Hookless Fishing

From 1966 to 1970 I was a member of an “exclusive” hunting and fishing club south of Danbury, Texas. The club catered to duck hunters and when it didn’t conflict with the hunting, allowed fishing and frogging. The club offered a nice air conditioned and heated lodge that slept twelve, a complete kitchen, including a cook and caretaker during duck season, game cleaning facilities and six, flat bottomed, aluminum boats and, on top of all of that, family members could use the facility for fishing, etc. without the member being present.

Besides the camp house and a hundred acres of woods, the club consisted of three lakes, or rice field reservoirs, of about twenty acres each. A deep channel was cut all around a square impoundment with the excavated dirt piled up to form a type of damn. There was about ten feet of shallow water along the damn’s inside before the excavated channel dropped off to over six feet. The channel, the only structure in the lake, was approximately thirty feet wide, sloping up to a large, shallow flat, two foot deep, which covered the center of the lake. The lakes were over twenty years old and had excellent aquatic vegetation flourishing in and around them. Plenty of snakes but, strangely, no alligators

My Dad was retired and his fishing buddy many days was Brad, his Grandson and my Son. Brad was five or six at the time and loved fishing with his “Poppy”. I was meeting them down there one Friday afternoon and my Dad and Brad went down early. When they arrived, the owner was draining one of the lakes. He was going to clean out the channels to increase the holding capacity of one of the reservoirs and it was down to only a square channel of twenty feet, or so, wide.

My Dad had told stories about low water conditions and pounding something against the bottom of a floating boat. This made vibrations under the water that caused the fish to jump into the air, some falling back into the boat. Hookless fishing! When flounder gigging in shallow water at night, I’ve seen salt water mullet become excited and jump into a boat.

Launching a boat into the channel, he and Brad, climbed in and while Poppy paddled, Brad smacked the bottom of the boat and the fish started jumping in. Brad was excited and laughing at the sight of the fish landing and flopping in the boat. Most of the fish were thrown into one of the adjoining lakes but Poppy kept three for supper that night.

I got down to the club in time to take this picture that clearly shows the low water channel behind the fishermen. One of the two adjoining lakes is visible in the background.

As soon as the picture was taken, Brad started jumping up and down wanting me to take him fishing and see the bass jumping into the boat. I did, and we quickly “caught” six more (in the boat) and put them in one of the other lakes.

What if a four or five foot alligator gar had jumped into the boat?

Try, Try Again

The April 7 freeze had set back this year’s garden two, or more, weeks. The almanac’s April, good planting days and my schedule, didn’t agree, so I postponed planting my remaining above ground crops until May 7. Nature interceded again and on Monday, April 27, our area was blessed with three and a half inches of rain. Some of it was real hard – the hail variety, with OO buckshot to nickel size!

My Texas 1015Y show the spotted, scars of the hail. Texas A&M horticulturalists developed, for the Texas soil and climate, the 1015’s from Granex onions from Spain. One variety was sent to Georgia and became the famed Vidalia onion, now the State Plant of that state.

The hail also scarred the garlic, Bermudas and Vidalias. Everything took a beating and it ruined my three rows of spring, spinach, clipped leaves off of the tomatoes and peppers and pounded the black eyes!

May 7 I planted crooked and straight neck squash; cucumbers, Kentucky wonder beans and cantaloupes. Everything is now up and growing!

There is one pleasant surprise, some “excuse me” dill has popped up in the wild garlic patch and both are doing fine!

The wild garlic is blooming and the hail scars are quite visible.

 

The “excuse me” dill too. I’ll pick the blooms, dry ’em, separate the chaff, grind ’em up and have dill seasoning.

The tomatoes are growing as are the marigolds planted beside them.

 

The jalapenos are blooming.

Marigolds, dill and basil are interspersed throughout the garden as an aid in predator control. They don’t work on deer!

The black eyes, Kentucky wonders, cantaloupes and squash are growing and left to plant this week are three bell peppers and six okra plants. These last two are going in where the three rows of spinach were planted.

Maybe A State Record

During the spring of 1972, Jake Schroder and I spent a lot of time fishing in Lake Pleasant, a twenty, minute, drive, north, up I-17. Now Phoenix and its suburbs have nearly encircled the lake.

