Three Fish Limit, Kid Fishing and More with Captain Scott Null, Expert Fishing Guide

Originally aired on November 9th, 2025. Doug's wide-spanning and insightful interview with Captain Scott Null, for your listening pleasure.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Let me get Cap Scott on the phone. Cap Scott,
what's up?

Speaker 2 (00:05):
Oh this Wendy dug well, Wendy, And no power for
us where we are. Every time you just go outside
and go like this girl and the power goes out
at the house.

Speaker 3 (00:15):
It's stupid. Man. Mind's the Internet. So I might at
some point, but that's okay.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
So let's let's go back to that three fish stuff
from yesterday. Because James James pretty adamant about not being
a fan of the new three fish limit, and he
and I both did agree though, that if we're gonna
really get this right, we need to focus on the
environment that those fish are living in now, which has
greatly changed. So come at it from the port O'Connor standpoint.

Speaker 3 (00:44):
Well, most of what I see, it's just a number
of people, man, Yeah, I mean just you can go
back and look at I mean, I did it a
while back. I don't have the numbers in front of me,
but just the number of licenses that are sold every year, right,
it's just increased exponentially. It's crazy, the numbers. And yeah,

(01:05):
I have kids around and now that you know, tell
you all, man, it's because you guys, you know, y'all caught.
Y'all had twenty fish limits. I said, Well, when I
was fishing, I had no limits when I started. Yeah,
and yeah, I mean I caught and kept thirty forty fish. Yeah,
it happened. But on those days I was on the

(01:25):
south shore line of Christmas Bay and I never saw
another person.

Speaker 1 (01:28):
Yeah, that's exactly right.

Speaker 3 (01:29):
I mean, so I was one guy taking you know,
twenty thirty forty fish whatever it was, versus I don't
know how many here over there. Now. The last time
I rolled through it about ten years ago, it was
wall to wall.

Speaker 1 (01:42):
Yeah. Yeah, let's call it two hundred guys.

Speaker 2 (01:46):
And if each one of them has two people in
the boat to probably one hundred boats. Each of them
got two guys in the boat, that's two hundred boats
or two hundred rods. And if each of them catch
three fish, now we got six hundred fish coming out
instead of twenty or thirty.

Speaker 3 (02:01):
Yeah, it does make it with the average of one
fish per person that you had.

Speaker 1 (02:05):
Yet, you know, you're still.

Speaker 3 (02:07):
That's still a lot of fish. And you know, just
that that number of the number of guides that are
that are out there that are hitting it hard all
the time, yeah, I think that has as much to
do with it as anything the environmental Yes, I mean
there's there's a huge impact on the environmental side, you know.

(02:27):
Harvey James mentioned that, Yeah, yesterday covered up all those oysteris,
you know, suffocating. There's so much involved in all that,
and I don't know how you fix any of that.
So the only tool that they have in the toolshifts
is limits, right, And so that's why, you know, we
worked so hard to get those limits changed like that.

(02:51):
I believe firmly that this, uh, that slot limit being
what it is is gonna help. I mean, he can't
do it anything but help and bring back quality fish,
you know, because that's one of the things I hear
the most is, man, we catch a lot of fish, Shiel,
and we're catching all good numbers and we can get
our slot fish. Man, we just never catch those big

(03:12):
fish like we used to. Well it was because they
were all going in coolers. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (03:17):
Well, and it's either we don't catch the big fish
like we used to, or the young guys are kind
of going, where's mind that we don't catch big fish?

Speaker 1 (03:24):
Period?

Speaker 2 (03:24):
They never have and they want said that and this
is a good way.

Speaker 1 (03:28):
To get it done.

Speaker 3 (03:29):
Yeah. And one of the other things I hear, you know,
because with the to the podcast, I've got all different ages.

Speaker 1 (03:35):
Sure.

Speaker 3 (03:35):
And one of the other things I hear a lot
from the younger guys is, man, everything's fine. It's as
good as it's ever been. You're twenty five years old. Yeah,
it's as good as it's ever been for you. You Yeah,
but you don't have a frame of reference that us
old timers have, you know, I being in that old
timers flute crowd now, but I am, and I mean

(03:59):
you did it. I did it. We went out there
fishing East Bay drip driftyfrief with nothing but a kelly
wiggler on a quarter round as you did, and catch
you fifteen twenty thirty fish four or five six pounders.

Speaker 1 (04:13):
I can remember.

Speaker 3 (04:14):
Not that unusual.

Speaker 1 (04:15):
It wasn't at all.

