Outdoor Odyssey

“Unkie”, G.A. Pyland, of course my uncle, had been telling me about this new “super” place for speckled trout and redfish, not 2 hours from our homes in southwest Houston. Taking the short drive down to the coast, gas was only $.30 a gallon then, we, my dad and Dub Middleton, met “Unkie”  and my cousin George at the specified bait camp in Port O’Conner.  It was still dark and we’d have a 20, minute boat ride to our destination, a place Unkie called the fish trap.

With the tide coming in all morning, we cranked up our boats and headed down Matagorda Bay towards Pass Cavallo, the fish trap was located just north of the pass, with a small channel leading into a hundred acre lake, the trap.  Arriving, we anchored the boats, jumped into the water and started casting.  Our lures of choice were silver spoons with a treble hook, with a pink attractor attached to the hook.  Each of us was using a black, Ambassaduer reel, with a 7, foot, popping rod.

Bump, bump, “Fish on”, I yelled out, as the rod bent with the strike, soon, not using a net, I grabbed the small red behind the gills, not big enough to keep, unhooked and released it.  First fish of the day, but soon we were all catching small reds and if we’d kept them all, we’d had a good mess!  The small reds finally quit hitting and we remarked that funny, no big reds and no speckled trout either.  

After almost 2 hours of this fun, we told Unkie and George that we were going to try our hand in Espiritu Santo Bay and see if any birds were working.   Knowing that late spring was a little bit soon for bird action, but these little reds weren’t putting any fish on the stringer!  We pulled the anchor, and since Unkie and George were still fishing, we crept out of the fish trap and once in Matagorda Bay, headed north.  Rather than going all the way back to Port O’Conner, we took a short cut into Espiritu Santo, a small pass that led into the east end of the bay.

Not 2 miles into the bay, we saw a bunch of birds hovering over the water, a sign that something had driven the shrimp to the surface.  After changing to do nothing, slow sinking lures, we coasted up to within casting distance of the birds and Dub was the first to let fly and he immediately had a hard hit.  What was it, spec, gafftop cat or ladyfish, but circling the boat the fish soon identified itself as a nice trout and when we netted it, a 3 pounder.

Dad and I cast out below the birds and both had hard strikes that proved to be identical fish to Dubs.  The birds would break up and 5 minutes later, here came the shrimp back up to the top, we could see them hopping about evading the trout below, but the birds would converge on the hapless shrimp and what the specs missed, the birds would get.  

We stayed with this school of fish for almost 30 minutes and boxed a dozen then they quit.  For a while we stayed around, but we noticed the tide had changed and was going out, probably the reasons for the fish’s lockjaw.  No more bird schools that day and we headed home around noon.  It was a fun trip and we caught 12 nice specs, along with a lot of small reds (that we didn’t keep).

The fish trap is no more because several years later a hurricane rearranged the coastal area around Pass Cavallo!

Houston was hot, hot and more hotter, humidity and all, when Richard Foster called me one evening and said we should go out to Lake Houston, rent us a boat and try and catch some bass.  A little background, the next week, the summer of 1958, I would be going to ROTC summer camp and the week after that, Richard, a newly commissioned 2/Lt. would be reporting to a basic training company at Ft. Hood.

In Richard’s jeep, the next morning, before the sun was up, we pulled into the parking lot of the main bait camp at the lake.  For $2.00, a princely sum then, we rented a 14-foot boat, then attached my 5-horse motor, loaded our gear and were off.  Just as the sun was coming up, our first stop was at a likely looking point and dragging our artificials, we were using Bomber baits, the first bait that under the water would crawl down a slope.

Richard connected first, a 2 pounder that jumped twice and it wasn’t long until I duplicated his feat.  Lake Houston, at the time a 5, year old impoundment on the San Jacinto River, northeast of Houston, was the city’s primary water supply, now this has been supplanted by Lake Livingston.  Lake Houston was about 15 miles, as the crow flies, from San Jacinto Battleground, where Sam Houston and his small band of Texians whipped Santa Anna.  More casts and no luck, so we moved along to another likely looking place.

This one was along a bank that we could drift down, we hadn’t thought about a trolling motor back then and changing baits to a Pico Perch, an under water bait that you could vary the retrieve and it would change depths.   We were using a medium retrieve that would run the bait at about 2-3 feet and we hit the fish here.  Connecting first, I landed an estimated 3 pounder and on to my stringer it went, then Richard nailed another 2 pounder.  Several fish later, the action stopped.

The sun was well up, probably around 8:30, so we switched baits to yellow, Piggy Boats, this spinner bait has been around since I started bass fishing in 1950.  The company was bought out by H & H Company, but is now owned by Academy, a regional sporting goods company.  This change of baits worked well for us and we picked up 4 more bass.

