The strong north winds have driven the water out of the bay system. The tide dropped about two and one half feet from Monday to Tuesday. It has remained very low. Our channel is so shallow that I have to raise my engine just to get out. The winds have made fishing difficult at best. I have seen three trout, two reds, and one flounder brought in from the pier and bay this week. Marv and I went out yesterday and fought the wind and waves. Unfortunately Marv took a fall while trying to get into the boat so I guess you could say we had one small trout on board and one man overboard. Marv was fine, just a little, make that a lot, wet. Brad and Andy Phair came in yesterday and Brad and Marv went into Copano today and did better, one small trout on board and nobody overboard. The Phairs were supposed to stay in Edd’s place, but the AC unit failed and they were moved to 103. As cool as it has been, I’ve used the heat more than the AC.

Yesterday Chris Crowley had his sleeves rolled up and helped Tom clean out the old maintenance shed. They had a mountain of trash. Chris said that if I saw him throw anything out that shouldn’t be to let him know. I said, “When in doubt, throw it out” and all I saw was a lot of trash.

I talked to Mark Brooks today. He has CMT lawn service who has our contract now. They are doing a great job. They have trimmed, hedged, and mowed the whole complex in the last two days. He is charging only $240 a week and $5 per tree to trim the small palm trees and $12 for the large ones. His uncle is fishing guide Robert Brooks. Mark’s wife, Shelly, was helping him today. His stepfather, Michael, did the mowing yesterday. I guess you could say it’s a family business.

A young lady from Bug Free came by today, as scheduled, to treat the condos for critters. She handled that heavy pressure container pretty easily, but then she said she is former Marine.

I met the new employee of Johnson and Cate who has been assigned our account. Her name is Beverly Peddy. She is from Indiana, but moved to Texas when she married a Texan. They have lived in San Antonio for some time, but have decided to retire here. Her husband is looking forward to doing a lot of fishing in his new Flats Cat boat.

Ron has progressed almost to the end of the 200 building with the flowerbed work and river rock placement. Work has halted on the decks. I was told that we are out of money and the 700 building cannot be finished at this time. The latest financial report has not yet been sent, so I don’t know exactly what our money situation is.

In a recent post I mentioned that I had seen people from the General Land Office doing some investigating here. I thought it had nothing to do with us. Today I googled GLO Corpus to try to follow up to see what they had found. The name Amy Koltermann popped up along with her phone number. I called and asked for her and I got Amy Nunez, they be one and the same, and surprisingly she was the one working on our situation. She said she had talked to Richy yesterday and explained to him that we were being fined for not obtaining a permit to add the fishing islands to our old pier at the time that we built the breakwater and extended the pier. She was very informative. What they do is basically tax folks for the square footage of their piers and it is impacted by the real estate values in the near proximity. Every five years a review is done prior to renewing a permit. Our permit is up for renewal on 2/28/2008. The review process discovered the additional pier square footage that was not permitted. She said it would be a one-time fine of $1200 and a yearly very small addition to our current annual fee. When the board discussed adding those islands I didn’t see any need for them because I don’t like to fish in the channel. I recall one board member said that winter Texans would like to use them to fish for flounder next to the breakwater. To my surprise, the islands have proved very popular. Last evening there were people at each one, possibly because the wind was crashing into the north side of the pier.

I told Amy that the board had discussed increasing the size of the end of the pier. She said it was permitted for 8 feet by 31 feet. She said the standard size is 10x30. She said that given the number of people using our pier it could be a safety factor to have it so narrow and 12x31 would be very reasonable. She said it would be easier for her to incorporate the request to expand the pier while we are renewing the permit rather than have it as a separate submission at a later time. I told her I had heard of no opposition to the expansion but it would probably be discussed at the next board meeting. She said that the permit would not require us to build immediately and if cost were an issue we could postpone the construction and keep the permit so we could begin work when we felt it was appropriate.

We also talked about the HEB property. She said she had received several emails about that situation and some folks thought the Texas Open Beaches law applied, but not so. What happens, is a study of tides is done over an 18.6-year interval. This determines the average tide mark that separates the state land from individually owned property. I guess that means that when walking on the HEB beach, half the time you are on state land and half the time you are on HEB property. This issue seems to be behind us as I see people on that beach area and the fence remains open. I hope it stays that way.

A hot issue in town is the development on Lamar and at the old Sea Gun. A meeting was held at Paws and Taws this week to discuss the development of those areas. They are planning to treat the sewage and dump the effluent into Aransas Bay. TXDOT and TCEQ representatives were present to address the large crowd. It was pointed out that in addition to the pollution that will be introduced, the added fresh water would be detrimental to aquatic life. The bays are too fresh as it is with Cedar Bayou closed. After years of debate it was also revealed that Little Bay is polluted with fecal material. For years the smell was horrible, but the claim was that decaying vegetation was the cause.

The new Chili’s is almost finished and looks to be ready to open soon. Catfish Charlie’s has reportedly been asking around town to try to find a location for a restaurant. Supposedly they offered The Diner $490,000 and it was a no deal. They looked at the B&P location yesterday, it is priced at $950,000, but felt the one-acre site was too large.