11/21/09 Seawolf Park

Let's all round up for the annual PACK flounder trip during the peak of the fall flounder run on Saturday, November 22, 2008. The last week of November to the first week of December normally signals the final surge of the annual fall flounder run, bringing the largest, and the hungriest flounder of the year thru Bolivar Straits by the Seawolf Park area on Pelican Island near Galveston. However, the peak of the run frequently settles around the first weeks of November when water temperatures have not yet typically fallen to that final 56 to 60 degrees - we'll hope for 62 degrees or thereabouts. Bait and bait stealers this late usually become absent in the water as November winds down, and live finger mullet at the bait stands are often a tough ticket. But now the mullet and mud minnows should be plentiful in the stands for the earlybirds. It's time to wade in for a chance at that trophy!

This chosen Saturday is the Saturday during the November part of the flounder run immediately preceding a highly desired no moon phase a few days later during the week. We won't be alone out there! Not only does the large number of fisherman fail to spook the flounder; novices and regulars can study the techniques of others at close range. Remember that the run may continue for several more weeks, and you may want more!

We'll meet in the Seawolf Park parking lot when the park opens at sunrise around 6:30 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 the park 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 boom ,and "the green bush" 1 1/2 miles down the beach. 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 boaters go there to catch croaker, red fish and sand trout. Further down the shoreline we will fish is the fallen telephone pole washed ashore signaling great mud for bedding the flounder. 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. There from the shore, out thru the 30 yard mud trough, to the sand bar is all good. Another 400 yards down the beach along the Houston Ship Channel side of Pelican Island is a 300 yard stretch of sand flats leading to the point of the island where it meets the Intercoastal Canal. 

 Dick McGonigle, click here to email, 713-498-1747