New Year’s Eve of 1981 was a memorable event because we, the three couples that collectively owned the bay house in Bayou Vista; Jim and Shellie Masters, my brother-in-law and his wife, Jim and Pat Buck and my ex-wife and I, decided to jointly put on a big New Year’s Eve party at our beach house.

The party was a success and rolling along, but by 10:00 PM I had lost interest in all of the small talk and went down stairs to sneak me a dip. Sitting on the boat dock, I heard the unmistakable “pop” of a trout hitting the surface of the canal right out from me. “Pop”, another one hit. Up in a flash I ran into the ground floor of the house, grabbed the closest rod and reel, this one with silver spoon and a yellow, bucktail.

The only light was from a full moon overhead as I whipped a cast almost across the canal, began a rapid retrieve, “Whamo” a good trout nailed the spoon and the fight was on! Standing on the dock, at least three feet above the water level, it finally dawned on me, how, without a long handled landing net, was I going to land this fish? In my haste I had forgotten to bring out a net! Swinging and flopping the trout out of the water up on to the yard, I ran over to it, got the hook out, carried it inside and put it into a forty-eight quart cooler, sans ice.

Back outside, this time with a long handled net, casting out again, another “Whamo”, another solid trout, which I subdued, netted and added to the cooler, just as Jim Buck came downstairs asking, “Brother-In-Law, are you OK? I thought you may have fallen in,” as he saw me putting the fish into the cooler.

He rushed inside, grabbed another rod and reel, this one with a M-52 Mirror Lure attached and made a cast. We caught four more specs before the school moved on, all nice fish, two to two and one-half pounds. We got some ice out of the downstairs fridge, covered the fish with it, washed our hands and went back upstairs to the small talk.

Nobody else missed me but Jim.

One memorable trip to “The Wreck” was during the summer of 1982. Alvin Pyland, my Uncle Gus, Dub Middleton, a close friend, and I had spent the morning fishing the Gulf side of the South Jetty. As usual we had an enjoyable trip and a large cooler over half full of fish. The tide had been going out pushing baitfish around the end of the jetty and back toward the beachfront and we had caught trout, reds, Spanish mackerel and even a cobia, better known along the Texas coast as a ling. When the tide changed and started going in I suggested we try “The Wreck”.

Neither of my companions had ever fished it and didn’t even know it was there. In the past, during the fall, they had good success fishing for reds almost directly across from “The Wreck” in ten feet of water along a shelf on the east side of the Ship Channel.

We pulled up my twenty foot, deep vee, into the vicinity of “The Wreck”, and with the depth finder began our triangulating. Soon we were anchored over it and had our baits in the water, when “wham”, Uncle Gus had a big hit from something judging from the bend in his rod, and another, “wham” Dub had a big strike on his spinning outfit, and “wham” I had a big hit too, three almost simultaneous heavy strikes!

The fight was on! My fish, a three, pound trout, came to the boat first, and Uncle Gus netted it while still fighting his fish. Dub was locked in a line loosing struggle with something big and shouted “Jon, start us up and get our anchor up. I can’t stop this thing.” I had a dilemma, Dub’s fish showed no signs of tiring and was heading north with the tide and Uncle Gus’s fish was heading east toward the deep water of the ship channel.

Like a politician, I split the difference and headed at a forty-five degree angle between the angler’s fish. Soon Uncle Gus’s fish, an over thirty, inch red was alongside the boat and we netted it, got the hook out and released it. Reds now had a twenty to twenty-eight inch slot and this one was too big.

Dub was still struggling with his fish, which he thought was either a record red or maybe a big, black drum. I followed it and soon we saw a large, over twenty pound, jackfish. “Record red, huh, haw, haw, haw,” we both laughed as I readied the net. One more short run and the jack was ours. We got the hook out and released it. Jackfish are great fighters, more like sluggers, but have no food value. We found ourselves over three hundred yards from “The Wreck” and both of my guests said, “Why don’t we go back to “The Wreck” and anchor up?”

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.

After sampling the wonderful off shore fishing out of Mazatlan, by the spring of 1972, I had found another salt water fishing paradise, “South of the Border, Down Mexico Way”. The upper end of El Golfo, the Gulf of California, the final destination of the western Colorado River, the same river that roars through the Grand Canyon, meekly trickles into the top end of El Golfo at San Felipe, Mexico. Sixty miles southeast of San Felipe is Puerto Penasco, or Rocky Point, as the local Arizonans called it.

Yes, local Arizonans. At the time, because of the outstanding fishing and relaxing available, about a hundred families had established an American colony there. The beach houses were minimum standard, but sufficient for occasional use by their lessors. Back then Gringos couldn’t own property in Mexico, so I chose to set up my tent and camp on the deserted beaches. The two best facilities at Rocky Point were the boat storage area, patrolled by the local police and fenced with concertina wire and the boat launching equipment.

My boat, at the time, was an eighteen foot, tri hull, with two, sixty horse outboards and two internal, twenty four gallon gas tanks, or as the locals called it “Beeg Texas Boat”. Loaded out it would cruise at twenty-five miles per hour and had a range of over sixty miles. We caught some very nice fish, sea bass, grouper, corvina, snook, bonefish and queen trigger fish. I won a category of a tournament there in 1973 with a ten pound, trigger fish and once saw, and came within twenty feet ,of a fifty foot, whale!

An unusual feature of Rocky Point is the extreme tidal fluctuation caused by its location at the top of El Golfo, which is several hundred miles long and for a large body of water, very narrow, fifty to a hundred miles wide. Tidal pressure going in and out causes wide fluctuations at Rocky Point. I was told the Bay of Fundy, in Nova Scotia, is the only spot in the world with greater tidal fluctuation.

In January of 1971, I was transferred to Phoenix and by the summer we were settled in, involved with the local Little League and hearing about two exciting get away spots in Mexico – Rocky Point and Mazatlan.

We chose Mazatlan as our first destination. At the time it was a quaint old town (now over a million inhabitants) located on the mainland directly across the mouth of El Golfo, the Gulf of California, from Cabo San Lucas. Back then, Cabo hadn’t been developed and commercial flights were few and only by Mexican airlines and a person would fly into Mazatlan and then catch the ferry to Cabo San Lucas.

On our first few trips to Mazatlan, we chose the train, the Ferrocarril Del Norte (Iron Horse Of The North), and caught it in Nogales, Mexico, right across the border from Nogales, Arizona. It was a twelve hour, plus or minus, overnight trip that deposited us in Mazatlan the next morning. Shopping and partying were the “sports” of most, but for me it was the fishing.

At the time, the only charter service was Bill Heimpel Star Fleet, also called Flota Mazatlan. They had twenty-six to thirty-two foot cabin boats as shown in the background of the photograph. The boats were seaworthy and reliable, the Captains put you on the fish, but with only one drawback, you had to keep all fish caught. Those not claimed by the fisherman, including the sailfish, were given or sold to the locals. My last visit in 1983 this practice had changed to almost all catch and release.

On my first trip out with Flota Mazatlan we raised fifteen sails, landed seven and returned to the dock with five. The picture shows two of the sailfish. I have caught sails, dolphin (not Flipper), white marlin and raised a large blue marlin and lost it. I was on a boat that landed a two hundred pound blue. I made eight trips down and always wanted to try the “small fishing”, but the excellent fare offshore always lured me away.

This picture from my last trip, shot into the sun, shows a billfish, tail walking across a very calm, Pacific Ocean. This one was released!

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!