We would put his original, Skeeter Bass Boat with a flat bottom and stick steering, in at the State launch ramp at the lake and head straight for the dam and try to fish inside the restraining cables. . The dam had a watchman, or Troll as we called him. We never met him but almost became friends, because he ran us off from inside the restraining cables so many times. He must not have been a fisherman.

Until the Troll would run us off, we would cast up on the dam and bounce our special multiple jigs back down its side, awaiting a strike from a white bass. White bass in Arizona you say? Yes, years before, Texas had traded millions of white bass fingerlings to Arizona for a large number of Rio Grande turkeys. Texas repopulated the state with the birds and Arizona created a great fishery for white bass in Lake Pleasant.

This particular trip was on a beautiful desert morning, clear, with no wind. As we neared the lake’s damn, I asked Jake, “Do you see the Troll,” “No Troll in sight,” he replied, so under the restraining cable we went. For a while, we were the only ones fishing around the dam and after several casts I had a strike with some “weight” behind it. Must be a catfish I thought. Then it made a nice run, more like a red fish, swirled at the surface of the water and took off again. Soon we lipped it and swung into the boat, the biggest white bass ever, maybe. We estimated it was seven pounds or more. What a fish! Onto the stringer it went, and back to casting.

Catching one more fish, much smaller, out came the Troll. “You boys get behind the restraining line, OK.” His first warning was always nice. We waved to him and kept fishing. “Behind the restraining line!” More firm. We waved and kept fishing. He was beginning to annoy us. “Move that blankety-blank boat or I’m going to give you a blankety-blank ticket”.

It was time to leave, so we started up and headed away and noticed a fisherman in a boat right up to the restraining line, laughing at our encounter with the Troll. He said, “I saw you caught a nice one, let me see it.” We showed him and said we thought it would weigh seven pounds or more. “Real nice,” he said as we motored off. We took both fish home and ate ‘em.

Several months later I got a call from Jake and he said, “You remember that big white bass you caught out at ‘Unpleasant’,” our new name for the lake. I said’ “Sure do, it fried up real good!” He went on to tell me that the fisherman we showed the fish to was an outdoor writer for the local newspaper, and of all things, he wrote and was published in a national outdoor magazine, an article about the white bass fishing in Lake Pleasant, and most embarrassing, about two Texas boys who caught a monster white bass, easily a new state record, didn’t register it with the state, but like all good “meat” fishermen, took it home ate it.

Always remember, that if records interest you, most times the state will keep the fish, and you can’t eat it

Memorial Day/Decoration Day

Today we take time to remember and recognize our troops who have died while defending our way of life. In the North, tradition was that Decoration Day began in New York in 1868, but it really started in Virginia as the Civil War ended.

Now, enter my Great Grandmother, Linnie Ross Sanders Wallace, born in 1866, a “Civil War Baby Boomer”, a “Rebel’s Daughter” and a true Texan! Her Father, Levi Sanders, had spent four years fighting with the 6th Texas Cavalry across Indian Territory, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee and Georgia. She made sure that I knew what “Decoration Day”, now known as our Memorial Day, was and just what it meant.

Within a month of the end of the Civil War, May 1865, ladies in Winchester, Virginia, formed a Ladies Memorial Association, (LMA), with the single purpose to gather fallen Confederate soldiers within a fifteen mile radius of their town and provide them burial in a single graveyard. Once that task had been done they hoped to establish an annual tradition of placing flowers and evergreens on the graves. There were Federal troops buried along with the Confederates and they received the decorations also. Within a year, ladies across the south had established over 70 LMA’s.

In the first year, these LMA’s had assisted in the recovery of over 70,000 Confederate dead! The ladies of Lynchburg chose May 10 as their Decoration Day. This was the day that Lt. General Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson had succumbed to wounds. The Richmond LMA had chosen May 31 because that was the day the populace of that town had first heard the guns of war.

Vicious Reconstruction laws not withstanding, by 1867, Decoration Day flourished across the South and it was a day that southern spirit and pride surfaced. Alabama, Florida and Mississippi celebrated it on April 30; North and South Carolina on May 10 and Virginia finally compromised on May 27.

