On a spring morning, just at first light, I lowered the 22 footer into the canal behind our Bayou Vista home, headed down the canal and chugged, speed limit 5 MPH in the canals, into Highlands Bayou.  Cranking up the big, outboard I finally skimmed the back way into the Intercoastal Waterway.  This was the same track Randy and I took several years earlier and he collided with a live, oyster reef.  See my June 18, 2009 post, “[A Close Call]”.

Having a 11:00 AM meeting with customers, this would be a short trip, but hopefully a productive one.  My destination, with the tide coming in all morning, was the sand flats that ran from Green’s Cut up to South Deer Island.  The target was to find sea gulls working over feeding specs, the specs driving shrimp toward the surface and the birds gobbling up the shrimp the fish missed.  Classic food chain stuff!

Armed with a 7-1/2 foot, popping, rod, 12 pound line spooled on a green reel, rigged with a popping cork over a live shrimp hooked through its horn with a small, treble hook, I was ready for action. The action wasn’t long in coming. Of all things, I noticed several shrimp hopping out of the water and casting right in front of them, bam, a big strike.

The fish took off peeling line from the reel, not the circling fight of a 3 or 4 pound trout, not the head shaking, weight of a big red, then the fish, a skipjack or ladyfish, (Bodianus rufus) cleared the water.  They’re real hard fighters, jump a lot, but aren’t good table fare.  Many times they will be feeding on shrimp, driving them to the surface where the ever hungry, birds will congregate over them.  No birds this time, so I landed the skipjack, guessing its weight at 3 pounds and tossed it back into the bay.

Two hundred yards away there was another good sign, several birds were sitting on the water, probably marking one or more good sized, fish, maybe even a school that was just getting together!  Lowering the trolling motor, I slipped silently to within 40 yards of the birds, quickly baited up and let fly a cast toward the center of the area among the birds.  The splash of the bait and cork hitting the water caused the birds to take flight just as my cork disappeared and I felt a big tug!  Another run, more jumps, finally the rod and drag beat the fish, another skipjack, identical to the first that I landed, unhooked and tossed back in.  Thinking to myself, This spot is full of skipjacks so I’ll just move down about a mile and try my luck.

Moving the mile down toward South Deer Island, just ahead, several birds, one hovering over the water, looked very interested toward the depths, cutting the motor I drifted up and let fly a cast beside the bird.  When casting with the wind a little slack will undoubtedly get in your line and the gull took this slack line opportunity to quickly grab my shrimp.  As it grabbed the shrimp, it immediately took off, wrapping the line around one wing and unceremoniously plopping back into the water.  Reeling in the squawking sea gull, before lifting it into the boat, I grabbed a towel, swung the bird into the boat and, in almost 1 motion, covered its head and eyes.

Thank goodness, the gull wasn’t hooked just squawking, so I unwrapped the line from its wing, uncovered its head and flipped it back over the side, where it caught the wind and sped away.  Looking at my watch, 8:30 so I’d better get back in.

No luck today, no fish to clean, just some throwbacks, but some good memories!

Jake Shroder and I were both fisherman and some of our first adventures together in Arizona were several trips to Lake Pleasant, north of Phoenix, at the time a 20, minute trip up Interstate 17. Now the town has almost surrounded the lake.

Back then, the spring of 1972, Jake had an original Skeeter Bass Boat with a 55 HP, 3 cylinder, outboard. It was an early model of the Skeeter with a flat bottom and, of all things, not a steering wheel, but stick steering. If I remember correctly, you pushed the stick forward to turn to port (left) and pulled back to turn starboard (right), however, it served our purposes well!

We would put in at the State launch ramp and head straight for the dam and try to fish inside the restraining cables. The dam had a watchman, or “The Troll” as we called him. We never met him, but almost became friends, because he ran us off from inside the cables so many times, he surely couldn’t have been a fisherman. Until the “The Troll” would run us off, we would cast up on the side of the dam and bounce our special multiple jigs back down the 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 most of the State with turkeys and Arizona, at Lake Pleasant, created a great fishery for white bass.

This particular trip was on a beautiful desert morning, clear, no wind, and for a while we were the only folks fishing around the dam. I asked Jake, “Do you see “The ‘Troll’,” “No ‘Troll’ in sight,” he replied, so under the restraining cable we went. After several casts, I had a strike with some weight behind it, must be a catfish I thought. It made a nice run, more like a red fish, then swirled the top of the water and took off again. Soon we lipped it and swung it into the boat, maybe the biggest white bass ever. We estimated it was 7 pounds or more. What a fish! Onto the stringer it went, and back to casting.