Speaker 2 (04:16):
And Trinity Bay was kind of semi quiet back then
because East Bay was so productive. And I remember the
first few times I got to go over there and
fish with Mickey or Blaine or one of those guys,
and we're we're standing on the edges of reefs throwing
out and you know, just along the along those reefs
with oh what was it meant all kinds of top
waters and dirk baits and just smoking five to eight

(04:40):
pound fish every cat.

Speaker 3 (04:42):
You know, Yeah, it was not that unusual. No, And
I mean, and that's the frame of reference that a
lot of the younger guys don't have them. They're like, man,
I can't believe they cut down the limits because things
are as good as I've ever seen them. Yeah, they
just yeah, I don't know. And like I said, the
only tool that they have in the toolbox is to

(05:04):
play with the limits criticizes. And I mean because it
takes a part of wild life. It's real hard for
them to do anything about water quality. You know. CCIA
does what they can as far as the habitat stuff
and the oysters. The oyster is a whole other issue.
Getting down here up there, you all got them covered

(05:26):
up by silk during the hurricane down here, they just
took all of them. Yeah, go across the bridge right
there Port Levaka. Right now. I had had a guy
came down here, was working on the ranch doing some stuff,
and he said, man, I came across that bridge there
at Port Levaka this morning. What's the deal, man, There's
like forty or fifty boats and they're right on top

(05:46):
of each other, they shrimping. What are they doing? He
has no clue. Yeah, and I said, now those are
oyster boats and they're dragging every inch of that orchary
and they will, they'll get them on. And well that's
that's as big a part of it, the same thing
as the I mean, oysters are the base of our system.
You know, they keep the water clean. Clean water helps

(06:10):
you know that filtering the water, and it just works
its way up from there. But I mean, I do
I do see an improvement. We're catching trout in places
that I haven't caught trout since the freeze, way back
in the back lakes while we're chasing redfish were you know,
we're catching these incidental trout like I used to and

(06:31):
then for several years there I didn't. They're all fairly small,
but always before you i'd pull the shoreline and I'd
be going down there on the grass flat we're hitting
all the reds. Then we'd hit the mouth of a
bayou and I'd tell my guys, hey, let that soft
plastic drip drift down just a little bit and you'll
probably catching a trout or two while we're cutting across
this opening, and since the freeze that wasn't happening, I

(06:56):
mean it was zero's and now back to you know,
two or three fish. Every time we cross the opening
of one of those guts, one spot.

Speaker 1 (07:05):
At a time.

Speaker 2 (07:05):
You know, they're coming back, man, they are.

Speaker 3 (07:08):
I mean, that's you know, it's encouraging. It is. And
I'm hearing from more and more people who target trout.
You know, I really don't target the trout much, but
the ones that do, they're doing better. You know, they're
catching more, and they seem happier about it. And a
whole lot of them that were pretty dead set against
that three fish limit and more so against the slot.

(07:30):
You know, they didn't like that lower slot, and now
they're saying, you know, maybe that was a good idea.

Speaker 1 (07:37):
Maybe.

Speaker 2 (07:37):
So Hey, Scotty, I hate to do it to you,
mister podcast, but mister broadcast here has got to hit
a network rejoin.

Speaker 3 (07:43):
Yeah, we don't do that, I know.

Speaker 1 (07:46):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'd love it.

Speaker 2 (07:48):
If you want to hang around, you can hang around.
If you've got stuff to do, go do it, you picked.

Speaker 3 (07:52):
Man, I'll hang out to do that.

Speaker 2 (07:55):
Yeah, I got more things I want to talk to
you about Yeah, Okay, let's put him on hold and
I'll come back to him.

Speaker 1 (08:00):
And when we get through here.

Speaker 3 (08:02):
Now here's Doug Fike.

Speaker 1 (08:05):
All right, welcome back, second and final hour.

Speaker 2 (08:08):
Well it started right before Scott and I finished, but
it starts in earnest. Now we've taken care of all
our business, so let's go back and talk to Scott
some more. All right, man, I'm gonna squeeze a few
more minutes out of you if you don't mind.

Speaker 1 (08:21):
First of all, when I was talking to James, I said.

Speaker 2 (08:23):
Something about how the there are so many small fish
in the bays now, and how a lot of the
people who don't who don't really understand what we're really
aiming for, will go out and they'll get under birds
or trip over someplace it's got a bunch of little
pencils on it, and they'll kill ten or fifteen pencils
to get one keeper. How do we how do we

(08:46):
train them to just leave those little ones and trust
that they'll find a school of all bigger ones because
they do tend to run in packs.

