Scott sent this report of his most recent fishing trips. He didn't mention that they were able to trade Kingfish fillets, pound for pound, for table shrimp at Flowers Seafood in Rockport.



Spent the first part of last week (10/23-10/26) in Rockport with my sales team as a celebration for a very successful FY2011. The weather was fantastic and the adventures were terrific. We went out on the Wharf Cat Monday and caught our limit of King and shark along with a few lane snapper. Due to the time of year and it being a Monday we barely had enough fishermen to make the trip. This means very few fishermen on a large boat . . . lots of room, great trip. One guy in our group won the boat cash pot of $160 for the heaviest fish by landing a huge barracuda. He also won a cash pot ($80) we were running within our group of 8 for the longest fish, also the barracuda. He walked away from the boat with an extra $240 in his pocket. He was not an experienced angler and he had not been fishing in 10 years. Sometimes it is better to be lucky than good.
The following day several of us went on my boat in Aransas bay in pursuit of the elusive speckled trout. We started the morning at Jay Bird reef and then moved on to Carlos Bay, grabbed some lunch then back to Jay Bird. We managed 10 trout for the day, all caught on DOA under a cork. I love that tackle. It is simple, clean, easy to operate and if the bite is slow at least you are doing something as you cast occasionally, pop the cork and work it back to the boat.
We had fantastic meals at Los Comales and Panjos, my two favorite places to eat in the Rockport/Fulton area. Attached is a picture of several of the SUPER margaritas at Los Comales. Very impressive beverage! The recipients of these two drinks were in "fine" shape when they were done.
My team had a great time on the trip and want to do it again. I think they have started to recognize the charm of the coastal village that the rest of us call our second home.

Yes I did. I sat there and watched every pitch and the stars aligned. Truly a team of destiny.

Scott and I made a run to Aransas Pass to go to Fowler Lumber today. Probuild is pricey on some of their items and the quality of the wood is better at Fowler's. Some pieces that are $2.99 at Probuild were $2.09 at Fowler's. Larry Rabe is using a lot of supplies to rebuild the utility cabinet doors and AC stands and enclosures. I'm glad Scott doesn't charge us to work around here. We couldn't afford him.
Scott did take his boat out to Jay Bird Reef yesterday and the four of them caught ten keeper trout on DOA shrimp. The weather was about as good as it gets.
I worked some more today on getting pier lights up and running. The latest word is that they may be turned on this Friday, but don't hold your breath.

B&R Electrical has completed their work on the pier lights repair. The new control panel is now located on the outside wall of condo 101. The two smaller boxes house the timer controls. They wanted almost $500 more to use photocells instead of timers. The timers require a lot of maintenance to synchronize them to each other and to the changing times of sunrise and sunset, but I guess they are less expensive.
What I did not know until Friday was that now I have to proceed with getting our power to the control box. I thought this would be a seven business day work period and the lights would be on. The county has to have an inspection and the AEP has to have an inspection. The AEP will then come out later and install a new meter and then we have to contract with an electrical retailer. I set all the wheels in motion on Monday and we may have lights by next weekend.
Robert(guest in 705) is going with guide David Huntress in the morning. David will have a hard time matching Robert's catch this evening. He caught a 27 inch red off the crossbridge using live mullet. I would have taken a picture, but I didn't have my camera with me.

I've been away from Kontiki for a few days. My son, Richmond, and I were on a road trip. Can you tell where we were?
OK. Now you know. We were at the World Series. The Ranger fans are pretty fanatic. Even to the point one of them paraded a goat around with no doubt who he was cheering for.
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Larry Rabe has been all smiles since we got our new HOA golf cart-work wagon. It has a three cylinder gas engine and a stake bed on the back for hauling. He used it this morning to drag the beach to level the new sand.
In an effort to save Larry time and gas I have made many trips to buy supplies. This time I had a max load for a car. I had seven 10 foot 1x2s, five 8 foot 1x2s, one 8 foot cedar 2x4, two 8 foot 4x4s,two gallons of concrete patch and two paint brushes. I probably looked like a giant porcupine going down the road.
This morning Steve(703) and I went into Copano in his big Kenner to find reds. We spent five hours without a single hit. I did catch a large stingray.

P and D Trucking came out today and put a little over 100 cubic yards of sand on our beach.
Jack Gibbs brought out a bobcat to spread the sand. We had not replenished the beach this whole year. We have been fortunate that tides and winds have not been a big issue this year to cause more erosion. This supply should last until next spring or later. We will likely buy a golf cart soon to use to drag the beach and level this new sand more smoothly. Owners' approved a new cart almost two years ago and we have finally found a gas powered cart with a flat bed for work use.

This is the new control panel installed to accommodate the power for the pier lighting.
AEP came out about 8:30 to turn off the power to 101 through 104 while the new panel was installed. They returned about 4pm to turn the power back on. I'm not sure why it would take two big trucks to connect a few wires in the cluster behind 708.