Catching another white, much smaller, out came “The Troll”. “You boys get behind the restraining line, OK.” His first warning were 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, blankety blank it!” It was time to move, so we started up and headed out into the lake. We noticed a fisherman in a boat right up on the restraining line laughing at our encounter with “TheTroll”. He said, “I saw you caught a nice white, let me see it.” We showed him and said we thought it would weigh 7 pounds or more. “Real nice,” he said as we motored off. We took both white bass home and ate them.

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 ate 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 2 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 and ate it.

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

In 1970, the spring fishing for speckled trout had been as good as it gets with me setting a new personal record a 7, pounder caught just out from Greens Cut.  We hadn’t had a damaging freeze on the coast for 16 years and game fish and baitfish stocks were at record highs.  Weather permitting, the Galveston Jetties were loaded with keepers, the weather had cooperated and our freezers were already full of filets.

After receiving another promotion from the large computer company, I had purchased a beach house at Jamaica Beach, 10 miles west from the end of the Galveston Sea Wall.  Launching at Jamaica Beach, I was now 5 to 10 minutes from some great bay fishing spots; Green’s Cut, the wreck, Confederate Reef and North and South Deer Islands.  My favorite South Jetty spot was only 30 minutes by boat, less time than it took us to drive and launch it at the yacht basin!

Brad was 9 years old and had been fishing with me for the past 2 years.  He was fun to take along, could bait his own hook and never grumbled about getting up early or cleaning up the boat and tackle.  My uncle, and his great uncle, Alvin Pyland, aka Unkie, and I had planned a trip on Friday morning to sample some of the great trout action under the birds, on the east side of the Galveston causeway.

“Unkie” and a nice mess of specks!

This area, 10 or 12 square miles, bounded on the east by the Texas City Dike and Pelican Island, on the south by Galveston Island, on the north by the mainland and west by the causeway, had been a consistent producer all spring.  Telling Unkie to be at The Pleasure Island Bait Camp, our fishing headquarters, at 7:30 AM and be ready to fish, Brad and I had the boat in the water at the Jamaica Beach launch ramp by 7:00 AM and started our15, minute trip to Pleasure Island.  I noticed storm clouds in the Gulf south of Galveston Island.  Rain coming, what’s different about that?

After picking Unkie up at the bait camp and buying a quart of shrimp, we headed out to find the birds.  Trout, feeding on shrimp, push the shrimp to the surface, where sea gulls see the disturbance, and always looking for a free meal, the gulls literally swarm over the shrimp and feeding trout.  This can be fast and furious action, trout are jerked into the boat without using a net, and many times we would use artificial baits rather than taking time to re-bait the hook.

Seeing several groups of birds in the distance, we sped toward the nearest and began a morning of catching specs as fast as we could, and a morning of, we did not know then, high adventure.

We noticed the storm that I had seen earlier had moved almost to the Island and storm clouds were also gathering north of us over Hitchcock and Texas City.  Being in the bay, in a 17, foot, deep vee, boat, we felt secure since we were but a short run back to  Pleasure Island.  Then the southern storm moved onto the island, and we found out later that it dropped 10 inches of rain there, and shortly, most of that fell on us.

We kept fishing and catching specs, the northern storms getting closer.  We paused to look at the storms and noticed they both seemed to stop right at the edge of the bay.  Storms north and south of us, and birds working, we started back fishing. I have since learned to not tempt Mother Nature.

All of a sudden a large electrical storm, lightning popping all along its front edge, filled the gap between our northern and southern storms, barreling east, right down the bay and right toward us.  We were a mile east of the causeway and the new storm was about 2 miles west of it.  Plenty of time left, keep fishing.

Craak!  Boom! Lightning hit a channel marker not 300 yards from us and almost to himself, Unkie uttered his infamous remark, “Let me make one more cast.”

He cast out and hooked a nice spec, which we took valuable time to land.  During the fight with the fish I got Brad’s life jacket on him and donned one myself.  Craak!  Boom! Another bolt hit a channel marker not 150 yards from us.  “Let’s get going,” I yelled as the rain started to batter us

Really getting pounded by the storm, we noticed that because of the lightning, we couldn’t head back to the bait camp because almost a solid wall of lightning was between us and the camp.  Full speed ahead to the northeast, our only partially open choice.

