I started fishing Port Mansfield when I was 10. Thats 52 years ago. Back when the old RedFish Motel occupied the Point off the Ship channel. Seen many boatloads of trout and reds caught there. My Dad and I used to go north and camp on the King Ranch Shoreline. Fish all night with cut bait on the bottom. Many nights we would catch 500 lbs. of Trout and Redfish.
I read somewhere that there were 650 guides fishing Baffin and Pt. Mansfield. 5 years ago, you could wade fish the Tide Gauge Bar at Baffin and catch 10 keeper Trout in an hour or two. Same with Corrales, or Peniscal. Today, you have to catch 100 14 inch trout for every 10 keepers. Nothing has devastated our Trout fishery more than the Guides that are selling our Fish to the highest bidder. If 650 guides make 4 trips a week with 2 guests and catch 2 limits of trout per trip = 52,000 keeper trout caught per week. No fishery can survive with that kind of destruction. Especially when the guides at Pt. Mansfield were using Croker and taking ALL the big fish. Now...we are limited to 5 trout per day in Pt. Mansfield. I'm glad my DAD isn't alive to see this devastation. I know some here will piss and moan that we need the guides, but the facts speak for themselves. The guides need to be eliminated from the Trout fishery. Immediately! Or...we won't have any trout left for our kids.

Man can I have some of whatever you are smoking? It sounds like its some really good stuff.

Trolling with stinkbait.

Padre,

I think I know somewhat how you feel about seeing a fishery decline precipitiously having gone through the big freezes of the 80's around Galveston. It is hard to take, but the guides aren't the entire blame. They are just trying to make a living providing a service that people want.

Now guides that use their limit to apply to customers, I have a big problem with as well as guides that don't respect the resource by failing to practice proper catch and release...they are foolish and killing the very resource that supports them, a behavior which is less than intelligent.

The fishery down the Laguna is very limited in terms of the fishing pressure it can withstand. Some folks will argue, but the facts are that the Laguna is simply not capable of supporting the same kind of fishing pressure we see around Galveston. The biology doesn't lie.

Outlawing guides isn't the answer, IMO. Strict limits that are enforced is the only hope of restoring the fishery. Outlawing the use of croakers as bait would also be a step that would help the situation. Croaker fishing extracts a terrible toll on the fishery and tends to negate the effects of catch and release fishing.

But we that fish shouldn't always blame everyone else for the problems. We should exercise restraint, each one of us. We should carefully release fish and we should help with enforcement of regulations by turning in offenders....just like hunters in our State have substantially reduced poaching by turning in offenders, we should actively do the same. The fishery is too important to allow a few bad apples to ruin it for the many.

In this day and age, 5 trout are plenty to keep. Trout don't age well in the freezer and most people simply don't need to retain even 5 trout. I wouldn't mind seeing the limit go even lower until attitudes change and the fishery recovers.

Freshwater trout fishing shows the benefits of low limits and especially of fishing people who care enough about their resource to actively oppose those who do not....turn them in!!! Why is it that saltwater trout are any less valued than freshwater trout, or LMB, or any other freshwater sport fish? Why are our trout often thrown in garbage cans to rot? Why do we tolerate those who would destroy what we enjoy so much?

There are folks on here who brag about catching and keeping over 100 trout a day. I submit to you that we can no longer tolerate those individuals in our fisheries and should make every effort to have them removed. Great fishermen don't deplete the resource and then brag about it, they protect it and then honor it.

This thread will probably bring out some of those folks...folks who would catch and kill every trout if they could...and then brag about it, take pictures of them on the cleaning table as if that somehow makes them a better fishing person. Those days are gone. The great fishing people now are the ones that preserve the resource. Until us saltwater folks finally get the same attitudes that most of our freshwater brethern have had for years regarding catch and release and resource protection, we will all suffer....and that in my opinion is the biggest problem, not the guides

P.s.

The late great Lee Wolfe said something like "sport fish are too valuable to be caught just once". If we saltwater trout fishers adopted that attitude toward specs, the problems you speak of would no longer be problems.

Either you Guide lovers can't add or you are in denial. 650 guides taking hundreds of thousands of trout a month out of our fishery is CRIMINAL. These fish are NOT FOR SALE! Yet the guides are selling them. Take Trout off the guiding list. Better yet...let the guides get a real job!

Any of ya'll ever read Plugger by Rudy Griger? Pretty good book by a former guide and highly respected angler who helped form the GCCA later to become CCA.

Lots of factors account for the falling fish numbers. Including the freezes, commercial fishing, closing of the land-cut, and polution. Go to Amazon.com and buy that book for a good insight.

