On a fall morning, just at first light, I lowered the 22 footer into the canal behind our Bayou Vista home, headed down it and chugged, speed limit 5 MPH in the canals, into Highlands Bayou.  Opening up the big, outboard I skimmed the back way into the Intercoastal Waterway.  This was the same track Randy and I took several years earlier when he collided with a live, oyster reef and I did a flip.

Having a 11:00 AM meeting with customers, it would be a short trip this morning, but hopefully a productive one.  My destination, with the tide coming in and a light southeast wind, was the sand flats and reefs that ran from Green’s Cut up to South Deer Island.  The target was to find sea gulls (birds) working over feeding specks, the specks 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 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.  Landing the skipjack, I released it and continued my scouting for birds.

Two hundred yards away, several birds were sitting on the water, this is a likely sign of a school of fish that has that has cleaned up the shrimp in one area, or of one or two big fish randomly feeding.  Pulling up to within 50 yards of the birds, the light wind and incoming tide soon pushed me within casting distance.  Letting fly, when the cork and shrimp hit the water, it was one of those rare times when the cork kept going down, almost jerking the rod out of my hand.  This was a good one!

Several trips around the boat, I slid the net under a 4 pound speck!  Thinking to myself, I’ll keep this one for Layla’s and my supper tonight, then my 11:00 AM meeting flashed into my mind and by the time I motored back, cleaned the fish, hosed out the boat, showered and drove the 45 minutes to my meeting, I’d better be scooting.

My salesman and I made the meeting on time and closed a big deal.  Mixing business and pleasure was neat and these quick fishing trips were a big advantage of living right on the water!

Since dove season opened up in two more Saturdays, Bill Priddy and I had gone up to our McCulloch County hunting lease to check out the prospects.  A lot of birds were flying around, prospects looked good and we even took along our fishing rods.  Our objectives this early morning were to see how many doves came into water in the big, two acre, stock tank along Highway 190 and to see if we could catch some bass out of the tank where we hadn’t fished before.

There was a heavy growth of mesquite trees around the perimeter of the stock tank meaning it was an old one, but neither we, nor the rancher, knew if it had ever been stocked before.  Bill’s first cast put all of this behind us he was using a silver Rebel, a small plug with a suggestive, wiggle that the fish hit almost as soon as it hit the water.  The question about stocking was answered!  After a spirited battle, Bill slid the almost three, pound, bass on to the sandy, bank.  Unhooking it, we admired his catch as he released it, sliding it back into the water.

In the next fifteen minutes, using my trusty Piggy Boat, pictured below, I hadn’t had a strike, while Bill had one more.  Knawing doubt crept into my mind, should I change to a Rebel?

At the same time, in my peripheral vision, I noticed movement to my left.  Turning toward the movement, along came this brightly colored snake, a big one, almost five foot long, dark, red bands, with black, yellow and black rings.  First thing that came to my mind was the old saying “Red and yellow kills a fellow. Red and black is safe for Jack.” Letting it slide on past, I thought it was some kind of a king snake, but later after consulting some “herp” books I determined it was a Mexican milk snake(Lampropeltis triangulum annulata). I dug this picture up from Wikipedia.

Piggy Boats, “safety pin” spinners, are great for stock tanks and small lakes, over the years I’ve had super luck using them, so, I thought, No changing for me.  More casts, no hits, as Bill plugged away, out scoring me with his Rebel.  Casting down, parallel to the bank, about two feet out from the shore, my Piggy Boat stopped.  These plugs, with the hooks installed properly, are virtually weedless and thinking I was fouled on some unseen, underwater obstruction, pulled on the object until the reel clicked as the drag paid out, but this wasn’t a “foul up”, it was a fish!

The fish headed away from the shore for deep water, taking line, more like a redfish, then it came to the surface clearing the water and I saw it was a big, big bass.  More runs, more jumps, the splashes attracting Bill as he walked over to me, but I was winning this “fight” and soon I slipped the big, bass up onto the bank.  Lipping it, unhooking the plug from the corner of its mouth, I held it up for us to admire.  He had a Deliar in his pocket and we weighed the bass, eight pounds, twelve ounces, not a twelve pounder, my personal best, Bill was with me when I caught that one too, see my August 6, 2007 post, [“A Really Big Bass”], but still, this one was a nice one too!

Keeping on fishing, we didn’t notice any doves coming into this tank and as the morning heated up, still no doves, the bass stopping too.  It turned out, the doves weren’t watering at this tank, but we found two more that afternoon that they were using and had wonderful shooting, two weeks later.

Continuing to fish in this tank and catching some nice ones, it appears that we answered the question though, that the tank had been stocked once before!

August is probably the hottest month along the upper Texas coast with the water in the shallow bays, East and West Galveston Bay and Christmas Bay, heating up to the mid eighties causing the big trout to seek cooler water.  The cooler water we were heading out to this mid August morning in 1968 was along the Houston Ship Channel.  The channel was begun in 1875 and not really completed until 1914.  In the late 1990’s and early 2000’s it was widened to over five hundred feet, with a depth of forty-five.

The weather forecast was a good one, light winds, tide coming in, with scattered thunder storms, in the afternoon.  Our plan was to finish up by lunch, so we didn’t anticipate any bad weather or problems.