Northeast of us lay the Texas City Dike, a nine mile, red granite wall built out into Galveston Bay (this was some of the last granite mined at Marble Falls, Texas).  Its purpose was to smooth the bay waters for the Texas City harbor and channel, however, and I repeat, however, we were heading in on the rough side!  The wind hit us then, the waves building up, all working to slow our speed.  We barely kept ahead of the lightning, and the rain was blinding!

We kept heading northeast and kept getting pounded by the storm, wind, rain and 4 foot waves, which were huge for the bay, since the distance between the crests was probably only ten feet.  Very, very rough!  Wave tops in the Gulf in 4 foot seas are 24 to 27 feet apart.  Lots of up and down for us, and luckily the drain plugs in the boat did their job, at least we didn’t swamp.  Looking down toward Brad, I believe he liked this and glancing over at Unkie, he didn’t have a care in the world.  Personally, I was scared to death!

Plowing on through the rough water, we finally spotted the dike and could make out a bait camp on our side and headed straight for it.  Closing on the dike, with the bow pointing into the storm that had slacked off some, I anchored the boat.  We got out of the boat and waded to the shore/dike and some smart aleck on the dike said, “Kinda rough, wasn’t it?”

No cell phones then, so I went into the bait camp and called my ex-wife in Jamaica Beach and told her about our ordeal and asked to bring my car and boat trailer to us.  It had rained 10 inches in Galveston, everything was flooded and she was stranded out on the island and couldn’t get into town.  We were stranded on the Texas City Dike and couldn’t get out and the storm was now picking up in intensity.

All I could do was call a cab, leave Brad and Unkie to watch the boat and then cabbed slowly through the water, back through Galveston and out to Jamaica Beach.  Picking up my car and trailer, I drove back to the dike to load up the boat.  By the time we took Unkie back to Pleasure Island, the skies had cleared so we cleaned the fish and mused that this was a close call and we should learn from it, however  I did not profit from this experience!

My first encounter with a tarpon was in the spring of 1953, when my dad took Bobby Baldwin, Walter Freeman and me to fish for them near the mouth of the New River, near Freeport, Texas.  To create a safe harbor for Freeport, the New River channel of the Brazos River, was man made.  What this created was a five-mile long fish haven and prior to their beach runs of the summer, tarpon loaded it up in the spring.

Dad and Dub Middleton had fished this area the past weekend and caught and released two tarpon.  Both were caught on red and white Zara Spooks, that were wooden, top water plugs.  The fish were caught by “walking the dog” past the schools of surfacing, rolling tarpon.

“Walking the dog” is a term used for a specific type of retrieve—twitch the rod tip and then reel one turn of the reel handle, then twitch and reel, twitch and reel, for the entire retrieve.  The lure is moved along slowly, twitching to each side, resembling a small, injured fish.  This is still one of the most favored retrieves for fishing for trout and red fish.

One more point, these fish were caught on light, split Calcutta cane, popping rods and Shakespeare Criterion reels, loaded with fifteen or seventeen pound, braided line, linen, I think.  Below is Dad’s old, circa 1933, reel with the original braided line still on!

The reel had no drag system and, to control a fish, pressure was applied by using the angler’s thumb. Blisters were common and often, band aids were used, for as long as they stayed on.!

We, Bobby, Walter, Dad and I, arrived at the fishing spot right after sun up and walked about a hundred yards to the river’s bank.  The walk seemed like a walk through a garbage dump, the area being littered with the remains of tarpon.

Tarpon aren’t a food fish and common sense says they should be returned live to the water, but these fish were caught, killed, I’m sure pictures were taken, smiles and all, and then simply left to rot.  What a waste of a fine fishing resource.  By the early 1960’s the tarpon had left New River.  Useless killing of fish played a role in this disappearance, but the main culprit, thought by most fisherman, were the huge chemical complexes that sprouted up around Freeport.

After passing through the stench of rotting fish, we started fishing, casting to rolling schools of tarpon.  They were everywhere along the river and, up and down you could hear folks holler when one was hooked.  Being teenagers, we watched the show and then my dad, under his breath, let out a “Hmmpf”, his rod bowed and a silvery/green tarpon cleared the water then headed upstream toward Rosenberg!  “Did you see that?  Wow!”  We shouted all at once and just then, the hook pulled out, leaving Dad with a sore thumb!

I still have my dad’s, scarred up, Zara Spook in a picture box display of all of his fishing plugs.  The spook must be eighty years old!

No more tarpon that day and not another one until 1998.

