A Little Exploring

One fishing trip, during the early summer of 1979, would change my fishing patterns completely. My Uncle, George Alvin Pyland, better known as Unkie, Dave Miller, a friend, and I, in my new seventeen foot, deep vee, packing an eighty five horse outboard, were heading in after a morning of fishing around Swan Lake, east of the Galveston Causeway.

We headed under the big bridges of the Causeway and were preparing to turn east into the channel to the Pleasure Island Bait camp, when Dave said, “Look at those new channel markers going toward Tiki Island and Jones Lake.” We turned west into the new channel and started a little exploring, not knowing of the changes that it would bring to our fishing.
Unkie said he had fished Jones Lake once and remembered it being shallow. Dave said it was new to him, so we followed the new channel markers; bamboo poles with flags on them, stuck into the sandy bottom and cruised under the Tiki Island Bridge. Tiki Island, at the time, was a new bay home development, and has since grown into a large, up scale community (with permanent channel markers).

Entering lower Jones Lake, we idled the motor and slowly headed toward some low lying islands and reefs that ran southeast to northwest and bisected the main section of the lake. Two of these islands had small, crude, fishing shacks built up on pilings, very basic accommodations that four years later, in 1983, would be blown away by Hurricane Alicia.

The lake is not big, probably five square miles. Not deep, probably five feet at its deepest, but the bottom, in 1979, was studded with live oyster reefs and clumps of grass. Now, most of the grass is gone but some live reefs still remain.

We headed toward the second island/reef, just about in the middle of the lake, and I said,
“We’ve got some dead shrimp, let’s try a few casts.” Starting our drift in almost four feet of water, little did I know that my first cast would change my fishing tactics for the next twenty-six years.

My popping cork hit the water and within a minute, the cork started moving slowly to my right, against the incoming tide, and Unkie said, “It’s a red, give him a second to get the bait in his mouth good. Now hit him hard!” Which I did, getting a good set on the small hook, and the red took off, almost spooling my Ambassadeur 5000C that was packed with fifteen pound, line.

To get some line back, Dave started the boat and the chase was on. What a fight, long runs, swirls at the top of the water, head shaking, which was really the red trying to rub the hook out of its jaw on the bottom, and finally we got it to the side of the boat and it was too big for the landing net, so Unkie got a good hold behind its gills and heaved it aboard.

Unkie holds up the big redfish, thirty-three inches long and we estimated that it weighed fifteen pounds. That day I caught one more, red twenty-nine inches long. This was all before a twenty to twenty-eight inch slot limit was set for the finny battlers.

For the foreseeable future, I was hooked on Jones Lake!

Skirmish

Skirmish

Two hundred and thirty-three years ago, July 4, 1776, our country proclaimed its freedom from England and today, as we celebrate this event and I thought it fitting to relate a family story about my 5G Grandfather, William Murrill and an action he was involved in during our Revolutionary War. This event was passed down through the family and recorded in the diary of a 3G Uncle of mine, James Buckner “Buck” Barry. Years after Buck wrote his diary, it was copyrighted and published as “Buck Barry, Texas Ranger And Frontiersman”. I have used family history and this book as my references.

SKIRMISH

Heavy gunfire erupted on the other side of the large pond and the twenty, man detail of Colonial Militia from Onslow County, North Carolina, started sprinting toward the shots. “Tony stay here and guard the pack horses,” William Murrill shouted as he ran past Tony, a family slave who served with William for the duration of the war. Tony was assisting the small unit that was on a prolonged scout along the coast for prisoners, rations and supplies.

The firing grew in intensity and was sustained for, to Tony, it seemed hours, when he saw two British Redcoats enter the water and swim towards him and the prize of horses and supplies that he was guarding. Thinking that William’s unit had been wiped out, he quickly hid behind a tree and kept a close watch on the enemy soldiers. When they came within gunshot range of the camp and saw the horses, they ducked behind a log in the water and tried to hide.

Tony breathed a sigh of relief when William and his victorious unit returned with no prisoners, but they carried the booty from the British camp, booty that included whiskey! William’s brother, my 5G Uncle, Kemp Murrill and another trooper, proceeded to get themselves drunk on the spoils. Tony told William about the Redcoats hiding behind the log in the pond. William immediately ordered them to come in with their hands over their heads.

As they were coming into camp, Kemp and the other drunk were going to shoot the prisoners, but William took their guns away and prevented a killing. Years later, Tony told Buck Barry, then a young boy, that they kept the prisoners for two days but he never saw them after that.

Feelings were real hard back then!

Morning Walks, June 27, 2009

June 30th through July 3rd, Layla and I will be gone to Liberty, Kansas to where I’ll be playing in the SPA Midwestern Championship, Senior Softball Tournament. The Texans, after winning State in Dallas two weeks ago, should do well in this one.

My morning walk last Saturday was pretty uneventful, but I had to stop and get a picture of this beautiful, mare feeding. It’s easy to see that she hadn’t foaled yet.

Then, in the shadows, several hundred yards later, one doe showed herself long enough for me to get a “shot”.

The walk didn’t get exciting until I got home. I still hadn’t taken my ball cap off and I went to the side of our house to move a sprinkler, and on the way, bumped into a hanging plant. With my ball cap pulled down and looking at the sprinkler, I never saw the plant and never saw what was resting among the leaves.

After moving the sprinkler, I walked to the back door and felt something crawling on my neck. I reached up and swatted, what I thought was a june bug, but turned out to be a tarantula. After the swat, it landed on the porch and I had Layla get me a sack real fast and using a broom, coaxed it into the sack. Sack and tarantula were carried out to the cow lot and I shook the big spider out on the ground. Their bite, more like a bee sting, is only dangerous to a human if you’re allergic to the venom, but seeing the big, hairy spider, that was on the back of my neck, certainly made my heart beat at an aerobic level!