard earned flatfish - beat! I was thinking of the inscription on my autographed latest book by Chester Moore, "FLATFISH RULE!" But Who Do They Rule? It's amazing to me that Chester had never met me, but knew it was ME they rule.
Paul Morris had loaded for bear, including his kayak to paddle across the swamp to the green bush as he had in the past. Feeling a bit puny when he got up, he drove to the park checking out our action. Then successively he hit the Coast Guard side of Pelican, the road toward the green bush, the Bolivar Ferry Landing, and finally the Galveston Ferry Landing (where waders have been kicked out only in the last week) where he at last saw a big stringer.
To complete the report...
Jeffrey Wolfanger stayed back to care for a loved one who was under the weather, but rumor is he may be out there on Sunday. Eric Thompson is held over working in NOLA a little longer, but hopes the "run" waits for his return. Betty and Bob Pratt tended to important family business.
Though the stringers were a bit light, Jim Richards summed it up pretty well for all of us describing the comaradarie on our PACK trips as unbeatable. Because of the warm weather, the water hovering above 65 degrees, reports of big flounder still being caught back up in the bay, limits of large fish in close time proximity to our trip, and the fact that I stepped in hundreds of flounder holes and stepped on at least 15 hefty fish this wade, it looks like this year's BEST of the "flounder run" may still await us. Good news to any ol' or new flounder addicts. Let's hear it for a blustery Norther or two, and some hot food and wild stories at our coming Christmas meeting on the 20th!
Dick McGonigle, December 4, 2005
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