Post Number 500 Tonight WOW

Estes, Texas

The morning started as a beautiful day of cool temps and light breeze. WOW. It was nice to awaken to the gulls screaming their little lungs out while chasing their breakfast. It was a very relaxing sleep last night.

Today included trips to both the Wal-Marts in the area. Mostly to pay close attention to the stocking of each store and the price differences. Diesel was $1.959 at the Aransas Pass store, so the truck has a full tummy now. Both Wal-Marts are seven miles away in opposite directions. That is the longest trip needed to get almost anything a person could need. Of course there are higher priced stores in-between i.e. HEB. This is a well centered location for a lot of things.

My balance is still not just right, especially this morning, so the hoped for paddling of the yak did not happen. My neighbor goes out early and paddles all over Estes Flats while fishing. We will have pictures later in this posting. Some fellow that were visited at the waterfront told me that my neighbor goes out and stands in his yak and fly fishes all over the Flats. Now his yak is a 12 foot model, but it still takes very good balance to stand in it. The good news is that he brings back lots of fish and gives them away.

The two guys at the waterfront clued me in to the obstructions on the bottom in front of the bulkhead. Additional details that are called “local knowledge” were also shared with me. Some little bit of lure casting was tried late this evening with no luck but for losing a lure in the underwater grass.

Now let us take a look at about a third of Estes Flats. They are too big to get all in one shot with my camera. This is the north third. They are straight across the ICW from the park here and are easy paddling to get over there.

Most of the flats at normal tide have no more than 18” of water over them and mostly less than that. There is one slightly deeper gut that the power boats use to get in and out of the flats. Once a power boat is in there it is mostly get out and wade for fishing.
Here is the very heavily used fish cleaning station in the park. Three folks can work side by side and it is lighted for use at night.
These next two pictures take some explaining. Both were shot with the maximum telephoto my camera can do from the park bulkhead at high tide. In the first picture the grass line in the background is about 2 ½ miles out from the park. This is to show how shallow the water is. In the kind of upper right center is a water bird of some sort standing in the water. The second shot is an enlargement of the bird part of the first shot. Through binoculars we could see that the birds bottom feathers were not touching the water.


According to the two fellows, once you cross the ICW you can walk all the way to the grass line without getting your belt wet. It will be interesting when my yak can safely make it over there to do some serious exploring. That will be a day when it comes close to having tooooo much fun. TheOFM.