This past Wednesday morning, after dropping Layla off at the Killeen airport, she’s running a Senior Softball tournament in Pensacola, I drove on down to Corpus and, too late for lunch, met Randy and his friend Wayne at a local sporting goods store. Unbeknown to me, we were going to fish Wednesday afternoon and that involved a fairly long drive down Padre Island.

Padre Island, 70 miles long, is the longest barrier island in the U.S. and the longest undeveloped barrier island in the world! Wednesday afternoon and Thursday morning we would be fishing in the Laguna Madre, specifically behind Bird Island, along a big grass covered sand flat. An interesting fact is that the Laguna is the only lagoon in the U.S. saltier than the ocean!

After meeting our host, another Wayne, we drove 15 miles down the island and took the Bird Island road and arriving at our embarkation point. The tide was out and donning our wading gear, both days we’d be wading in up to thigh deep water and we planned on covering a mile, or more, of the flats.

Wayne and Wayne both had spinning outfits with 8 pound line, while Randy and I were using my 7-1/2 foot, popping rods with green reels loaded with 12 pound line. Both, casting and spinning, were excellent choices to throw the baits we’d be using, 8 inch long, “do nothing” lures, packed in a “can’t help but catch them” fish attractor.

We started chunkin’, and for 15 minutes, nothing, then I had a big strike and the fish took of, heading for parts unknown! No circling of our positions, probably not a big trout, and we tentatively identified it as a red, a nice red fish, or channel bass. Out a ways from us the fish swirled on the top of the water, the bronze back giving it away as a nice red and I still held on. What fun being man to fish, the red running, but stubbornly giving in to the pressure of the rod and drag combination. After we netted the red, we guessed its length as 24 inches. Thinking to myself, It’s been 5 years since I caught one of these and the old zing is still there, I have got to do this more often!

Wading and casting, soon Randy’s friend Wayne picked up a small flounder, barely a keeper, but on to the stringer with it. Our host, Wayne, caught 2 under size speckled trout that he threw back. Nothing of size since my big red, but we kept chunkin’ until sunset, then we slogged back to clean the fish.

Supper Wednesday night at the premier fish place in Corpus, then snoozing at a friends, up before the sun to drive out and meet our host, Wayne for a morning of more fishing. Arriving, the tide was in covering our flats with water all the way up to the marsh grass, maybe this was what it would take to really turn the fish on? We started casting and walking, more of a shuffle, we shuffled because of the stingrays, stingarees locally, Urotrygon, specifically, that have a barb at the base of their tail that can inflict a painful injury! Alert for stingarees, we noticed many jelly fish too, or Ctenophora, their long tentacles packing a terrific sting, we avoided them too!

Wayne, Randy’s friend, struck first with a 20, inch flounder a good fish and good eating. Having another strike, probably a keeper, that bit my “do nothing” plug in half, changing baits, I switched to a different kind of swimming plug, still with no results. Reaching our outward boundary, we turned back toward the cars, still shuffling and chunkin’.

Shuffling along with water up to almost my waist, I shuffled into a 1 foot deep hole with mud on the bottom, floundering, down I went with only my head above water. Friend Wayne shuffled over and helped me up, but everything, reel, fishing license and my car keys were wet. Frustrated, I closed up shop and shuffled back, a little more quickly.

Everything turned out OK, everything dried out, I cleaned the car “unlocker” and it works fine, my rod and reel, veterans of being under water before, cleaned up to my satisfaction and I did have 2 nice red fish, fillets, 1 to be fried and 1 to be marinated in Italian dressing, then grilled with the skin and scales still on, scale side down toward the coals.

Just remember, as someone once said, “A bad day fishing beats a good day working,” or something like that!

Hopefully, while this is being read, I’ll be tied on to a big red or trout in some bay around the Corpus Christi area. Two weeks ago Randy invited me to go with him on a fishing trip around Corpus, he’s mixing business with pleasure, his church, Bay Area Fellowship, is having a staff meeting and one of the staff invited him to go wade fishing. He immediately called me and “we” accepted.

Goin’ back to wade fish in the bay, even though it’s not Galveston Bay, is exciting for me because I know there’s some really great spots around Corpus, but I have no idea where we’re headed.  I’ll stop Layla by the airport in Killeen, she’s off to Pensacola to run a Senior Softball tournament, then drive on down to Corpus and meet Randy and his fellow Pastors for lunch on Wednesday, then we’ll be fishing on Thursday, hence this post.

My last go at salt water, fishing was just before I retired and it’s on my post, “[One Last Trip]”, of June 1, 2008. Hopefully, this trip will be successful like the last one!