# Coastal Texas Cast N' Blast - Trigger Pulled



## Rhawk86 (May 21, 2013)

Pulled the trigger on going to Texas Jan 9-17 for a cast n' blast. In an effort to encourage those of you that are also squirming in their seats debating their own trips, my details below:

This is currently 2 man trip, *Freelance Non Guided*
$426/week for a 2 bedroom park model - 15-30 minutes from launch depending on hunt
$103 for 5 day hunting license
$68 for fishing license
21Hr drive
Gas on the way TBD

I have about 2hrs of conversation in with a fantastic guy who manages the units, probably rack up another 2. I cant believe the rate on the house. My adrenaline is in full force even typing this thread.

My equipment planned and other exciting stuff to follow, I need to go take a shot and holler out in the yard. I have been so conservative with plans lately it feels great to just go for it.


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## Divers Down (Mar 31, 2008)

Rhawk86 said:


> Pulled the trigger on going to Texas Jan 9-17 for a cast n' blast. In an effort to encourage those of you that are also squirming in their seats debating their own trips, my details below:
> 
> This is currently 2 man trip, *Freelance Non Guided*
> $426/week for a 2 bedroom park model - 15-30 minutes from launch depending on hunt
> ...


You lost me at the *21 Hr drive.!!*
Have a great trip! looking forward to the pics.


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## BumpRacerX (Dec 31, 2009)

Kinda jealous. Doing a 19 hour drive to Florida over the holidays. Debated packing shotgun and waders. Probably not though.


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## Rhawk86 (May 21, 2013)

BumpRacerX said:


> Kinda jealous. Doing a 19 hour drive to Florida over the holidays. Debated packing shotgun and waders. Probably not though.


Don’t worry brother. I saw your post in the other thread. Louisiana and Texas are my top 2 as well. I’m just scouting it out for you. Find us some birds on Lake Okechobee. I would love to catch 8lb large mouth and blast ducks all day in gator land.

If 4 of us went down there it would really cost nothing. Also get twice the scouting in. I would welcome any honest hard working person.



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## fsamie1 (Mar 8, 2008)

Rhawk86 said:


> Don’t worry brother. I saw your post in the other thread. Louisiana and Texas are my top 2 as well. I’m just scouting it out for you. Find us some birds on Lake Okechobee. I would love to catch 8lb large mouth and blast ducks all day in gator land.
> 
> If 4 of us went down there it would really cost nothing. Also get twice the scouting in. I would welcome any honest hard working person.
> 
> ...


Good luck and it will be fun for sure. Do you know what kind of ducks are in that area. I heard Texas is mostly redheads and cans? I am honest but do not work hard. Can I fly and meet you down there?


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## TSS Caddis (Mar 15, 2002)

When we freelance a couple different east coast states, it generally runs $300-$450 a person for 3 people door to door including everything. $450 if we stay at the Hampton Inn, $300 if we stay and the local motel


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## Rhawk86 (May 21, 2013)

fsamie1 said:


> Good luck and it will be fun for sure. Do you know what kind of ducks are in that area. I heard Texas is mostly redheads and cans? I am honest but do not work hard. Can I fly and meet you down there?


We plan on doing a good amount of walk in hunts. The boat is really just a shuttle. If the Red ducks want to cooperate we will gladly go diver mode. We are preparing for both.

You’re in the stage and shape my father is in. He is sitting at home while we figure it out this year. He doesn’t really like to get out of his 21ft boat. 

Hopefully I see ALL the birds, I don’t necessarily need to kill them. Just want to learn em. Tons of teal.












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## Stillkickin (Jan 7, 2018)

Sounds like a great trip, I spent some time in Port Mansfield last year and it looks like an awesome area for a cast and blast. 

what region are you going to?


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## Rhawk86 (May 21, 2013)

Stillkickin said:


> Sounds like a great trip, I spent some time in Port Mansfield last year and it looks like an awesome area for a cast and blast.
> 
> what region are you going to?


We will be in the northern part of the Gulf. You were a lot farther south.


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## Swamp Boss (Mar 14, 2003)

Sounds **** a great trip. Can you take a picture of restaurants that are open and bring back Texas' Governor? We need a new one here!


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## Rhawk86 (May 21, 2013)

So the emotions have calmed since "booking" the trip. I find myself waking in the night after dreams of Pintails with 3ft tails on them...no joke...and cinnamon teal pulling up right in front of me. So I realized my expectations not only need to be set but they need to be realistic.

Realistically, the redhead and teal opportunities should out weigh the rest of the encounters we have. But anything could happen, we would like to get 1 new species out of this trip(for us). Whether it is cinnamon, mottled, black bellied, fulvous it is equally amazing...well I would put cinnamon on the top tier. So realistically we need to put in the time to find a good volume of ducks. Holes with 30-40 birds might yield a 2 man limit but would not yield the diversity a 100+ bird hole would. So we either have to find the specific species we are looking for, or play the numbers game and move on from pretty good holes looking for great ones. I would NOT dare to say that I am so awesome I can go down to this new habitat, with new birds, tides, and gators and be able to get right on them. Also when do you call it good enough, like any trip, when do you lower your expectations??? I guess that depends on a lot of things...birds in the area, equipment failures, body fatigue. Enjoying clouds of divers instead...

