Passport to Texas

Family camping trip at Bastrop State Park

Recreation: Camping with Dad Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Camping offers parents an opportunity to bond with their children, and the kiddos a chance to connect with nature.

15— Kids love camping, and to get them outdoors is so important. Especially nowadays even more so with all the electronics that are out there. They are tomorrow’s leaders, and we want them to be conservation leaders. So it’s very important to get them outside and to have a good time with them.

Robert Ramirez is an education and outreach training specialist, and takes his kids camping whenever he can. With Father’s Day coming up, he encourages dads (and moms) to plan a camping trip with the kids. It doesn’t have to cost a lot.

16— You can find a lot of secondhand items at yard sales and Goodwill; my whole kitchen set is from Goodwill. It’s very inexpensive, and those are the kinds of things you’ll want outside that you can beat up or lose and won’t cost so much. And camping gear also – it’s there for you to find at yard sales and second hand stores for sure.

If you’re new to camping, consider a backyard test run.

15— Once you have your equipment and get outside in the backyard and do a test run – put up the tent and set up our little camp site and cook outside. That way you’re going to have an idea of what you’re going to need. Make a check-list of everything. And, educate your campers; that’s extremely important to do.

Find camping and safety information on the Texas Parks and Wildlife website.

That’s our show for today. .. Funding provided in part by Ram Trucks. Guts. Glory. Ram

For Texas Parks and Wildlife, I’m Cecilia Nasti.

Flathead catfish, courtesy Virtual Aquarium, Virginia Tech

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Hand-fishing for catfish, also called noodling, is a new way to fish in Texas even though it’s been going on for years.

06— And it’s typically passed on from generation to generation. There isn’t a lot of new folks being added to the sport.

Hand-fishers use only their bare hands to bring a fish to shore. Kris Bodine is a fisheries research scientist. Hand-fishing became legal in Texas in 2011, and since then, TPW’s been trying to understand this user group and their needs.

15— What we’re finding is that a lot of these people fish with their family members — it’s just passed on down the chain. But a lot of these folks like this sport because it allows them an opportunity to catch really big fish that might be otherwise very difficult to catch.

Bodine and his cohorts are collecting data about them using a voluntary online survey.

29—In recent years we’ve been working on developing a statewide catfish management plan. And that catfish management plan requires us to have a suite of different kinds of information. One piece of information is we need to know about our anglers: what they want, who they are, what they’re catching, and how they want us to manage the fisheries. Because they are a new angling group to us, and we know nothing about them — virtually. We need to consider their needs in our future management practices.

The survey’s available through the end of this month. Find a link to it at passporttotexas.org [find link to survey below].

The Wildlife and Sport fish Restoration program supports our series and is funded by your purchase of hunting and fishing equipment and motorboat fuel.

For Texas Parks and Wildlife, I’m Cecilia Nasti.
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HAND FISHING SURVEY
The survey should take five to 10 minutes to complete online at https://survey.tpwd.state.tx.us/TakeSurvey.aspx?SurveyID=8803304. Anglers may complete the survey any time between now and June 30.

Blue catfish – a fighter and biter for those who “noodle.”

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Noodling or hand fishing is a preferred way to land big catfish, for some.

15— What they do is they find holes that are typically on the bank, or in structure timber, what have you. And, fishermen will search around in the water blindly, feeling in holes until they find these fish, and then they’ll pull them out with their hands.

Whether the anglers get the catfish, or the catfish get the anglers is up for debate.

07— Some of them will tell you they’ll be as gentle as a kitty cat, and some of them will meet you at the door, ready to snap on.

Kris Bodine is a research scientist at Heart of the Hills Fisheries Science Center.

09—They [hand fishers] tell me that actually blue catfish are a little more aggressive than the flat head catfish, and a lot of the hand fishers don’t want to catch blue catfish because they’re so aggressive.

Although hand fishing is not a new sport, it only became legal in Texas in 2011, which means researchers are in the beginning stages of studying this unique user group.

16—It seems at the outset right now, in terms of the data we’re collecting, that we don’t have a very big user group. There’s probably not a lot of folks going out there hand fishing. In fact, they don’t even have a very long window to do it. It’s typically during the spawning season, so they only have a couple months to hand fish.

A survey for hand-fishing enthusiasts. That’s tomorrow.

The Wildlife and Sport Fish Restoration program supports our series and is funded by your purchase of hunting and fishing equipment and motorboat fuel.

For Texas Parks and Wildlife, I’m Cecilia Nasti.

Trophy buck taken by Tom Roughton with guide Rene Garza, January 17, 2006.

TPW TV: Buck Fever Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

While hiking, you spy a buck in the distance with large, perfectly formed antlers. Your heart races; your breath becomes shallow; your nerves tingle. Hunters call this buck fever. What do perfect antlers look like?

06— Nice smooth lines, tall tines coming off the main beams; very symmetrical one side to the other.

John Stein should know; he’s curator at the Buckhorn Saloon and Museum in San Antonio, where antler and taxidermy covered walls draw visitors by the thousands.

05— Overall, in the collection, there’s over 12-hundred trophies that are on the walls –of all difference species.

Some hunters pay landowners handsomely to bag trophy animals—money that’s funneled into land management and conservation. For 25 years, deer experts at the Kerr WMA have studied the genetic and nutritional aspects of antler growth in bucks, and have shared the data with landowners; biologist, Gene Fuchs.

15— The information that we’ve gained from this study shows that through selection – by never allowing a buck that was a spike to ever breed a doe – we produced no spike antler yearling bucks two years in a row. And, the percentage of good quality antler yearling bucks has steadily increased.

Learn more this week when a segment called Buck Fever airs on the TPW PBS TV Series. Check your local listings.

Caprock Canyon trail

Recreation: National Trails Day Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

National Trails Day, which is Saturday June 7 this year, encourages us to celebrate the outdoors on foot.

04— Most of our parks have programs and trail-type events every weekend of the year.

But, Thomas Wilhelm, with Texas State Parks, says there are special trail events around the state this Saturday.

12— Bastrop is having a special hike so you can see the rejuvenation efforts that are taking place in Bastrop following the wildfires. Estero Llano Grande and Resaca de la Palma down in the valley are having special bird-centric hikes.

There are other hiking events and even trail building, maintenance and repair opportunities at parks across the state, too. Thomas Wilhelm says, in the end, the point is to get outside and experience nature.

23— Being on the trails is the first step to really embracing nature. It’s low impact. You’re just doing something we do every day – you’re just doing it in a different atmosphere. So, you really get to experience things that you may overlook day-to-day, even though it’s right there beside you (even though it’s right there beside you). So, it starts people on the path to really appreciating nature and wildlife and everything that’s around them.

Find information about National Trails Day and Texas State Parks trail information at texasstateparks.org.

For Texas Parks and Wildlife, I’m Cecilia Nasti.