In my seventeen foot, deep vee pictured, we, my dad and uncle, Alvin Pyland, better known as Unkie, launched at the bait camp at San Leon and made the short run out to the ship channel.   We went about two hundred yards on the Smith’s Point side of the ship channel and started our drift.

Our tackle was six and a half foot popping rods, red reels filled with fifteen pound, mono line.  We used a popping cork with a three-foot, leader, a light weight and a small treble hook.  Our bait was live shrimp.  We’d cast out, pop the cork, reel up the slack, repeat the process until we either had a strike or we retrieved the rig back to the boat, then, if no hit, cast back out and repeat the process.

Unkie and my dad cast out and hadn’t made one or two “pops” when they had big strikes, both fish were good ones, taking line and circling the boat, a sure sign of a big trout!  Netting Unkies fish first, a real nice five pounder, my Dad’s fish put on a show around the boat for us and we could see that is was a little bigger than Unkies.

Finally I cast out, popped the cork once and “bam”, had a big strike.  A twenty-yard, first run, highlighted this fight, along with two circles of the boat, with a lot of wallows on top before my dad slipped the net under the spec, a twin of his.

We were probably fifteen miles up from the Galveston Jetties, the mouth of the Houston Ship Channel and in the distance, south of us, the morning’s first big tanker was heading our way. Dad said, “Boy, you’ve never seen the wake these big ships throw up, have you?”  “What wakes?” was my answer. Unkie chimed in, “Six or seven footers, that’s what and we’d better get everything in the boat squared away!”  This got my attention quick.  We quit fishing and knowing that if you’re in heavy seas, you head into them and don’t get caught broad side, I started the engine and here the came the wake.

Looking at the wake, it came toward us, obliquely, in a long line, soon it was only fifty foot from us, then, here it was!  The deep vee in my boat’s hull cut smoothly through the seven foot, wake and rode up and down it.  It would have swamped us if we’d been broadside to it!

Going back to catching specs, before the tide changed we put a dozen more five to six pounders into the cooler.  We experienced three more big wakes, got back to the launch ramp before noon and missed the forecasted thunderstorms.

The summer of 1987 was the calmest weather I can remember.  Back then, we could plan an offshore trip a week ahead, and the weather would cooperate so Bob Baugh and I planned a trip one week ahead, and sure enough, ended up sixty miles out of Freeport, Texas, in his Formula, the “Bill Collector”, at a rig in one hundred and ten feet of water.

We cruised around the rig checking for bait- fish and noticed not five feet under the surface some small amberjack, so I cast out a cigar minnow and a bigger amberjack quickly darted in and snatched the bait, and the fight was on.  I finally subdued the fish and we netted and released it, a 20 pounder.

After we tied up to the rig, we really got a workout from several sixty to eighty-pound amberjacks, members of the tuna family, and pound for pound, they are the hardest fighting fish in the Gulf.  We were using eighty-pound class tackle and after each bout with a big ‘jack we would take a five or ten minute break.

During one of these breaks I got out a new bay rod that I wanted to try out and baited up with a cigar minnow and cast it out behind the boat and let the bait drift with the current. We noticed a squall line looming to our east but didn’t worry about it since NOAA was predicting calm, storm free, weather.

For every five big, amberjack we hooked, we may have landed one.  If, they get their head pointing down, you’re done for and he’d cut you off in the rig.  After loosing another one, I was re-rigging and I happened to look up and noticed the squall line getting closer.  “Bob, should we worry about the weather?” I asked.  He replied, “Naw, don’t look like a problem.”  We laughed later, over his reply.

Just then, my new rod bent nearly double and the line was peeling off at a rapid rate.  Bob says, “I told you that new rod was too light for these big fish out here!”  As I set the hook I was rewarded by a big, bull dolphin clearing the water by about ten feet and took off for Mexico in passing gear!

What a fight this bruiser put on!

Jump, jump, jump, while running away from the boat, the dolphin was “turned on”, each jump silhouetting the neon, green/blue/gold fish against the approaching dark blue squall line.  If I had been an artist, it would have made a beautiful picture.  Captain Bly (Bob) spoiled it saying, “We better git, that storm looks like a good one.”

“Horsing” the fish in wasn’t an option.  I would get him near the boat and jump, jump, run!  We finally got the bull subdued and into the boat and the wind changed from south and hot to northeast and cool.  Oh, oh, I’ve been down this road before.  We quickly whacked the dolphin on the head, put him into the big cooler, un-looped the rope from the rig and Bob backed away.

Then Bob did something funny. He reached into the boat storage area, got out a motorcycle helmet and slipped it on.  He wore very heavy glasses (this was before he had corrective laser eye surgery) and he used the helmet and visor to keep the rain out.  He wiped the clear visor with a towel and told me, “We’re going to get wet, so find you a place and hold on.”

We headed directly into the storm and broached each wave crest, probably eight footers, the rain, worse than when I was caught in a severe storm in 1982, and like then, this storm was between us, and the shore.  Wind was about forty miles per hour and no lightning, but the rain almost obscured the bow of the boat, ten feet in front of us.

All we could do was trust the LORAN, (this was before GPS), and keep going for forty miles. The easy one hour run took us two and a half hours.  The last twenty miles were in relative calm seas and the last five miles were spent in a race with a twenty-four foot Proline.  Our speed on the LORAN was fifty-two miles per hour and we won this joust by half a boat length!

The Bull Dolphin weighed thirty-one pounds. NOAA never said anything about the storm that never was!