The Stout Ranch

Got invited to go on a long range offshore trip on the old “Possession Limit” this past week. The 46′ Post is now 42 years old but still going strong. Every time I get to go out on this boat brings back lots of memories of good times with good friends.

All of my old fishing waypoints are still programmed in the electronics so we had no problem locating good spots at the Rezak and Sidner banks about 150Nm offshore. We caught plenty of nice snapper, about 20 red porgy of perfect eating size, one nice blackfin tuna and a half dozen large yellowedge grouper as shown by the pictures. Both the 150Qt and 350Qt coolers were pretty well packed.

One of the highlights of the trip was a triple of jumbo snapper caught on one drop in about 400′ at the Sidner Bank.

As you can see, seas were pretty flat most of time, but on the second day of fishing, thunderstorms boiled up all around and we were unable to find a clear area to fish, so we ended up making the run back to Clear Lake a little earlier than planned. As always. it was still a good time with good friends, just like I every trip I remember.

In late July, after getting the Piggie Trap on the Northeast Feeder built, I managed to get a sounder of 12 piggies in one drop. Had one of the little ones slip out under the fence as I was delivering the lead tablets, but even so, the Coyotes were very pleased with the new and enlarged buffet at the drop box.

Since then not one single pig has visited the Northeast Feeder, but we did have a group showing up on the other side of the lake at the North Fence Line Feeder, so I got to work building a new trap there.

Finished installing it yesterday, so I set the trap and waited till dark. Just as expected a sounder of 6 pigs went in without hesitation, so I dropped the gate with my phone and then had to dispatch and drag another half dozen to the drop box this morning.

Because the steel gate is pretty heavy, I use the farm jack to raise it into position and reset the trap. Notice that three of these were those ugly splotched pigs. The coyotes will be singing my praises again tonight.

My last offshore fishing trip was in 2019, pre-Covid. Finally the five year hiatus is over and I have been fortunate to make two trips this year. Prior to the trip this past weekend I had picked a new two-speed lever drag offshore reel and was eager to give it a try. As we were approaching the target area of the McGrail Bank, the boat passed over a 100 foot high pinnacle that appeared to have a nice cloud of fish hovering over the high spot. I was running the boat at the time, so an immediate U-turn was made, I positioned us right over the peak, then danced down the stairs to the cockpit to grab my rod. On the first drop I sent my favorite glow grubtail jig to the bottom and immediately hooked up on a strong fish. Only it was a little too strong, and I soon realized why some of my fishing buddies refuse to use my grubtail jigs. Clearly it was a big Amberjack, and I am just as clearly not as young as I was in 2005 when I boated the state record 121 lb AJ. It took about 20 minutes and some serious sweating but I finally got him to the boat. Turned out to be only 80 Lbs, but still a good size AJ.

As per our usual pattern of behavior, on both trips we ended up with packed coolers including Red Snapper, Grouper, Porgies, Golden Tilefish, and Blackfin Tuna as evidenced by the photos below:

Seas were flat when we headed back to Galveston, but 15 miles from the jetties, and about an hour prior to daylight we were hit by a major league squall line with howling wind, lightning, 5 foot seas, and rain so thick we could not see the bow of the boat. We were pleased to finally make it back to Clear Lake and have the opportunity to clean fish for about 3 hours. The icing on the cake was the Monday evening dinner where we enjoyed fresh tuna sashimi for the first time in many years.

After two weeks of CR 190 being under water I was excited about driving down the road to FM 3090 again. That happened Wednesday. Friday at noon, I took that route for a ride to Houston. Turns out that was my last ride on that stretch for a while. During my hour visit in Houston a really bad line of thunderstorms passed the ranch, dumping another 4 1/2″ of rain. By the time I was heading back on FM 3090, there were several spots where the road had about 6″ of gushing water from small creeks flooding the road. I made it all the way to the Gibbons Creek Bridge on CR 190, but at that point there was a solid lake of water over the road again. Had to backtrack to Carlos and managed to make it back to the ranch from Highway 30. This morning, even that route was closed due to flooding and CR 190 is under 4′ of water yet again.

When I arrived back at the ranch, the rain had ended but the wind was still howling. There were reports of hurricane force winds in the area during the height of the storm. We had two large trees toppled near the ranch house, but fortunately the wind pushed them away from the house. The lake was about 18″ over the discharge flume and was flowing out the emergency spillway. Some of our torch lights along the edge of the lake were nearly submerged. My bass tracker boat had been blown off the deck at the south end of the lake and was about 50′ away in the pasture behind the dam. Lots of limbs down all over the property, but nowhere near the damage reported in Waller and Harris county.

No significant rainfall is forecasted for the next couple of weeks, but we probably have another 5 days or so before the water recedes from CR 190. Bet the mosquitos are really happy.