It was getting steamy so we motored on in, cleaned the fish and headed back home toward southwest Houston.  Back then, we didn’t have fish finders, trolling motors, live wells to keep the fish in, fancy baits that would run at certain depths, but we still caught fish.  In fact, TV was still in its infancy, no PC’s, no cell phones, no internet, no freeways, but we still made do!

Having had a lot of boats, 16 at last count, spanning 40-years, from 1965 to 2005 I could almost be called an authority on the subject.  This is the story on how I moved up from a small 14 footer to my second boat, a 16 footer.  The old story is true in my case, that as you grow older, “Your toys only get bigger!”

Carrying a load of firewood into my garage, I didn’t see the garage door wasn’t raised all the way.  Bam, I ran into it and dropped the load of wood all over.  A month later, as soon as my concussion was healed (some say it never was) we took my first boat out for a try at water skiing.  The boat was game, but the 40, horse motor was insufficient to get me up on skis, my ex, being 80 pounds lighter, popped right up, but something had to be done about the boat and motor. That something happened the next weekend.  Bill Priddy, one of my old West University friends, worked with me and invited us to go water skiing in Lake Houston with him and his date.

We showed up on time, but Bill and his date and Norman Shelter and his date were sitting in the boat.  Wouldn’t 6 be too many, I thought as we loaded up everything?  Bill’s boat, a 16-foot fiberglass, lap strake, packed a 65, horse motor and turned out to be a skiing delight.  A little strained for getting me up with the crowd aboard, but nice.

It was dead calm as I finally cleared the water and began skiing, nice conditions, flat water, no wind and the thought came to me, Why am I being pulled behind this boat when not over 20 miles from here I could be fishing for trout in Trinity Bay?  The thought nagged at me, but wore off as the morning wore on.  

While Norman was skiing, we noticed a cloud building up over the south end of the lake and soon, pop-crak, thunder, as the lightning hit.  We quickly picked up Norman, headed for the launch ramp and were all thinking, That was too close.  Before we got the boat loaded, here came the rain and more lightning.  Very exciting, but anyway, we were already all wet!

We decided to wait this storm out and sitting in Bill’s car he thought out loud, “I’m going to get rid of this boat and stick with bass fishing.”  The boat seemed to be just what I was looking for, a bigger boat with more horsepower and within 2 weeks, I’d sold my first boat and bought Bill’s for $900.00.  The price was a steal, 3 years later, when I bought my third boat, an 18-footer, I got a $1,200.00 trade in for it, even with 2 new motors and all, the cost for the new one was only $2,500.00.

Even though we used it for some water skiing, for the next 3 years, this one became my first real, fishing boat.  Just learning about where to fish, when to fish, how to fish, boating safety and boat handling, I finally found my second love, fishing!  Brad was getting old enough to fish with me and I had ample opportunity to take my dad, “Unkie” and Dub Middleton, each one of the older guys drilled safety into me!   My younger friends Bill, Norman, Dewey Stringer and over 10 years later, Bob Baugh all were eager participants too, that is until moving to Arizona and finding about the wonders of quail hunting!

My life has been blessed with many different events; some rewarding, some terrifying, many dangerous, many stimulating, but none remain with me like Allison, the tropical storm that flooded and devastated not only Texas and Louisiana, but also the Southeast and Eastern United States.  This is my longest story and the drama and full extent of the damage could only be captured with a long post.  Breaking it up into 2 would only dilute the impact!

In late May of 1998 tropical storm Allison began as a tropical wave off the coast of Africa, moved west and crossed upper, South America into the Pacific, then moved over Mexico back into the Gulf of Mexico and wandered north, made landfall between Freeport and Galveston Island.  The storm had 2 eyes, with both passing over my home in Bayou Vista.  It hit Houston and moved not over 100 miles north and because of high pressure to its north, stalled, then moved south back into the Gulf Of Mexico, pounding the entire Gulf Coast and Eastern Seaboard and finally sputtering out in Massachusetts where it produced a tornado and flooding.  It was the costliest tropical storm in history and the only one that has had its name retired!  Houston experienced over 7 inches of rain in an hour and over 28 inches in 12 hours and that is where my Allison story begins. 

Allison’s rain was pounding us and around 2:00 PM, my partner, Bob Baugh, said he thought I should head on down to Bayou Vista and make sure my house was OK.  My experiences on Interstate 45 between Houston and Galveston, told me that it would be a long, difficult and possibly dangerous drive down there.

