Okay, so now what do we do? Football season ends with the Super Bowl, the major hunting season is over, and the weather can be cool and unpredictable for surf fishing.  This is the time of the year when you visit the beach just to be out there. At certain times I like being out there when it is unfishable because most of the time my brain is on “MUST CATCH FISH” mode. But during these periods I can go play around and engage in other activities that don’t involve fishing, like beachcombing and shelling, checking out birds, noting which ones are temporary visitors and which ones are “homeboys”, or simply taking a nice stroll on the beach.

                The winter season can be very harsh on the shellfish population and many are killed by cold like the recent Arctic outbreak we had. Most of the time the shells you find in those kills early on will be the ones that look like ice cream cones we call “pen shells” Actually, the proper name for those is “saw toothed pen shell”. After a week or two and a few good strong cold fronts and some northeast winds more of the desirable shells will wash up. One of the most desired of the stuff we find, (At least my wife likes it the best) is not a shell at all.   It is the fan coral pictured below. About the only time we ever find it

 is during the winter time and most of that is past the 40 mile area and on down towards the Mansfield Jetty. It is tough to see at first but it normally is found in stacks of seaweed deposited along the beach. Often times you will just see a tiny bit of it sticking out of a pile and have to work to uncover it.

                Visitors are allowed to take up to five gallons of shells at the Padre Island National Seashore as long as they are not collected for commercial purposes and as long as the mollusk inside the shell is no longer alive. Here are just a few I managed to grab and photo. Some of my favorites include the eastern murex – first on the left of the bottom row. For a complete guide on shelling the National Seashore visit http://www.nps.gov/pais/planyourvisit/upload/seashells.pdf

                Other common items found beachcombing that the kids seem to love are these sea beans that come from the Caribbean see picture below including the “Sea Heart Bean” pictured upper right and what we call the “Hamburger Bean” for obvious reasons.

For more fun with sea beans you can visit the U.T. Marine Science Center display near the Port Aransas Jetties in Port Aransas. They have a wonderful display of sea beans and maps showing where each variety comes from. Shelling is usually best at low tide though I have found some wonderful shells in the washout areas between the dunes. For the sea beans, the high tide line in the old weed is a good place to start.

                A story that I have told before concerning beachcombing involves my friends, Dennis and Carolyn George of Helotes. Dennis fishes and when he is doing that Carolyn beachcombs. One day I was fishing with Billy Sandifer and we stopped to say hello to the Georges and Carolyn showed us some of her more unusual finds. One happened to be a black looking claw with a hole completely through one end. Carolyn asked me “Tyler what do you think this is?” She thought it might be some bear claw from an old Indian chief’s necklace. Being a male and temporarily forgetting that females don’t necessarily want the truth but the “right answer” I blurted out “It’s a stone crab claw tip!” I wished I could take those words back out of the air but it was too late. It wouldn’t have hurt her to go on thinking that was some ancient bear claw worn by some great Indian Chief. Life lesson learned.

                With the cold and then the rain, not too many people have been fishing recently. The water has been off color and there have been some slot and oversized Redfish caught in addition to lots of Whiting and a few Stingrays. This month fishing for oversized black drum should be good inside the Mansfield Channel and all along the beach at times for redfish, black drum, whiting and occasionally Pompano when the water clears up.  Fresh bait shrimp and Fishbite combos will be good for all species though it never hurts to try mullet or cut mullet, or cut whiting for the redfish, and sea lice and blue crab for the big black drum. Horse mullet over 12” are now legal to take as bait.  Driving is good on the low tides but can get dicey in the normal areas of Big Shell from the 18 to the 28 mile areas.

The Big Shell Cleanup is set for Saturday March 20th!

Tyler Thorsen