Speaker 3 (08:55):
Well, everybody's gonna get excited about those little ones. Then
I get it. I do it that you do. What
we need to train them to do is treat them
a little better. You know, if you're talking about that
bas Gat, don't do that. You know, they've done all
the studies hard institute down there in Corpus, they did
huge studies on all these fish and traut are a

(09:17):
lot more resilient than we give them credit for. If
you just give them a bear minimum of respect.

Speaker 2 (09:25):
Sure, kip them off the front deck on the way
back into the.

Speaker 3 (09:28):
Water, you know, don't throw them off in there like
a heronad either. You know, I see that constantly. Uh,
you know, just the you don't have to be super
gentle with them, you don't have to baby them and
all that. But yeah, grab the you're slinging up there
onto the boat. Don't throw it on the deck number
one deck, that's bad, Okay, just lift it out of

(09:51):
the water. They're little, they're not They're not, you know,
not hard to handle. And well except that they are
hard to handle in that they flip around a lot.
I end up doing I'll take my needle nose, you know,
got them on my hip, yep, I got my flyers.
I grabbed the hook. I don't even touch the fish,
grab the hook at the bend of the hook, turn

(10:11):
it a little bit and the fish falls right straight
back in the water.

Speaker 2 (10:14):
Little pro tip for you, pro little pro tip for
you pro mashals turned barbs down.

Speaker 3 (10:22):
Yeah, I ain't. It's just it's I think that's more
of it than trying to get people to get away
from catching fish. That's just probably not.

Speaker 2 (10:33):
Yeah, that's hard, but yeah, the treatment part, You're exactly right.

Speaker 1 (10:36):
They need to learn.

Speaker 2 (10:36):
And I'm really disappointed with the bass master elite at
Lake Fork because I'm here to tell you, these guys
are treating these fish like garbage.

Speaker 1 (10:46):
And bass used to be so revered.

Speaker 2 (10:48):
Man, if you put a bass on a cleaning table
fifteen years ago, you're tires of be slashed before you
could get back to your truck. I mean, that's that
was unheard of. And now these guys. Here's another guy
just yanked one out of the water. He's got one
hand on it now, and him pretty sure as soon
as the camera gets off of him in his big smile,
he's gonna grab it behind the ears and then.

Speaker 3 (11:10):
Yeah, here you go.

Speaker 2 (11:10):
Oh he's got his hands up in the gills. Now
that's good.

Speaker 1 (11:14):
Show that off. You work deep dive and crank bait.

Speaker 3 (11:16):
Man. When it opened my eyes was when the at
the boat show that used to have the big tank
with all the bass in it. Yeah, and they'd go
up to Conrad and catch a bunch of bass and
put them in that tank, and then those fish should
be in there for what was that run fourteen days
or fifteen days. But by the end of it, if
you went up there to that tank and looked at
those fish, you could see the handprints on them, yep,

(11:39):
where they were handled. You could see there was fungus
growing on their lips where they were lip gripped. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (11:45):
We used to catch them like that at Fett County
and at Gibbons Creek when the schooling stuff was going
on in the summertime, get late late in that year
when the school there was still some schooling going on.
But it was almost kind of at the tail end,
you catch a bass and you could see a perfect
handprint across a back or on a belly or whatever.

Speaker 1 (12:03):
It's horrible, man.

Speaker 3 (12:04):
No reason that was. That was my opener, those seeing
them in that tank and them throughout the week and
seeing how they changed, and you know, watching that fungus
grow on them. And so that's another one. I see
it all the time out there, all the day. You
don't have to grab on with a towel.

Speaker 1 (12:22):
No, do that.

Speaker 3 (12:23):
That's the worst.

Speaker 1 (12:24):
A dry hand is bad enough.

Speaker 2 (12:27):
A towel is that's that's a death sentence almost because
it takes so much slime off those fish, and it
just opens the door for anything and everything in the
water to grab on and slowly kill that fish.

Speaker 3 (12:38):
Ye. People don't realize that the slime is their protection.
That's their skin, you know, that's that's what keeps them healthy.

Speaker 2 (12:45):
And that goes for all the fish too. It's not
just trout. I mean it's everything we catch. Every where
we catch fish. That's their protection, that's their overcoat for winter,
that's their germ, just defense, that's their vaccination.

Speaker 3 (12:59):
I'm pretty sure gas off they're safe. Uh hardheads, Yeah,
my gaff top with that slyme, I'm pretty sure those
fuckers are safe. Oh my gosh, yeah, I don't think
you could get to the bottom of the slime on
a gaff top.

Speaker 1 (13:13):
Now how many times?