Then in 1868, in the North, May 5 was officially designated Memorial Day. This was later changed to May 30, because no significant battle was fought on that day. In May 1968, at Waterloo, New York, Pres. Lyndon Johnson “officially” recognized Waterloo as the birthplace of Memorial Day. Still later, our government intruded and made the last the last Monday in May, Memorial Day, a Federal holiday.

LBJ, who began his career as a history teacher at San Jacinto High School in Houston, should have studied his Civil War history a little closer.

 

My 2009 Garden – A False Start

After the deer’s wanton destruction of my 2008 garden and peach crop, see my post on [Depredations] of June 18, 2008, my solution was an eight, foot, fence around my current, and planned future expansion, garden area.

The completed fence and my “second edition”, 2009 garden.

The fence was completed in February, just after I had planted my onions. In first were two and a half rows, each row being seventy-five feet long, are Texas 10/15Y’s, Vidalias, Bermudas and shallots. The other half row is my wild garlic “patch”. Next to the onions were three rows of spinach that would be harvested by May 15.

In planting my garden each year, I have faithfully followed four things; the Farmers Almanac planting dates, the arrival of hummingbirds, the arrival of barn swallows and most important, the blooming or “coming out” of the large mesquite trees. The mesquites are most accurate of the four! By March 26, all of the preceding had taken place, my peach trees were blooming too, but peaches are the worst of the worst predictors, but I was busy planting this year’s edition of my garden.

My eyes being bigger than my garden and I had purchased twelve tomato and jalapeno pepper plants, so I planted them in two rows, six plants of each, sprinkling dill, basil, marigolds and black eyes among the plants. Luckily, I saved the other twelve plants and kept them alive indoors. Then I planted a long row of black eye peas and sat back with a big grin on my face. This year I would have a good, early garden!

The morning of April 7, it was awfully cold, twenty-eight degrees, with a heavy frost, almost ice on the ground and even though I had covered everything the night before, all my plants that were up, tomatoes, peppers and peas were frozen, history, even my peach blooms! My spinach survived and by April 15, I had paid my taxes, cheered along with all of the tax protesters and replanted my garden.

This was the first time that I have ever heard of mesquite trees being wrong!

The Perfect Situation

As things sometimes will do, events happened to cause me to change my entire attitude about salt water, fishing. Bobby Baldwin, my high school fishing buddy and close friend, had access to a twenty-three foot Formula, deep-vee boat with a hundred and sixty-five, horse engine and Mercrusier outdrive, a real boat! We took it offshore fishing twice and both times stopped by the Galveston Jetties where I was shown a spot, on the Gulf side of the South Jetty that became my honey hole for the next forty years! I caught the biggest trout of my life there in 2000, but that’s another story.

During the spring of 1966, severe flooding over the Trinity and San Jacinto Rivers and the headwaters of Buffalo Bayou had flushed out Galveston Bay. The bay water was fresh and muddy and almost all of the baitfish had left and taken up residence at the jetties and along the beachfront and were quickly followed by the trout, red fish and flounders.

The flooding and bad, bay water combined to present a real opportunity to catch some fish and try out my new boat, a sixteen, foot, semi-vee, pushed by a seventy-five horse, outboard. This particular day in May 1966, my Dad, being retired, and I had decided to sneak off early in the morning, fish my South Jetty spot and be back in town by 10:00 AM so I could make my afternoon appointments.

We bought a quart of shrimp and then put the boat in at Bobby Wilson’s Bait Camp and sped at thirty-five miles per hour, around the East Beach Flats, no more wading for us (only if it was too rough to get around the end of the South Jetty). No problem today since the wind was blowing lightly out of the north- east.

Just after sunrise we motored up and slipped up close to the jetty, quietly dropping the anchor and letting out enough line so that it would grab hold. Looking up and down the jetty, we were the only boat out. We ended up thirty-five or forty feet from the rocks, in ten feet of water. The depth dropped from zero to ten feet in forty feet! The tide was flowing to our left toward the beach. It is funny that when the tide is flowing out of the channel you get a reverse effect on the Gulf side of both jetties. Bait fish were crowded against the rocks. We knew the trout were here.