Monday, before the front, the bay looked like this. I thought it might be the evening to flounder, but late in the afternoon the wind came up and the water got murky again. Today's front really stirred things up.

Work continues on the AC stands and enclosures. The repaired ones are good as new. Most of the 700 building is done and all of the 100 building is completed.

Seagulls are pretty sharp when food is involved. When this Walmart employee empties the garbage containers they swoop in and check for bits of food that may fall on to the pavement. Notice the one perched on the car to the left. Of course, she does wear a hat when she does this.

This is a money maker I wish I had thought of. This is called dry stack storage. They use a large fork lift to pick up a boat and put it in the warehouse on one of five available levels. When a boater wishes to use their boat, they just call and it will be fueled up, iced up, in the water, and ready to go. When they return, they just leave the boat in water and a crew cleans it up and returns it to storage.

Scott and I saw this tugboat at Conn Brown Harbor on Sunday. The truck parked in front gives a perspective of just how big this thing is. We usually see them pushing a barge from afar and don't realize just how big they are.
Notice the two pads in front for pushing.

Tom worked most of the afternoon yesterday to install the sliding glass door in my condo. After some shimming and trimming the door went in easily and looks great. What I will have to get used to is the utter quiet when the door is shut. I really thank Ralph and Cheryl for letting me have this door. Their installer said this door was not that great. He had not seen my 28 year old door. I guess all things are relative.
I called Rockport Glass and they came by today and picked up my old doors for recycling.

We have new wildlife to entertain guests. This roadrunner was seen in front of the 500 building.

Scott brought a plant, potting soil, and gravel with him this weekend and Larry set the plant into the new decorative pot that Jeanette Dyer recently donated to us.

This, five dot, red was caught yesterday morning.
The reds continue to be all over the mitigation site. My neighbors in 202 start early and fish from the road. This 25 inch red was caught just before daylight and my camera phone does not have a flash so it's a little dark. They have been throwing very small gold spoons. They caught more as the day went on. I heard of one oversized red being caught, but I was not there for a picture. It's a good time for the reds to be in the mitigation site as the big pier lights won't be on again until next week.
Chris(408) caught and released eight keeper reds yesterday.

On Tuesday evening I noticed the lights were out on the 300 and 400 buildings. I found a breaker that had been tripped and reset it. The lights came on the 300 building, but not the 400. Larry Rabe trenched up the wiring that runs from the corner of 308 around the parking lot curb and back to 401. The break in the wire was just east of the sidewalk. There was no apparent reason for the wire to short and burn entirely in two, but it did. Larry spliced it together and sealed the connection and reburied the line. This probably saved us some big bucks that an electrical company would have charged to locate and repair the line.

Tom Durfee dug this trench for the electrical conduit for the new pier electrical hookup. I can't say when I've seen anyone work as hard as Tom did. He dug this 124 foot trench two feet deep and then filled and raked it level in one day. I know he slept well that night. He said he is an independent contractor and works for $12 per hour. He can do electrical, plumbing and carpentry. I would recommend him to any owners needing work in the their condo. His phone number is 361 229-2489.

I have to guess the reds stayed around all evening. My neighbor in 202 took his gold spoon out at first light and caught this red fishing from the entrance road.
Ralph(101) is having all his windows replaced. Window World in Corpus gave him a good deal and he is doing all twelve windows and two sliding glass doors for only $14k. The sliding doors he took out are double pane and only three years old. I'm going to see if they will work in my place as my doors are original and in pretty bad shape.

Ralph(101)shows that the fish are still in the mitigation site. He caught these two this evening on the same Gulp he always uses. Maghsoud(407) came in this evening because he had seen the fish that are being caught on the crossbridge and wanted to get in on the action.
Randy(308) and his family were in for the weekend and went out with guide Terry Coufal. Terry wrote this up in his guide's blog.

Today I had another good repeat client Randy Schulte. Today he brought his daughter Kim, her husband Henry, and their son Brock. We had strong north winds today which you guys know I like. So many options today I did not know where I wanted to start. Our first stop produced no bites so we quickly moved on. Our next stop produced some immediate bites. Kim got us on the board first, then Randy. We then missed a couple and broke one off, caught some undersized then our bite stopped so we moved on. We then headed to a reef I like under these conditions and it was a good move. A lot of undersized fish in here but some good keepers as well. We boxed 7 more, missed some good ones and Kim had a HUGE fish on that spit the hook. And yes Kim limited out first. We actually left fish biting to hit an area I thought might be holding some bigger fish. It did not take long and we were hooking up more fish. And yes this time it was Randy's turn to break a big one off on the trim tab. We ended the day with 11 reds. Another great day of catching with really good people. Kim has been on a roll with me. This was her third time to fish with me and she has limited every time.

