Port Aransas fishing trips: five rentals with a pool

You're coming to fish, and you want a pool. Those two things pull in slightly different directions here, because the houses built for groups sit back from the water in the neighborhoods, and the condos closest to the sand share their pool with everyone else in the complex. Both work. Which one you want depends mostly on how many of you are coming and whether the non-fishers in the party need somewhere to be at two in the afternoon.

Five of our Port Aransas homes answer the question directly. Four are units at Executive Keys, a short walk from the beach with a heated outdoor community pool; one is a six-bedroom house with its own fenced pool and parking for a boat. Here they are, then the reasoning.

The five to put side by side

• No Plana Cabana — 6 bedrooms, 6 baths, sleeps 16. Private fenced pool, outdoor shower, outdoor wet bar, parking for up to nine vehicles including room for a boat. Less than a quarter-mile from the beach.
• Unit 404 at Executive Keys — 2 bedrooms, 2 baths, sleeps 8. Second floor of Building #4 (no elevator in that building), balcony looking over the pool, courtyard and Gulf. Heated outdoor community pool; five-minute walk to sand.
• Unit 307 — 2 bedrooms, 2 baths, sleeps 8. Ground floor, patio opening onto the pool and the grass. Same heated community pool, same short walk. No pets at this one.
• Unit 113 — studio efficiency, sleeps 3. Ground floor of Building #1, private patio, two minutes to the pool, five to the beach.
• Unit 111 — studio efficiency, sleeps 3. Same footprint and the same two-minute walk to the pool, with a queen bed and a sofa sleeper.

Private pool or shared one: what it actually changes

If anyone in your group is going to be at the house while you're out on the water, the private pool is worth the extra distance from the sand. No Plana Cabana has its own fenced pool area with palm trees, lounge chairs and picnic seating, plus an outdoor shower by the door for rinsing off before anyone tracks sand inside. Three stories, six bedrooms, each with its own bath, which matters more than it sounds like it should when half the house is up before dawn and the other half wants to sleep. There's a shuffleboard table on the ground floor and a game room, so the afternoon takes care of itself.

The Executive Keys units trade that privacy for proximity. The pool there is a heated outdoor community pool with a rec room beside it, and from Unit 307 you step off the patio and you're basically at it. That's a different kind of useful: a condo where the kids can be at the pool in view of the patio door while you clean up from the morning's trip.

Where the fishing actually is

Port Aransas has four public piers and you're never far from any of them. Horace Caldwell Pier runs out over the Gulf from Beach Road, lit for night fishing, with bait, tackle and rod rentals at the shop on the gate, and it's open around the clock, which is why you see people on it at three in the morning in August. The pier at Roberts Point Park is the one for watching boats come through the marina while you fish. Ancel Brundrett Pier sits at the north end of Station Street beside Cline's Landing, where locals call it the Station St. Pier; you get the Lydia Ann Lighthouse in your sightline from there. Charlie's Pasture Pier, the newest of the four, is out along the shipping channel in the nature preserve off Port Street.

For the jetties, the Mustang Island side is walk-on from the north end of the island. The San José Island side needs a passenger ferry from Fisherman's Wharf on Tarpon Street, and it earns the crossing: January through April is when bull reds and sheepshead come thick off the north jetty. South Jetty gives you deeper water and brings sheepshead and kingfish into range. Further down the island, Fish Pass Jetty is surf-fishing country and you want a 4x4 to reach it, either running south along the beach from Gulf Beach Access Road 2 or paying in at Mustang Island State Park, which is also where to go if you'd rather wade or take a kayak after redfish, trout and flounder.

Charters leave from Cotter Avenue. Deep Sea Headquarters is at 440 W. Cotter, and Woody's Sports Center sits a block down at 136 W. Cotter. Fisherman's Wharf is on Tarpon Street. Book the boat before you book anything else in your week; that's the thing with the least flexibility.

Boat trailer, or no boat trailer

This is the fork in the road for a lot of fishing groups, and it decides the house. No Plana Cabana has a garage and parking for up to nine vehicles with room for a boat, which is the kind of detail you only appreciate after a trip spent reversing a trailer down a street with no shoulder. If you're towing and there are a dozen or more of you, start there and work backwards.

If you're flying in, chartering, and fishing from piers and jetties on foot, the Executive Keys units make more sense. Free parking, a full kitchen in every one of them, and a five-minute walk to the beach. Unit 307 is the one whose record lists a boat and a bicycle among its amenities; worth asking us exactly what's included there before you plan around it.

Eight people, two bedrooms: how the condos do it

Unit 404 and Unit 307 are both 2-bedroom, 2-bath condos of about 1,100 square feet that sleep eight, and the way they get there is a queen in the primary and two double beds in the second room. For four adults fishing and four kids, that's fine. For eight adults who've just spent nine hours on a boat together, it's tight, and you'd be happier with the house.

The real difference between the two condos is vertical. Unit 404 is up on the second floor of Building #4, which has no elevator, and what you get for the stairs is a balcony over the pool and courtyard with the Gulf beyond it, the best seat in the complex for a cup of coffee before a six a.m. departure. Unit 307 is on the ground floor with the patio opening onto grass and the pool a few steps away, which is the better arrangement if anyone's carrying coolers and rods in and out twice a day, or if stairs are a consideration. Unit 404 takes pets; Unit 307 doesn't.

Two or three of you, in and out at odd hours

For a couple or a pair of anglers, the efficiency units at Executive Keys do the job without wasting money on rooms nobody sleeps in. Unit 111 and Unit 113 are both 432-square-foot ground-floor studios with a queen bed, a sofa sleeper for a third, a full kitchen and a dining area, and a private patio over the courtyard. The pool is two minutes on foot, the beach five.

The kitchen is the part that matters on a fishing trip. A full fridge and freezer means you're not hunting for ice at five in the morning or wondering where to put what you caught. Unit 113 has a tub-shower combination in the bath; both units allow pets, and both allow long-term stays if you're the sort who comes down for a month in the spring when the reds are running off the north jetty.

What to sort out before you book

Call us. Really: pool operating status for your dates, what boat parking looks like at a given property, pet rules, and whether the unit you're eyeing is open for the nights you want are all things we'd rather tell you straight than have you guess from a listing page. We book direct and you get a person on the island who knows these buildings, not a call center.

Two local things worth knowing while you're planning. The ferry between Port Aransas and Aransas Pass runs 24 hours and the crossing takes about ten minutes, so getting on and off the island at odd hours is easy, though the queue in summer is a different story. And construction is a permanent feature of life here. Something is always going up somewhere, and the quiet street you looked at on a map in March may have a slab pour on it in July.

If I had to point one group at one house: twelve to sixteen people with a boat on the trailer should take No Plana Cabana and not think too hard about it. Everyone else is choosing between a balcony over the pool and a patio beside it, which is a nicer problem than most.