Daddy had just the right tackle; a new, red Ambassadeur 5000 reel with fifteen pound line, mounted on a six and a half foot fiberglass “popping” rod. I was armed with a Mitchell 300 spinning reel, ten, pound line and a semi-stiff, six and a half foot spinning rod. Ok unless I picked up a big red or jackfish. We were free shrimping with a BB size split shot attached about ten inches above a small, treble hook. Trout poison! For the record we had two coolers, a foam one for food and drinks and a new forty-eight quart Igloo for the fish. Funny thing, at that time, Igloo was one of my customers.

We baited up and cast toward the rocks, dragging the shrimp slowly along the drop off and whamo, whamo, we are both into two very nice fish. We began the “Jetty Shuffle”, which was circling around the boat, passing rods under each other to prevent tangling or lines crossing, al thel while keeping pressure on the fish. We netted both fish in the same landing net, removed the hooks and placed them in the new forty-eight quart cooler. The fish were identical, twenty-six inches long with their tails curling up the side if the cooler.
We shook hands, baited up and cast out and whamo, whamo, two more nice fish! We repeated this over and over until we had the new, forty-eight quart cooler full to the top with a minimum of ice left in it. Twenty-nine trout, all twenty-six or twenty-seven inches long, almost two hundred pounds of fish. All of this in less than two hours!

My Dad, John H. Bryan with the four specs we kept after selling the others!

Looking up, I saw Wayne Thomas, a real jetty pro, and one of my old college and baseball playing buddies, pulling up slowly outside of us. I yelled across the water, “Wayne, let me pull up the anchor and you all ease in here and you can catch some fish.”

Making my afternoon appointments on time, I read in the next day’s Houston Chronicle, that Bob Brister, the Outdoor Editor, wrote that the “jetty pros” hammered the trout at the NORTH Jetty. Funny, I guess he really could keep a secret.

A Really Bad Road

In the early, 1960’s, my Dad and I had found a great place to hunt ducks and squirrels and fish for some hungry bass. The place was in the Trinity River bottom, between Dayton and Liberty, Texas, but before we could “bring home the bacon”, we had to conquer a truly, terrible road.

We would enter “The Bottoms”, as we called it, at a remote place near Dayton, at the Kennefic Fire Tower, then proceed down five miles of this truly, terrible, probably the worst road, in the United States. The road was always flooded, mud was axel deep on a jeep, deceiving ruts covered bogs and it was also the home of the largest mosquitoes on the Gulf Coast!

The road was only part of the challenge. The leaseholder of the land, we never met formally, would come by several times during the week to check on his cattle and hogs and to scare poachers out. He chased us out one time mounted on a horse! When the river was up and out of its banks you couldn’t possibly get in. But when you could get in, the creeks and sloughs provided some of the best bass fishing and duck and squirrel hunting to be found.

After hearing my Dad and I talk about the fabulous hunting and fishing opportunities, my brother in law, Jim Buck, was desperate to get down in “The Bottoms”. Just a month before, in one of the many sloughs, my Dad and I had a very enjoyable afternoon fishing there, catching one to two pound bass. My dad had a friend with a jeep with mud grip tires and a “new” Warn winch that was mounted on its front bumper. If we got stuck, we hooked up to a tree and let the winch pull us out. That’s the way to conquer “The Bottoms”.

Well, Jim found, for $500.00, a 1947 Jeepster Station Wagon, four wheel drive, a rusted, green color, but mechanically sound, that he promptly purchased. “Jimmy, we need a winch. Did you get one for the front bumper?” I asked him. He replied, “No, I have something better, a hand winch which we can use front or back.” At that time, I had a very elementary knowledge of mechanics and uses of a hand winch so I thought we were fine. I quickly learned different!

The Jeepster easily made the trip to the Kennific Fire Tower and it turned out that it ran very well on a smooth road. Pulling up to the gate in the not light, early morning, it was locked, but we knew where the key was hidden, and since there was no sign of the leaseholder, in we went! Many times during the day to follow I had wished for the evil leaseholder to show us up and “help” us out of this infernal place.

We navigated the first six hundred yards and came to the first boggy spot. The Jeepster, and its skinny road tires, we never had thought about mud grips, plowed gamely through the muck and deposited us safely onto solid ground. “Piece of cake”, we thought.

