There were many exciting things on this memorable trip but being out on Matagorda island in the Gulf of Mexico was the cherry on top. Everything about the area amazed me from the wide variety of the animals and fish we got to see, and to the land and water that supported those populations. The joyous memories that this trip provided will never leave me. I would recommend going to these estuary systems to anyone I meet.
Before one even gets to the coast you can notice the land slowly start to change from the hills of west Texas to flat coastal plains. If you keep a keen eye open, you begin to notice the different birds that are associated with the coast. One bird in particular you may notice is the crested caracara. It is a bird of prey with a black patch on its head with a broad red beak and face that looks like it has a blue tip. Its neck and chest are mostly a cream color with modeled black feathers that turn into all black roughly halfway down. This bird was one of the most intriguing specimens I observed throughout the trip.
As we arrived in Port O’Connor I noticed the houses were mostly all on stilts. This reduces the affects of flooding and can lessen the infiltrations of pests. To get to our guide’s boat house (Cooper Knight), we had to enter a gated community which had multi million dollar homes lining the streets. As we unpacked our gear, I could barely hold in my excitement to get on the boat and out to the island. On the way out to the island we had about an eight mile boat ride which took about a 15-20 minutes. We got to see numerous bird species like herons, a loon, brown pelicans and rosette spoonbills. A pod of bottlenose dolphins with a calf was also observed on the way out. As the boat entered shallower waters mullet would quickly jump out of the water. Once we arrived everyone was unloaded with all the stuff and a third trip had to be made to get the stuff, so I ended up staying on to help. This time around it was just three of us on the boat including our guide. He took us a shorter route that was shorter but a lot shallower. In some areas it was down to roughly six inches. It was no problem for his boat which was a 22-foot john boat with attachment on the motor to raise and lower it. After packing up, we tooled around the canals for a short time telling us all about the houses and boats we floated by.
The first night we had a shrimp boil with potatoes, corn on the cob, mushrooms, onions and sausage. It was some of the best shrimp I had every consumed in my life. We ate that for the remainder of the time on the island. After supper I tried fishing for a bit with not much luck. Later a bunch of us tried using a cast net used for small fish. A few of us ended up catching fish like a flounder and I caught a Gulf menhaden. Before bed a handful of us went out herping. We looked for about 45 minutes with our head lamps and flashlights but did not find a one. We ended up seeing a few deer, so it wasn’t a total waste of time.
The next morning, I went out fishing for some speckled trout which were abundant around the island. I did not catch a whole lot, but it was a blast when you got one on the line. They fought hard and occasionally jumped out of the water. Afterwards we went out and sampled with seines. This was extremely interesting getting to see the different species. While we were out another fisheries professional (Dusty McDonald) joined us to identify the species that we caught. He and our guide both were full of knowledge of the area and told us many things about the history and species that inhabit the area. Such as finding the cut to the ocean, telling us about a lighthouse in the civil war, and a town that was wiped off the map. Seining in the ocean surf was extremely challenging and quite the workout with the undertow and waves crashing into us. The seine we used was a 20 foot bag seine that was not easy to drag through the water, but it was fun at the same time. Later that day we packed up our stuff and got off the island where we stayed at our guides place in Port O’Connor. After setting up our tents we went to eat at a roadside restaurant about 20 min outside of town which served all sorts of stuff from burgers to seafood. I ordered the 3 lbs. of crayfish which was one of the best meals I had on the trip.