Speaker 2 (13:15):
How many times have you seen your line come up
thinking you got a pretty good trout or maybe a
red fish, Probably because it's staying kind of deep and
three feet up the line before you can even see
the lure of the fish.

Speaker 1 (13:27):
Anything you just see that's not come on man.

Speaker 3 (13:32):
It comes up on the beach front while or tarping fishing,
they will they will absolutely slam one of those d
away bait busters. Oh yeah, tarping clam it, and the
first immediate thought is got it harping. I mean they
hit hard, sure, and be within about ten seconds, I
tell that it's gonna be a gaff top. But what
I found that's been interesting is wherever I find gaff stops,

(13:55):
I find harping. I don't know what the relationship is,
but they're they're in the same they're in the same school,
they're in the same areas.

Speaker 2 (14:03):
I would think, let's just let's just throw let's spit
ball a little bit. Okay, you got tarpin and you
got gaff top moving together. The tarpain are looking probably
for a little bit bigger something to eat, but they're
moving a whole lot of everything in front of them.
Everything little runs away from the tarpa and the tarba goes, yeah,
I don't want a potato chip, I want a steak,
and the gaff tops comes sweeping in to get the

(14:24):
little stuff that.

Speaker 1 (14:25):
They kick up.

Speaker 3 (14:27):
I don't know if it's that or it's the tarpn
feeding and they're catching leftovers, you know, the done fish
then stuff.

Speaker 1 (14:35):
Well, yeah, that's true too.

Speaker 3 (14:36):
One other thing I've noticed though, is you know we
get MUDs just like with red fish and MUDs along
the beach front. That's that's a true sign of tarpain.
Now we're gonna we're gonna get them. They've got clear water,
we got a mud, good mud streak, probably tarping in
it if it's all all the beach. And I'm wondering
if those those gaf top are rooting the bottom and
rooting stuff up that the tarpan.

Speaker 2 (14:57):
Are now and the tarpain are just the tarpin are
the beneficiaries of the rooting of the gaff top you.

Speaker 1 (15:03):
Think, huh?

Speaker 3 (15:04):
I don't know, who knows. Yeah, I've seen Tarvin following
those huge schools of jacks. Yeah, and I think they're
picking off cripples, you know, because the jacks just go crazy,
they bang into everything, and then I think department are
just taking off the easy cripples.

Speaker 1 (15:19):
Yeah, that's a good time.

Speaker 3 (15:20):
There's a lot that we don't know about it, but
we can. We can sit. I get a lot of
time to think out there. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (15:26):
Well, and you know what, it's a lot of time
to learn too, because you study it enough times and
they're eventually a pattern will emerge. This is the old
way we used to learn to fish. Now you just
get online and go to YouTube and look at that.

Speaker 1 (15:40):
There we go.

Speaker 3 (15:40):
Now, I know, I fish speaking the old time when
you go into the uh that cars Country had you
know you first broke Oh yeah, and I just go
right back to being a seven eight nine year old kid.
And that's my dad went and shot, you know before season.

Speaker 1 (16:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (16:01):
And I grew up on the south side, you know,
down there off Edgebrook. It was so it was kind
of coastal, kind of kind of had that salt air
and not real salty, but it was different. It was
more humid. And then we would he'd get me in
the truck early on a Saturday morning or Sunday morning.
We'd drive up there to Carter's Country. I'd sleep the
whole way. I mean, it was the forever driving. We

(16:21):
might as well be driving to Dallas. Then the door
would open and it was a different air. Yeah, the
the texted air and then hearing the pool woo, you
know going off. I mean it just it was so cool.
And then to walk in there and see all those
mounts and just wander around. Yeah yeah, and then get
out there on the range and smell the smell the gunpowder,

(16:44):
and it's just cool memories to think about all that,
No doubt. It was every year that was the only
place we could go shoot. And and as I got
a little older that I had my twenty two and
I got to go shoot some and then he got
me an old military surplus E three go three oh
wow at thirty six. That was my first dear rifle.

(17:04):
And then I got to shoot the big gun. You know,
I got to go out there and shoot at that
hundred yard range. Woo, look out and yeah, and walking
down there and setting the targets. It's just good memories. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (17:16):
And well, you know, you bring up something else, I'll
ask you about and I'll let you go real quick.
So at the range, you do your shooting, and you
come up in Crementa. You got the twenty two. Then
you get to shoot a little rifle. Then you get
to go to the big gun out deer hunting. I
had somebody else ask me by email a week or
two ago. Man, a good friend of mine is taking

(17:36):
his ten year old grandson.

Speaker 1 (17:39):
To shoot a trophy.

