"What's in a Flag?"

by Hutch00 AKA Archie (with assistance from Sam)

Sometimes, the uninformed might think we were psychic.

Imagine coming down here from, say, New Jersey and having the opportunity to go on a bay fishing trip with a pen pal (or another CCCF member).  Well, you head on down the road, early-thirty, and pass several bait camps without stopping.  Now you know that these fish eat bait, right?  Just as you start questioning the sanity of your fishing buddy, he stops at one, saying, "Okay, this one has what we want."

There's a joke about the Thermos Bottle being the best invention ever because it keeps hot things hot and cold things cold...the punch line is, "How do it know?"   Well, how does your friend know which bait camp has the "right stuff"?

It's all in the flags.

Almost all bait camps on the coast (and not just Texas) fly "bait flags".   If you are looking for shrimp, just look for the white flag.  Shoot, some of them even spell it out for you...a white flag with the words "LIVE SHRIMP" written on it.

Okay, but this trip, you plan on soaking some live finger mullet.  No problem.   Just look for a red flag (however, that can also mean live mud minnows, and, if it is a big red flag flown high on a mast, it probably means small craft should exercise caution).

Let's assume you and your bud just want to throw out the long rods and simply need some dead shrimp or dead mullet to cut up.  Again, no problem.   Look for the black flag, which denotes dead bait availability.

Finally, a lot has been said about targeting big trout with live croaker.  This has gotten so popular in recent years that a lot of the bait camps now fly still another color, orange, when they have live croaker for sale.

Now if the bay would just fly flags showing us where the trout are!