This one kind of started it all... went to the wrong place at the right time.
Info:
Swell Direction - None
Best Swell Direction - S SE (apparently)
Swell Height - 0-1/2 ft
Tide - Who cares
Location - Headed down to Port OConnor. Boated through the back waters. Walked across the island at the shortest part. Shit. Everywhere.
Travel time from Austin - 4hr
Description - Reminded me of an irrigation canal. Ripples everywhere. Must just be a series of beach breaks. I wouldn't know, it was as flat as it gets.
Things you might like to know:
The Poco Loco Lodge is a real good little motel/fishing camp. Allows dogs. Clean sheets and towels every day. Very friendly and helpful staff. You can talk the resident handyman/fishing guide into buzzing you through the backwaters to find surf, and he will drink with you.
My Experience:
This was early last summer shortly after the move and thinking ahead as I do, I set up a LOLA surf alert for the Texas region. 4-5ft wind swell coming from the SE, winds out of the N. Sounds like a nice set up.
Well I decided to get exotic and wanted to go to an island. Matagorda island was accessible by a short ferry ride from Port OConnor, $15, and you can camp there. Perfect.
So I load up the wife, the dogs, our gear and happily await the oncoming swell. We arrive 4 hrs later to find out the ferry was shut down due to no funding. Welcome to George W's America. Minor set back. Our host/all around guide greets us with a smile and we eat some lunch. We talk about how to get out to Matagorda and he decides that there isn't too much going on so he would ferry us over there himself. We're back on.
Have a great cruise on a 22' center console fisher, 70 degrees out, blue water, and arrive at the drop off. Make plans for our guy to pick us up 4hrs later at the same spot, unload, turn the dogs loose. Drag our shit up and across the sand dunes, not a footprint in site. Get to the last dune and look over the top.
First thing I see is my dog taking a nose-dive into a dead fish on the beach. Good form. Next I notice the sheer amount of debris washed up on the beach in my line of site to view the water. Takes me a minute to realize that the water was the same color as the sand until I noticed small traces of whitewater. Skunked. Horribly skunked.
We spend the next couple of hours wandering through drift-junk. There was plenty of dead fish. Some dead birds. A hardhat. A big blown out tractor tire that was kind of fun to climb on. A shoe. You get the picture.
The wind pics up so we decide to move back to the other side of the island. Before we do that I paddle out for good measure. Soon after I paddle in for good measure. We go over to the other side of the island.
We wait 5 more hours. Ole boy finally comes back for us. He brought beer. He was quickly forgiven.
It turned out that the wind swell had a whole lot more E in it than S so it blew right past us. Lesson #1 - Swell directions change real fast down here. Lesson #2 - Never leave yourself pigeon-holed on an island when you can't see the surf first. Lesson #3 - Don't talk fishermen into dropping you off at a deserted island.
Follow these rule and you'll be farther along than me.
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