Speaker 2 (17:41):
Class deer, something that's gonna go probably one eighty to
two forty first animal ever. And how long do you
think that kid's gonna love hunting?

Speaker 3 (17:52):
No, it's not gonna it won't last.

Speaker 1 (17:54):
There's nothing nothing left.

Speaker 3 (17:57):
Yeah. Now, when I started off deer hood and we
were hunting around Gonzala's area, they weren't hardly any deer.
Just seeing deer tracks, yeah, deal was a big deal.
And then seeing a dough you know, seeing a little
four point buck or something, Yeah, it was that. You
need to step it up in fermently. And I do

(18:18):
it with fishing too, you know. We guys, they you know,
they called me up. Hey, I want to take my
little boy out fishing, or my little boy, my little
girl out fishing. And I tell them I did the
love kid trips. We're probably gonna go to the jetties
if it's calm enough, and we're gonna get some shrimp.
And this is a kid trip and we're just gonna

(18:39):
go have fun. We're gonna catch what we catch. We're
not targeting red fish, trout, tarping, any of that. You
stand on the back end of the boat and cast
them all you want. Now, I did it with you,
did it with you and Christian and that that one
day in greens Christian had so much fun. I don't
know how many species of fish he caught, but caught

(19:00):
a ton of fish.

Speaker 1 (19:01):
Yep.

Speaker 3 (19:01):
I've had little boys out there that they'll tell me
at the end of the day, we caught fourteen species whatever. Sure,
And I don't keep track of it, but they sure do.
And they know they had a blast. They caught fish
over and over and over and over and they're happy. Yeah,
And it didn't matter that it wasn't a thirty inch trout. Nope,

(19:26):
it didn't matter that it wasn't a tarp And they
really don't care.

Speaker 2 (19:29):
From the start, they want to catch a fish. It's
it's a progression of all of us in our age group.
You just want to catch a fish. Then you want
to catch more fish. Then you start looking for something
a little bigger. Then you start maybe tinkering with trying
to get two or three different species. But there's always
another step to take. And if you take a kid
out and put them on a thirty inch trout or

(19:50):
a two hundred inch deer. First rattle out of the box.
Nowhere else to go but to the mall. They're headed
to the mall.

Speaker 3 (19:58):
Yeah, well, now, I totally agree with you on that.
But I'm about to go get on the tractor. I
got a cab tractor, so I'm going to get in
there and get away from this wind. And I got now,
I probably got about thirty forty acres that need mo
in today, so I think I'm just going to go

(20:18):
do that instead of I can't stand just being out
in the wind. I got things to work on out
here around the place that I could be doing outside
the tractor, but the wind just gets in my head
and just it's irritating, irritated. I'm mad.

Speaker 2 (20:38):
I'm with you, all right, It's always a pleasure, my friend.

Speaker 3 (20:43):
I'll turn my turtle box on, listen to the last
hour of You and switch over and listen to the
listening to Texans get your butts w oh God?

Speaker 1 (20:51):
All right, Talkabil, I said, hell long, will you?

Speaker 3 (20:54):
Okay, she's close to you day than she is me.
She's down there with heroes on the water doing something
thanks for letting me know.

Speaker 2 (21:01):
Holy cal I didn't know about that one. Anytime she
needs me, I'm hers. Okay, let's get it.

Speaker 3 (21:07):
Yeah, I don't know what. I don't know what that
one is. She got back from somewhere else.

Speaker 2 (21:11):
She moves pretty fast. I know that. Tell her thanks
and I'll talk to her soon. All right, thank you,
Scott Audios. All right, Holy cow man. It's a good
conversation with a good guy. Trust him. Anybody who's been
professionally guiding any outdoor activity for more than ten years,

(21:31):
they know, they know things that the average person has
no idea about when it comes to fishing, when it
comes to hunting, any of that stuff. And I'm very
blessed to have access to a lot of those people,
and I call on them when I can.

Speaker 1 (21:46):
I don't like to bother them.

Speaker 2 (21:47):
I don't like to put too much pressure on them
or expect too much from them. But when somebody will
give me their time and share with you guys what
I'm pretty sure I already know they're.

Speaker 1 (21:58):
Going to talk about, I'm happy to do that. And
Scott's one of those guys. James is one of those guys.

Speaker 2 (22:03):
All of those people who drop me in their boats
and let me come fish with them for so many
times when I was at the paper and beyond.

Speaker 1 (22:11):
It's still true to this day.

Speaker 2 (22:13):
Every now and then I'll make a phone call and
see if I can't go, freshen up my knowledge base
and see what I can do. And most of those
guys are happy to oblige me, and I appreciate that greatly.