Things have been a little bit damp here at the ranch for the last two weeks. April ended with a 3 1/2″ rain which filled up the lake and made me smile. However just a few miles north of here they received over 9″ and the floodgates at Gibbons Creek Reservoir had to be fully opened. As usual, that put Gibbons Creek out of its banks and flooded the south end of my property. But to make matters much worse, the Navasota River began to flood, so the water from Gibbons Creek had no place to go. The Navasota River crested about 3 feet higher than the highest ever recorded. As of May 1, CR 190, between my entrance gate and the Gibbons Creek Bridge was under at least 8′ of water. On the north end of my lake it came close to breaching the emergency spillway and dumping into the lake. My wooden bridge over the creek was floating about 6′ above its normal resting place. CR 190 has been impassable for over two weeks. As of this morning, the road if finally clear, but the stench and the mosquito problem from the still flooded pastures is pretty bad.

To add to the flooding problems the oil well just on the other side of the road from my place flooded so badly that one of the oil tanks floated and tipped over on its side. Environmental cleanup crews have been deploying oil booms by boat for the last week to contain the spill.

Fortunately we still have road access from Highway 30 to the north and have not been cut off from the rest of the world. Last week, Mike and Helen Luchak visited for a couple of days and so I got in some serious fishing. We averaged about 10 bass per hour and ended up with a total of 87, mostly on topwaters. Unfortunately, the coontail moss is starting to explode and we had a tough time fishing any type of subsurface baits. Mike won the largest fish award with a couple of 5lb fish.

Saw a few interesting things while fishing such as a 4′ rat snake climbing up a dead tree in the middle of the lake and slithering into the wood duck nesting box mounted on the tree trunk. Also spotted a big beaver and a 5′ lake lizard.

While driving back from town a couple of days ago, had to dodge a gator walking down the middle of CR 190.

As if that wasn’t enough, the forecast is for 2-3″ more rain tomorrow. At least my old man skin is not as dry and wrinkled as usual.

A couple of my offshore fishing buddies, Mike Luchak and John Billings, came to the ranch this weekend for our annual New Year’s hog hunt. The afternoon temps were almost 70 degrees and the wind was calm so we started out on the pontoon boat and spanked a few bass. John B started things off with a fish just a hair under 6 lbs.

We ended up fishing for about an hour and caught about 20 bass on spinner baits and topwaters.

Once the sun started going down we returned to the dock and started the campfire, along with a few adult beverages. Before we could even finish the first round, a sounder of hogs began frolicking around the feeder behind the dam. Mike L had brought his .270 with a new Thermion scope, so he was selected as the designated executioner for this group of pigs. On his first shot, 3 pigs went down. He was not trying for a two-fer or three-fer, but it just happened. Not a bad start with his new scope.

As we headed back to the ranch house, Laurel reported that a rather large boar had just shown up on the North Fence Line feeder. We decided to convince the poor lonely boar to take a dirt nap and proceeded to the NFL feeder. After another short night walk to the shooting stand, Mike L had put down his fourth pig of the night.

At this point our wives declared that it was 7pm and time to eat so we headed back to the house. Just as we were all enjoying a piece of Goode Company Pecan Pie, another lonely boar started snacking on the Northeast Feeder. This time it was John B’s turn. A few minutes later, the pig count for the night reached five.

That brought my overall pig death count for the year up to 26, not even close to my best year of 81, (but I had slacked off a little so my buddies would have plenty of targets). Now the problem will be how we manage to do better better than 5 piggies down at next years annual hog hunt.

It was March of 2020 when we first planted 140 grapevines in the Gibbons Creek Vineyard on the hill behind our ranch house. Between raccoons with a fondness for grapes, and 100+ degree temps for weeks on end, last year turned into a meager harvest of mostly raisins. But we learned from our mistakes. A new, fully electrified 6′ fence across the front of the vineyard, and lots of steel spikes installed below ground level around the rest of the vineyard allowed us to almost eliminate the loss of loss of grapes to the critters. Watering the drip irrigation for 3 hours every 3 days kept the grapes nice and plump.

Last week the sugar content of the grapes surpassed 20 brix, so it was time to schedule a grape harvest. Our friends Mike and Cathy Rape, Jennifer Deering, and our ranch hand Taren Parker met us at the vineyard at sunrise this morning. Temp were a pleasant 75 degrees (at least for the first 5 minutes) as the bird netting was removed from the 7 rows of vines. By 10:30am, we had harvested and crushed 820 lbs of Lenoire grapes.

Mike and Cathy have a wine making operation and were able to supply the grape crushing equipment and take the grapes. The crushing operation produced almost 100 gallons of juice and skins, which will now go through a couple of weeks of fermentation. We are hopeful that this will produce about 300 bottles of wine.

Looking forward to the tasting of this vintage next year.