Another low spot, spinning tires, mud flying everywhere, then stuck! No problem we had our hand winch. There was a tree close by in front of us, very convenient, and we hooked on and began cranking the winch and the vehicle moved, all of six inches. Twenty minutes of cranking and we were out of the mud and sailing down the “road”.

Winching through three more bogs we noticed the sun was up, it was hot and humid and the mosquitoes were out in force. We had missed the sunrise fishing we had planned on. No worry, so little fishing pressure where were going, the bass would hit all day.

More bogs, more winching. We were both wet and covered head to toe in mud and it was getting close to noon, we wouldn’t have much time to fish. We gamely “soldiered on”. We hit this one spot that I had worried about on the way in – a fifty foot run through bog, mud and water – and we splashed in, four wheels spinning, and made no progress. Stuck again.

No tree was close by, so I volunteered to push. Maybe that would help. It did for five feet. Still, no tree near, and we were really stuck! Finding small logs and branches to give our street tires some traction, we inched forward until we could reach a tree with our winch line. Crank, six inches. Crank, six inches. Crank, six inches. This ceased to be fun. Crank, six inches. Solid ground and we broke for a late lunch.

We assessed our situation. Over the past seven hours we estimated that we had made about three miles. We were almost out of water. We had been stuck twelve times. If the Jeepster didn’t break, at this rate, we would get to our fishing spot about dark.

It finally dawned on both of us that, maybe, we didn’t have the right equipment. We could always blame the Jeepster – no mud grip tires. We could blame the weather – that last big rain really made a mess of the always, bad road. We could blame the leaseholder – maybe he had come in with a Dodge Power Wagon and deliberately ruined the road. Admitting a tactical defeat, we turned around and headed out.

Even though we didn’t even wet a line or catch any fish, there were some good things to come out of this ill-fated trip. We only got stuck seven times coming out. We got out just before dark. I did not have to push. We “made” the leaseholder some new road. And, best of all, we dried out before we got home!

Morning Walk, 5-19-09

What a beautiful day, I thought as I stepped outside for my morning walk. The sun just coming up, no wind and a brisk, cold for late May down here, 52 degrees, our record for today is 47.

I’d have company this morning, my wife, Layla, our dog, Spike, and cat, Bo, would be accompanying me. Having told Layla about Monday’s exciting walk, she was going along today.

We marched out on to the county road and for almost a half, mile saw nothing but two cows. Providing some excitement, the cows rushed the fence trying to get at Spike. These cows hate any dog, or coyote looking animal and, if not for the fence, big trouble for little, Spike!

Nothing, no deer, ‘dillos or skunks showed up on this walk. Just Spike and Bo, tagging along.

We did sound like a traveling, circus going down the road!

Morning Walk, 5-18-09

Still suffering from the pulled groin muscle (from five weeks ago) I have begun a regimen of slowly walking for up to a mile, not straining the muscle, but just warming it up. When finished, I sit coldly, on an ice pack for twenty minutes. It takes up to eight weeks for a groin to heal, maybe this will speed it up?

Early yesterday as I was going out the side door to begin my morning walk, I noticed movement on the other side of our old house. A closer look showed a skunk was prowling about.

Grabbing my .22 Mag. rifle, carefully staying up-wind, and charging the varmint, two shots later it was done!

After walking down the county road for about four hundred yards, behind a tree stood a big doe. “Oh boy,” I thought, “This will make a great picture!” As I fumbled with the on/off switch, the big girl trotted off into the thick stuff. I’ll be ready next time!

After walking not quite a hundred more yards, with the camera still “on”, there was movement in the brush along the road, “Another skunk” was my thought, as out rushed, of all things, an armadillo.

’Quick drawing’ my camera and ‘firing’ several shots, I got a blurry one of the little armored guy.

It would be something if each mornings walk would be this exciting!

The Dirty Boot Ranch

The boys over at the Dirty Boot, outside of Paris, Texas, were caught honin’ their ridin’ skills after Wesley’s base ball game was rained out again!

Wesley is atop ole’ Dude and ridin’ toward the food trough.

 

 

Will got into the act and looks real comfortable on Dude.

Pretty soon these fellows will be able to reach the stirrups! For now, all they have to do is squeeze their knees together and hold on to the saddle horn!