Layla was working part-time, in far north Houston, for a national softball organization and I headed out, called her and said that she should start home right away.  We had just sold our home in Cypress, Texas and were living full time in Bayou Vista.  The next day we were planning on driving to Hot Springs, Arkansas, where Layla was running a senior softball tournament and I was playing in it.

Starting out around 3:00 PM, traffic was building.  Our local media was wearing their rain suits inside of their studios and telling us to brace for a tropical storm with 50 mile per hour winds.  Overkill, I thought.  Traffic on I-45 was awful, not thinning out until past the NASA exit and when the traffic thinned, here came the rain.  It poured buckets on us, slowing speeds to around 40.  It poured for the next 10 miles and when I reached the Dickinson exit, the rain stopped and the skies lightened up.  I looked to my right, west, and saw, not 5 miles away, a funnel cloud hanging down nearly to the ground.  It was heading north, so no immediate danger to me.

Turning up the radio, I heard that the eye of Allison had just passed over Galveston Island.  Wow, I thought, I must be in the eye right now.  That makes 3 for me!  The next 10 miles down to Bayou Vista were fairly nice, light rain and not much wind.  I pulled into my driveway and my neighbor, Jack Bustos, was standing in his driveway and said to me, “Hey, the eye just passed over here!  Come on in for a drink.”  “OK,” accepting the offer.  We were chatting about what a strange storm this was when it started raining again and I cut our visit short and ran home.  Then it really started to rain!

During my travel south, Layla was trying to get down to Bayou Vista also, but was hung up in the traffic and rain.  Freeways were being closed and she made it no farther than West Belt and Westheimer, where, because of the rain and flooding, she decided to get a room in a motel and meet up with me in the morning.  My company’s offices were right across the street from her motel, but Bob and the staff had already gone home, so she was too late for them to help her.  She called me and we decided she would be safe to stay where she was.

It rained and rained and rained, with a constant wind of 35 to 45, a steady hard wind, and the water in the canal was rising, not from the heavy rain but from the expected 5, foot tidal surge that Allison packed.  Raising my 22, foot boat as high as I could in the boat shed, it should have plenty of clearance between the hull and the water. 

The water had risen 3 feet and was already over the bulkheads, washing into my yard, so I went into the garage and made sure everything was up off of the concrete, floor.  If we actually had a 5, foot surge, water would be in the garage.  My property was 9 feet above sea level and the street was 11, which meant we could still get out if need be.

It was raining hard, wind blowing and then it stopped.  I went out onto my deck just as Jack, my neighbor came out and yelled over to me, “Looks like another eye, that’s real strange.  How about another drink?”  “No thanks,” I replied, thinking that when the storm on the backside of the eye picked back up, I could be stranded next door.  This made the fourth storm-eye I had been in, enough for anyone I thought!

The night passed with more rain and wind and the tidal surge didn’t make it into the garage, just up to the patio.  Not much storm when I awoke and called Layla and said for her to be ready over at my office and I would pick her up in 2 hours.  She told me what to pack for her for our trip to Arkansas and I was on my way.

Houston was flooded, but the freeways were open with not much traffic and I buzzed on in.  We loaded up, parked her Suburban in a secure area behind my office, and headed north up I-45 in my 4WD Suburban..  Water everywhere and a light rain falling on us until we passed Huntsville, 60 miles north of Houston, when the rain hit us.  By “the rain”, I mean the main rains of Allison. 

The storm had stopped north of Huntsville and was dumping rain over the countryside.  On the Interstate we were forced to slow down, blinkers flashing, to 30 miles per hour for the next 50 miles!  By the time we had driven to Fairfield we had passed through the heart of Allison, but no “eyes” for me this time.  With a light mist and rain all of the way we drove on to Hot Springs, with the weather clearing the next day.

We followed the storm closely on radio and TV and the tournament proceeded as scheduled and my team won our classification and qualified for the Nationals in Plano in September.  Allison was another story.

The storm made landfall in Texas, on June 4, 2001, passed through Houston, stopped around Buffalo, north of Houston, turned back into the Gulf of Mexico and slammed into Louisiana, then skipped down the north shore of the Gulf, turned northeast along the Georgia/Florida line, up the East Coast and finally, on June 18, turned out into the North Atlantic Ocean.  Damage estimates were over six billion dollars.  Texas and Louisiana led the list, with third place in damage, of all things, Pennsylvania!  Over 40 people were killed by the storm, 23 in Texas alone, and Allison dumped over 40 inches of rain on Southeast Texas, the fourth highest amount of any storm in recorded history.

So ended Allison, the most expensive, damaging and dangerous tropical storm on record!  