Aren't you being a little hypocritical...matter of fact, you are. Guiding is a job, they have to abide by restrictions, rules and regulations just like anyone else. Non-guided anglers also take trout and other species from our coastal waters and you're putting all the blame on guides. No, I'm not a guide, but if I wanted to hire one, that is my decision and option, no one elses. They do have a real job, they guide those that may not know the bay, gulf, lakes, rivers, have a boat or know-how and would like to learn from their experience. It takes a tremendous amount of money to do what they do, and should not be blamed for any one thing unless they are not following the rules or our regulations.

Maybe you need to learn how to catch bigger trout...seems like you might need to take a few lessons from a guide.

Better yet, I had the honor of fishing with him...a true old salt in every sense of the word.

i really like the limits in saltwater that say anything you catch, you keep. 8 trout limit. no release. at least when croaker fishing. I think half the fish you catch, you kill.

Soggy - where are you reading those regulations, not here in Texas.

There may be another possibility...some of us may recognize that we the fishing people are part of the problem.

You like math, do this math, add up the numbers of LMB caught in a typical tournament, then multiply that by the number of tournaments going on every weekend on every lake in Texas, then add the numbers of LMB caught with guides every day on every lake...why isn't there a huge problem with LMB? The answer is simple, catch and release, and a realization that even though LMB are renewable that are NOT indestructable....all about attitudes.

Consider if you can other places as examples...take Boca Grande for example. You probably can't count the number of guides fishing for Tarpon there. Yet, it remains one of the World's permier Tarpon fishing locations. The guides religiously protect the Tarpon. If you are inexperienced fighting a big fish, you better not fish with a Boca Grande guide.

Same is true in Key West. You better not fish in Key West with a top guide and kill a Tarpon, or a Permit, or a Bonefish....believe me it will be the last time you do that.

Same is true even in Mexico where the standards of living are generally lower...by and large sport fish like Tarpon are recognized for their economic value and protected by guides with everything they have.

Same in the Bahamas where bonefish are treated like a member of the family by the guides.

Same in Belieze and so on.

Try catching and keeping San Juan river freshwater trout....it won't be game wardens that stop you. In fact you will be lucky if it is a game warden. Other trout fishermen do not take kindly to seeing the resource killed....guides will resort to violence to protect the fish.

We need to change our attitudes. Specs need to be respected as a renewable resource but also one that can be destroyed. They are too valuable to rot in a trash can, be thrown out of a freezer because they are unedible, or slaughtered and laid out on a cleaning table for "pictures".


Ban the guides you say, that's foolishness and just p*ssing in the wind. Change attitudes and the problem will take care of itself.

I fish in a lot of locations in this country and in other countrys...and I can tell you for certain and with great sadness that the Texas coast attitude toward our great workhorse sport fish, the speckeled trout, is the worst of anywhere I have fished. That's the problem.

Meadowlark - you hit the nail on the head there friend! Great respone!

breambuster nailed padre too! But I find it hard to believe he would catch 500 lbs -in a night?- and then if he didn't c&r, what did he do with a 1/4 ton of fish?

But if he, as he writes, is catching 100 14" trout to get to his 10 keepers, it doesn't sound like there is a trout population problem where he's fishing! LOL

Meadowlark -those are two very good posts, but I think they will fall on blind eyes as padre is just trolling to stir it up.

He writes as though he just broke off a relationship with a guide or feels he was wronged on something.

Padre is absolutly correct, however, the guide lovers around here will argue to they are blue in the face. Just add up the numbers of guides on the water and times that buy 4-6 people and times that by 10, and like padre showed you get a whole lot of dead trout. Plus, its an every day thing.

There are way too many guides in the business and they cater to people who like to keep every fish they catch, and usually wouldnt catch so many if they were alone.

You can not tell me that the fishery is not effected. Every summer I see the toll first hand. My aunt lives on Alazan bay and the water out front her house is the secrete trout spot of all time. Untill about mid summer, the trout fishing there is increadible, with huge numbers of 20 inch plus fish. However, as summer wears on, and guide season is in full swing, the large trout begin to disappear. Due to the high gass rates, guides love to catch limmits as close to the boat ramp as possible, to save money. Our little secrete has been found out by several local guides and after about 2 weeks of them lineing the shoreline, you can not buy a keeper trout. Man it really ticks us off.

Though we do not own the water, it is our own little personal beach and what we feel like a private wading hole that we have fished religiously for 20 yrs. However, the guides will motor right up on us and even sometimes cut us off from the fish. Needless to say, it starts some pretty big fights.


Regardless, the over guiding in fishing does play a toll on the fishery. Just do the math!! My suggestion is a 5 fish limmit like in bass fishing. Also, I think that there should be a stronger push for catch and release like in bass fishing.