Brazos camping trip

[Darrells]

I took my daughter on her first river camping trip. She never has paddled before and was alittle nervous so we took my wifes Ultimate instead because it is rock solid. A good friend and his little boy went with us and once we got to the river I told Hannah to go paddle around and get a feel for the boat and in just a minute she was gone. A perfect natural. So we get the boats loaded and off we go to battle the fierce south wind for a few miles.

We get to our site finally and get camp set up. It was a pretty long paddle with the wind howling.

As soon as baits hit the water drum were all over us. the catfish never did show up, but we still had a great time.

The gar bite was on last night. We had run after run after run,but could not get a good hook up. I am still learning this gar fishing . We were using cut drum and the heads of drum for bait.

Finally at 4:15 this morning I got the hookup I had been waiting for. Made several 100+ yard runs and there is nothing you can do about it except hold on.

I eventually won the fight and got the Gator on the bank. It is by far my biggest ( for now).

We had a great time and the kids really enjoyed it also. As great as it was to catch a really big fish the highlite of the trip came this morning on the way back when Hannah paddled up to me and said " Hey Dad when can we come back".

I am going to order some good leader material from Leadertec and also make a noose to help land these big fish. I know there is a gar well in excess of 150 in this area.

 

[islandpiper]

Very cool.......looks like good water and lots of fun. In southern wisconsin we used to use a section of cheap rope, tied to the line like a streamer with the end frayed out till it was fuzzy.......we'd drag them pas the weedbeds and the gar would latch on and never get off. Butt ugly buggers, if you ask me.

piper

 

[bearridge]

Once upon a time I caught a gar on a Zebco. I had no idea what wuz on the other end puttin' up such a fight. I give a sigh when he got off jest before I got him ta the bank. It mite have been a that black lagoon critter fer all I knew.

What iz all this bout wind on the Brazos? [grin]

regards
bearridge

Political Correctness is a doctrine fostered by a delusional illogical liberal minority & rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous liberal press which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end. unknown

 

[oldsparkey]

I use to take out and bow fish for the long nose gar , a couple of friends and I would have a good time on the Econ when the water was low and the gar came swimming over the sandbars. We would get them coming up stream to spawn any where in length from a few feet to several over 6 feet in length , never weighed them.

During one trip later on in years a friend of mine who was a Game Warden stopped by and went nuts when he saw the gar on the sand bank that we had shot. He wanted to know what we were going to do with them and we told him , fertilizer for the trees around there. Dam if he did not cut the backs open and take the tenderloin out of the back. The ease that he did that , it was easy to tell he had done it a lot of times in the past.

He said that when it is cut into chunks and fried up it is just like deep sea scallops with an hint of lobster . From then on he wanted to know when we were going gar shooting so he could come by and clean the ones we shot. That's the long nose gar , not sure about the gator gar.

Chuck.

 

[keith]

chuckey, those gator gar make some of the best jerkey and ofcourse balls with gravey, man slap yo mama. later keith

 

[Kayak Jack]

You paddled a much more civilized Brazos than the one Ronnie Smith took me to see. I expected a Comanche warrior at any minute to ride down from the bluffs. Good on ya, taking kids along.