Steve Knight

The impact of a hurricane is always determined by the damage caused on land.

However, blown down trees and ripped off roofs are not the only results of a storm such as Dolly, which hit the lower Texas coast last week.

At times storms can have positive impacts — such as bringing much needed rain beneficial to range conditions and wildlife across a portion of South Texas.

A hurricane can also just make life more interesting. Rockport fishing guide Brad Smythe grew up in East Texas and on many occasions experienced the improved fishing that a pending thunderstorm brought.

Riding out his third storm on the coast, Smythe said the situation is similar with a hurricane, but on a grander scale.

“We were catching fish before we felt the impact, but it was like the fish felt it. I was fishing on Monday and (Hurricane Dolly) was right off the Yucatan. The tides were coming in, they were starting to surge, and we wore the fish out. It was trout, no reds,” Smythe said.

On Tuesday, the redfish moved onto the reefs and shell beds and were in a feeding frenzy. The fish were hammering the live bait as soon as it hit the water.

“When you are fishing croakers in late July you usually feel them get nervous, then they will get hit and get nervous again. These you could feel the vibration of the hit in your rod,” Smythe explained.

Normally with a rising tide the water will come up 2 to 6 inches. The current that accompanies the changing tide is often more noticeable than the rising water along that portion of the coast. In advance of Hurricane Dolly, the water rose 3? to 4 feet, inundating some docks and piers.

The water was also highly oxygenated and cooler. Along with the barometric pressure drop, the fish went on a bite.

Rockport is northeast of where the hurricane came on shore. Like South Padre Island, Rockport began taking a hit from the hardest winds on Wednesday. With the wind circling back from the north at gusts up to 65 mph, the bays began to look like the open water of the Gulf. It was too windy for bait dealers to get on the water, forcing most charters to be canceled.

On Thursday the hurricane made land and the Rockport area felt it more from its winds than rain.

“This was the first time (of the three hurricanes he has experienced) that we had substantial wind. The winds sustained at 40 and the gusts were to 64 and 65,” Smythe said, adding the water in the bays starts to roll at about 14.

The guide said when the storm came on shore at Brownsville, it sat there. That meant the Rockport area was crushed by the winds for upwards of six hours.

Over the weekend, Smythe worked as a deckhand on a boat competing in an offshore tournament. He said the boat had to travel 30 miles offshore before it found good water.

“In the bays it was pretty nasty looking, but the tide was gone. We had a hard push of water coming in, and then it pushed it out,” Smythe said of the aftermath of the storm. “The water is trashed. There is a lot of brownish water and there is a lot of debris in the water. There are floating logs and pilings. You have to be careful running the bays.”

Talking to other guides who were out over the weekend and the first of the week, Smythe said it sounded as if the fishing was tough.

“Probably everything is so torn up it is hard to get on fish,” he explained.

But he predicts it to be a temporary condition. In fact Smythe expects fishing to be good because of the storm once everything settles down.

“I think what is fixing to happen is that it is going to help. There is going to be a lot of runoff from everything coming in to the bays, but we had such a surge of saltwater it is not going to turn the bays into freshwater or brackish,” he said.

Contact Outdoor Editor Steve Knight at 903-596-6277 or by e-mail at outdoor@tylerpaper.com

HELLO DOLLY: For those able to get into the bays, fishing was excellent just before Hurricane Dolly approached the Texas coast. Guides expect it to be good again in coming days.
((AP Photo By David J. Phillips))