After seeing no reds caught in the mitigation site this weekend, Marv(guest in 307) shows they were back this morning. Marv went through a pint of shrimp in just over an hour. He caught several croaker and some more reds that were just a tad too small.

Work began today on the repair of the lights on the pier. The lights are expected to back on next Tuesday evening.
We had a pretty good crowd for the weekend with SeaFair in town. The rain was not too bad and I saw big crowds there, but did not attend. There were a lot of people fishing, primarily from the crossbridge, but I did not see any keepers caught although many caught good sized croakers. The tide was about as high as it has been in some time. The mitigation site is totally flooded.
Chuck and Sandy(107)stopped by last week on their way to Port Mansfield to visit family. They will be back for the annual meeting.
I saw a sign at the downtown carwash that said it had been sold and was under new management. Chris and Karra had owned it for some time.
Condo 708 did not last long on the market. It is under contract to Lynda Bohn. I understand they will close next month.

No keeper reds were caught in the mitigation site today, but there were other fish biting. Here Cheryl(101) shows one of her flounder that hit her Gulp. She and Ralph caught and released several keeper flounder since they are in the middle of a remodel of their condo and have no appliances to keep or cook any fish. I think I better loan them a stringer. I can find something to do with keeper flounder.
There are also a large number of golden croaker that are in the mitigation site to spawn. They bite aggressively on most any bait.
Ralph also caught three of these that appear to me to be lizard fish.

The reds are still in the mitigation site, but today the tables were turned for the Fischers. Yesterday Bev caught her limit and he was shut out and today Joe caught his limit and she was shut out and he threw in a 17 inch drum for good measure. His largest today was 26 inches in length. Interestingly, one of her reds yesterday had almost completely excreted a rusted hook and about 10 inches of line. Norm, the new owner of 219, also caught a keeper red this evening.
Cobridge has been spending a lot of time here recently and with some success. They spent at least three hours working on 407 last Friday, but concluded the problem was in the walls. When the remodels were done a lot of the television cabling had to be moved and splitters and connectors were used. Like everything else here they are starting to corrode and fail. When this happens it is an owner borne expense. Many of the attic access points were closed during remodel and this makes it even harder to work on the cabling. The Cobridge repairman was successful in 307 yesterday. The connector used to bring the new cable up the wall to allow for a wall mounted TV was replaced and that fixed the problem. Cobridge really is not responsible except for the cable signal up to the outside pedestal, but they have been generous in working on inside issues when they can. 304 is having a problem with the TV now and that will be the next call to Cobridge.
The wifi signal has needed some fine tuning. Kevin came by today and improved the connectivity for three condos. It was pretty fast service since I had called him out for work on 307 and just as he finished I saw Paul(106) and he told me of his problem so Kevin fixed it before he left and then as he tried to leave again Pat(602) called me and I put Kevin on my phone and he talked to Pat and went right over and fixed his signal. Kevin has been very responsive to anything we need where the wifi is concerned.
This year's Hummingbird Festival three weeks ago was a huge success. I have never seen so many hummingbirds. They have been like hornets around a nest as they circle and feed at the feeders. I picked up a feeder at ProBuild yesterday and already today had four hummingbirds buzzing around it and feeding.
This afternoon a big UHaul pulled up to 101. They loaded all the furniture and pictures, kitchenware and anything that wasn't tied down. The new owners, Ralph and Cheryl, are changing everything out. Betty(502) bought everything that went into the UHaul for one price. The remodeler purchased everything in the kitchen including appliances, cabinets, and countertop. That condo looked great when they purchased it. I can only imagine what it will look like when they finish. I saw the tile and granite today. Meanwhile, Martin and Blanche(708) gave a counter offer this morning to the offer they received for their condo. They have fixed it up nicely and priced it right. It will sell soon.

Joe and Bev Fischer came in yesterday and found the reds in the mitigation site again. This afternoon Joe went to buy bait and Bev fished with some perch while he was gone. When he got back she had her limit. My granddaughter, Breleigh helped Bev show off her catch here. The small fish is a croaker as they have returned to spawn as they seen to do at this time of year in our mitigation site.
Actually, Joe and Bev had planned to come here in two weeks, but saw my blog post about the pier lights being scheduled for work at that time and decided to come in earlier. Now, with this catch, they plan to stay an extra day.

Work on the new causeway is moving slowly. With the recent north winds, I can hear the pile driver banging away even inside my condo. This is scheduled for completion in four years.

Larry Skelton continues work on the deck railing painting project. He is working here on 707 as he strips off the old paint before priming and painting.

Ed(302)sent some pictures of the recent hurricane damage up in his neck of the woods. Very impressive!
Clicking on the picture to enlarge the image will give a better view of the extent of the damage to this area.