In 1953, the early December opening of goose and duck season, was hailed by hunters for the rain and high winds that back, to back, to back, weather systems had fostered.  Blow from the southeast for two days, then blow from the northwest for a few days, the cycle repeating itself continuously.  Me, and my group of hunters, using the term loosely, “sneakers” would better apply, took full advantage of the weather to try the patience of many of the rice farmers and our parents.

The area west of Highway 6, along FM 1091, all the way to Fulshear on the Brazos River was prime goose country.  All of this area now is subdivisions and shopping malls and the geese have vacated it.  Back then, after a driver passed Post Oak Rd. street signs changed from Westheimer to FM 1091.  Now, Westheimer extends for miles, out past Highway 6 and is the center of commerce for west Houston!

Four of us were heading home around 11:00 AM from a reasonably successful goose hunt, success being measured by; a vehicle not being stuck beyond retrieval, none of the hunters injured, not being stopped by the law and, maybe, a few geese.  We were coming in, heading east, on FM 1091 and wishing we could get permission to hunt on Cinco Ranch, a large ranch, twenty sections or more, laying north of 1091, all the way to Highway 6.  The ranch now sports country clubs, shooting ranges and some very, large subdivisions.

Probably four hundred yards north of the road, inside the fences of Cinco Ranch, we spotted a huge gaggle of geese.  Immediately, one of our group said that we should sneak ‘em.  A quick uwey and we stopped on the soggy shoulder, donned our hip boots, hooded parkas and grabbed our shotguns.  Going over the barbwire fence, hitting the ground, we started our sneak.

Four hundred yards is long crawl, shotguns cradled in our arms, military style.  Keeping our heads down we inched along, with each inch, the noise of the geese grew louder.  No alarm calls so we were doing OK.  Inches turned into feet and feet into yards as we reached the hundred yard, mark, only sixty or so, more to go.  Then raise up and let fly!

Hearing a strange peeping sound, I knew it wasn’t a rattler, then the whirring of twenty or more quail bursting into the air startled me so much that I leaped to my feet and shouted a few choice expletives!  That’s all it took for the thousands of geese to spook and get airborne.  Standing, we could only watch as they gained altitude and “honked” their way to safety.

That was our first, and last, “sneak” on Cinco Ranch!

By mid September, the Katy Prairie had dried out from the summer’s deluge and opening day of the south zone, Dove season found Bob Baugh and I, on the Katy Prairie, sweating and squatting down under 2 mesquite trees, by a feed pen, waiting for the afternoon flight of birds.  Our wait was a short one and soon we were covered up with darting, diving Doves.

Dove hunting on the Katy Prairie was spotty at the best.  The birds don’t hold to one spot very well.  Hunting pressure quickly forces them to other food and water spots on the immense prairie. But the birds stuck around for that afternoon’s hunt!  

We continued sweating in the 90 plus temperature and continued shooting, until our gun barrels were hot.  Since the prairie was well policed by wardens, we stopped shooting 10 minutes early.

By quitting time we each had near limits and cleaning the Doves, we remarked that this was going to be a good lease, especially since it was only 20 minutes from each of our houses!

Bob and I are cleaning everyone’s doves!  Don’t we look happy?

My life has been blessed with many different events; some rewarding, some terrifying, many dangerous, many stimulating, but none remain with me like Allison, the tropical storm that flooded and devastated not only Texas and Louisiana, but also the Southeast and Eastern United States.  

Damage estimates were over six billion dollars.  Texas and Louisiana led the list, with third place in damage, of all things, Pennsylvania!  Over forty people were killed by the storm, twenty-three in Texas alone, and Allison dumped over forty inches of rain on southeast Texas, which was the fourth highest amount of any storm in recorded history

Allison began as a tropical wave off the coast of Africa, moved west and crossed upper, South America into the Pacific, then moved over Mexico back into the Gulf of Mexico and wandered north, made landfall between Freeport and Galveston Island, with the eyes, yes two eyes, passing over Bayou Vista.  It hit Houston and moved not over 100 miles north and stalled, then moved south back into the Gulf Of Mexico, pounding the entire Gulf Coast and Eastern Seaboard and finally sputtering out in Massachusetts where it produced a tornado and flooding.  It was the costliest tropical storm in history and the only one that has had its name retired!

Houston experienced over seven inches of rain in one hour and over twenty-eight inches in twelve hours and that is where my Allison story begins. 

“Dave, I’m hung up” I exclaimed. Dave Miller stopped the slow troll to try and recover the new white Bomber, deep running, bass plug, that had cost $1.29, from the bottom of Lake Houston. My Dad said, “Damn boy, are you fouled up already!”