So with expectations adjusted, we relocated our home base and consolidated to one specific area. This is to better utilize our time and make sure we even have realistic expectations on scouting the first two days.

Back to intensively look at aerial images, sometimes I look at them and imagine the hunt in that spot(get my limit everytime)...I have gone full Kid mode since we decided to do this.


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## wavie (Feb 2, 2004)

Don't set your expectations too high. Enjoy the adventure, from planning to your actual hunt. Make sure to give us a recap.


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## TSS Caddis (Mar 15, 2002)

wavie said:


> Don't set your expectations too high. Enjoy the adventure, from planning to your actual hunt. Make sure to give us a recap.


Don’t know how many out of state hunts I’ve been on where I left a lot of the enjoyment on the table being focused on the harvesting of a species. Do your best to put yourself in the right area and let the chips fall where they may.


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## bombcast (Sep 16, 2003)

have hunted north central Tx about a dozen times over the years. Amazing trip, we always go last 5 days of their duck season. The "go with the flow" comment is spot on - some years it's a teal fest, others your normal plains birds - gadwall, wigeon and sprigs. One year it was all cans and redheads and honkers. We pig hunt primarily now, which is all the fun you can handle, and we tend to only shoot specimen birds so we don't have to eat freaking duck all week. Shot a drake cinnie 10 years ago, and a couple banded mallards. Scout scout scout - don't lock in on one particular thing until it proves out.


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## grassmaster (Jan 10, 2009)

We did that trip last year out of Matagorda, cold front turned the Redfish off and the ducks were stale where we were.
We headed to port Aransas and there were Pintails and redheads all over the place 1000s right on both sides of the bridge swimming around some stilted palm grass blinds, later learned the guy rents them out with 10 dz decoys for $75 per gun per day. that's what I would do next time.


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## Rhawk86 (May 21, 2013)

grassmaster said:


> We did that trip last year out of Matagorda, cold front turned the Redfish off and the ducks were stale where we were.
> We headed to port Aransas and there were Pintails and redheads all over the place 1000s right on both sides of the bridge swimming around some stilted palm grass blinds, later learned the guy rents them out with 10 dz decoys for $75 per gun per day. that's what I would do next time.


When did you go last year?



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## grassmaster (Jan 10, 2009)

Middle of January, its a bad time to fish for reds as the shrimp season is closed so there's no live shrimp for bait.
there's a great jetty in Port Aransas to fish, they catch all kinds of stuff off there.
we used gulp shrimp.


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## grassmaster (Jan 10, 2009)

The guys at south bay marina on the redfish causeway{hwy 361} over to Port A will know who rents the blinds out.
spoons and stick baits work good off the jetty, talk to the locals on the jetty about the ducks, lots of you tube videos of monster fish caught there. good luck!


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## Rhawk86 (May 21, 2013)

Hey guys,

Just an update for you all that asked. We left Saturday for a non stop drive to our bayou home away from home. We left at 6am and got in at 2am. Not a bad drive, amazingly not really any waterfowl around the Mississippi River. However the fields in Arkansas were just amazing, it was my first time going through there and it was just like I would of imagined it from all the stories I have heard. Rice fields full. It was hard at first to justify driving on. But then you realize those ducks are $50-75$ a piece per 1/2 day. I can’t imagine how many phone calls those landowners get.


First day Sunday- a massive storm system came through all day. Snow all over Texas, incredibly high winds. This was a planned scouting day, which seemed like a mistake at the time. But going out that morning we saw very few birds. The ones that were up did not stay up long. So we actually got cold and wet in Texas instead of hot and sun burnt. We did half a day out on the boat and half in the car. We were just trying to get increasingly better spots. We ended the day with nothing better than C+ spots.

2nd day Monday- We decide to do a hybrid scout/hunt. We go for the Detroit Duck Destroyer(canoe). The wind and the tide are creating extremely low water conditions. So this is our safest and most mobile option. We go out late to be safe and see birds work. The decision was made to setup some decoys and observe the birds even if they don’t want anything to do with us. We started to see birds as the morning went on. A group of green wing teal came right in on us, 5 of 6 shots wiffed for us but 1 beautiful drake knocked. Rusty start but they’re so much more agile than the fat mallards we have been shooting back home. Then we really start to see birds pouring into our area. We shot two gadwall and continued to watch the show. We left the decoys and went to scout the approach on our A+ spot for Tuesday. It was about a 5hr adventure. Tomorrow should be 12 birds. I’m regards to the casting part, the water is just destroyed from the storm right now. 

Take care up there everyone. 


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## Stillkickin (Jan 7, 2018)

Keep us updated, that TX cast and blast sure seems like a great thing to do this time of year!


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