During the summer of 1981, by accident, Dewey Stringer and I “found” a boat, probably a scuttled shrimper that had been sunk in fifteen feet of water, two hundred yards north of the old concrete ship, right off of the Galveston Ship Channel. With the right conditions, incoming tide, not too much wind or too heavy a current, we consistently caught speckled trout and red fish at this spot.

A very favorable set of circumstances led us to “finding” this sunken wreck. With our depth recorder on, because we had forgotten to turn it off, we had been drifting the flats north of the old Quarantine Station, on the west side of the Ship Channel. We noticed that we had drifted out too far into deeper water toward the Ship Channel and, all of a sudden, a “hump” appeared on our chart paper.

This got our interest so we crisscrossed the hump several times and determined that it was a sunken boat about the size of a shrimp boat. This was before the days of GPS’s, and Dewey didn’t have a Loran, so we had no way of marking the spot other than triangulating on the old concrete ship, a channel marker and an oil rig.

We anchored over the wreck, baited up and let our rigs down to the bottom. Dewey was right into a nice fish, but I was hung up on something. I had caught the wreck and in loosening up my hook brought up a small piece of wood. I netted Dewey’s fish, a nice red, got my rig baited up and proceeded to land a two-pound trout. We were on to something and for the next two years “The Wreck” was a fish producer for us and it was only a twenty, minute boat ride, straight down the Intercoastal Waterway from Dewey’s Camp!
In 1983 the tidal surge from Hurricane Alicia washed away the sunken boat and put an end to a great fishing spot!

We took a trip to Mazatlan with the Schroder family and one event stood out. A long fishing trip with no fish and four hours into our trip the Captain was fretting about (in Spanish) our lack of luck. We had seen some sails lolling about on the surface, but they weren’t interested in our baits regardless how skillfully presented.
Our trolling continued, four lines on out riggers and one flat line and all of a sudden, one by one, everyone in our party, two adults and four kids, started getting Mal-De-Mere, seasick! It seems that when, like flu, one person gets it, it become contagious and spreads quickly.
Taking turns, “chumming” for fish, Jake and I told the Captain to head back in, easily over a one hour trip and as the boat came about to head back to Mazatlan, one of the four outriggers snapped, then a second, then a third, then the fourth and the flat line was nearly pulled from the holder by a vicious strike! The infirmed anglers quickly recovered, grabbed rods and the fight was on.

We had run into a school of dorado, dolphin, not Flipper, and the water behind the boat was churned up with the acrobatic fish. These were large dorado, at least 25 pounds each, and on the medium tackle we were using, great fighters. As the fish wore down, the mate had his hands full getting them aboard, but he finally put the last one in the big cooler.

A younger, and both recovered, Jake and Beechnut display the day’s catch!The excitement of the furious action helped everyone to recover for about two minutes. Everybody was “up” and apparently recovered, then the Mal-De-Mere hit again. We didn’t get a strike all the way in, but we kept chumming!

Our hotel’s chef did a stupendous job of grilling our dorado and with full “tummies” everyone had forgotten our afternoon meeting with Senior Mal-De-Mere.

On this fishing trip in Mazatlan, the Captain put the lines out when we were about four hundred yards away from the dock. The fish hit almost immediately and put on quite an aerial display, making five or six jumps and “greyhounding” for almost a hundred yards. What a fight and what a memory! We snapped a good picture of one of its jumps.
That morning the mouth of the harbor was loaded with sails. As the day progressed the fish moved out into El Golfo never exceeding four miles. An easy trip and for the day we connected with five sails. After almost arguing, one fish was released, mine was being mounted and the Captain sold other three.

The sailfish mount, hecho en Mexico, on the wall of my den in Paradise Valley, Ariz. It weighed one hundred and ten pounds and was ninety-seven inches long. It was destroyed in 1983 when a tornado in north Houston hit the storage shed where I was keeping it. Sadly a trailer park was right next to the shed and it was completely destroyed killing two people.

On one excursion to Rocky Point, several of the locals asked me to accompany them to “The Cut”, a two hundred foot wide, cut and channel leading from El Golfo into a small bay, St John’s Bay. Catch the conditions right, mainly the water movement, and the fishing is excellent.

The trip was ten miles down the beach, not hard packed sand like along the Texas coast, but fine volcanic sand that refused to pack. It’s a ten, mile trip from Hell, four wheel drive all the way. Tires deflated to eight, yes, eight pounds each! We probably saw a dozen skeletons of disabled trucks littering the beach. If you broke down, chances were the truck just stayed, rusted out and sank into the sand.

Once we got to the cut and the tide started moving, I cast out a Mr. Champ spoon with a small sardinero, hooked through the mouth, and jigged it slowly along the bottom My first cast was met by a savage strike, a long run and after a spirited fight, I landed and released an eighteen inch bonefish! Before our wild trip back to rocky Point, we had loaded up on two to three pound, corvina, a fish resembling our Gulf Coast white trout, but this one can grow to a size of up to thirty pounds and we even released several small snook! Hot fishing!

It is a very enjoyable, exciting experience to make a suspense filled trip to a remote fishing spot, hammer the fish and then come back out in the dark, engines roaring, sand flying and finally making it back to civilization in one piece. I made a total of four trips to The Cut. We even spent the night at The Cut once. Once was enough!

The funniest thing I have ever seen fishing or around a fishing camp, occurred at Rocky Point. My first time to fish down there, early in the morning, Jim Buck and I, launched my big tri hull off of the launch ramp just like anywhere else. The proprietor of the camp told us in broken English that in afternoon when we returned the tide would be out, but don’t worry, just be sure to call him on the ship to shore radio and let him know when we would be back.

We caught a mess of fish; pintos (small groupers), rock bass and queen triggers and returning to the camp, called the proprietor as he had instructed. In broken English, he replied, “Beeg, wide Texas boat? OK, we get jur trailer and be ready for ju.” Breaking the connection, I asked Jim, “Get our trailer. What’s going on.” “Quien Sabe?” he replied in broken Spanish.

Nearing shore, I thought I was seeing things! In the water, there was a John Deere tractor coming our way. The closer we got to it, the more stranger it looked. I quipped to Jim, “Looks Like a John Deere tractor to me!” What I saw was a tractor body, diesel engine and all, built up on fifteen foot extensions, with wheels below the extensions rolling on the sandy bottom and the drive shaft pointing down to the rear wheels at a forty five degree angle. Out came this contraption to tow us into the ramp area and since the tide was out the ramp area was all on dry land.

Our trailer was waiting for us two hundred yards out from the launch ramp, hooked up to another tractor/contraption, rear wheels into the water just below the bearing buddies and a Mexican boy standing on the rear of the trailer, dwarfed by the strange looking vehicles. We secured a rope to our John Deere and it chugged up to our trailer, we untied from it, threw the line to the boy on the back of the trailer, he pulled us up to our winch and hooked us to the winch and the second tractor/contraption, we never found out the brand, it didn’t have a body, just engine, chugged us back up to the launch ramp and on to our car. We hopped out of the boat, backed the car up to the trailer and hooked up.

Walking up to the proprietor, I asked him, “How much?” “Two dollar,” he replied. I would have paid ten for that show. Driving back to our campground I remarked to Jim, “I wonder how they figured those tractor contraptions out.” “Quien sabe,” he replied in broken Spanish.

There is more than one way to skin a Deere.