Fishing at the Port O’Connor Pier, Justin, age 9, caught his first bonnethead shark and Kyle, age 7, caught a puffer fish.
Casey & Her Redfish
As a kid I loved to fish. It didn’t matter to me where I got to fish or what I used for equipment or tackle or where we went, the only thing that mattered to me is that I got to cast a fishing rod into the body of water and maybe, just maybe, I would be lucky enough to get a bite! Usually I had a round bobber, you know the kind, the red and white ones with that nifty spring loaded piston where you could latch the line top and bottom, and I would watch the action on the bobber like my life depended on it, hoping for a tug or better yet, a take down indicating only one thing, FISH!
There were many times when I was fortunate enough to have my dad take me out fishing. Fresh water lake trips early on but then later we began to fish the salt water. While I loved the perch and bass we caught no matter the size in the fresh water, I had no idea what was to become of me once I tasted the salt water with its abundance of fish and other critters that were so willing to devour whatever bait offerings we were able to both afford and find. You see my dad had a love of the salt water as well and he took us kids any chance he got, sometimes all of us and other times just me, whoever would not pretend to be asleep at 5AM would get to go. I can still hear his tip toes in the house trying to keep all but the eager asleep as he whispered in my ear…”Stephen, hey Hambones, you want to go fishing?”
Fast forward to today and if you are sleeping in my house and showed interest in getting up early to fish, you can bet my tip toes sound very similar to those of ole dad! Why do fishermen insist on getting up so early anyway? I often ask myself the same question as my alarm nowadays wakes me somewhere in the neighborhood of 4:30 AM. I think it’s because in those old days my dad had to build in time to get his sleepy anglers to come to life and wake up enough to help put at least some of the gear together. Not to mention we had to pull the boat thirty miles and then get in line to get live shrimp and launch the boat and park the car and trailer and to make sure we had all our gear. Inevitably my dad had it all together but one of us boys or my sisters held up the show by forgetting something like our life jacket, or we were wandering off at the ramp chasing seagulls or crabs, or talking to another guy bothering them asking where the fish were. It was surely a show and I can still smell the salty humid air and hear the gulls cackling and making all kinds of noise.
The Saturday morning trips would find us heading to Galveston and over Bolivar Roads via the ferry. Most of the times we went fishing and travelled via ferry fell between my eight and twelve years of life. We didn’t have a boat until I was a teen but I cherished the walks on the North Jetty (except for having to carry my body weight in rods, coolers and other gear) because we were right there in the middle of the action, hopping rocks all the way out to what I thought was over a mile walk. Along the way we would pass anglers of every age and kind all with an excited chatter of what they were going to catch and commenting on how neat it was for my dad to be taking us out on the rocks to catch fish. Most of the time I admit my brother and I were more interested in the goings on between the rocks like the crabs, the myriad of bay trash that had been caught up in the cracks and the other anglers and what they may be catching, to be too focused on catching our own fish. Our method was to cast out and get as far as possible from the rocks then place the rod in a crack to hold it and then take off in another direction to see what entertainment was there to find. I can bet my dad watched our method and shook his head thinking “these kids don’t get it!”
Those were great times and like I said I can still remember them forty years later like they were yesterday. Eventually we were able to get a boat which had a name on the side of it called the Lynn Ellen after the man’s kids we bought it from. We never changed the name which was kind of strange but I guess it might be bad luck to rename a boat? Anyway the funny thing about this is that we again went through the entire routine I mentioned of waking up, gearing up and now getting the boat ready. We went to Galveston like before and even launched the boat out of near where we would board the ferry. Only this time we had our own boat to get over to the North Jetties. Here’s the part that makes me smile though is no matter where we anchored up we cast our lines toward the rocks trying to get as close as possible because we figured that is where the best fish must be. Strange how when we were jetty walkers we tried to cast away as far but as boaters now we tried to cast as close! Oh well!
The point is as a kid it didn’t matter how close or how far we fired a line through the air away or toward the rocks, the important thing was we were fishing, and therein lies a lifelong quest. Tomorrow I will guide three anglers with high hopes of casting a line and angling a fish and to me that is no different of a mindset than I had as a kid.
We all become childlike at times on the salt water. It’s the excitement of the possibilities that we cannot fully harness that makes us this way. Think about it do you ever begin a fishing trip with anything less than unbridled giddiness? I think not, in fact we have a name for those who might think that way, they are called land lubbers. Fishermen and women are anglers and to be around this group of folks is to be in the more positive thinkers in any generation. Just try to hang out around a bait camp before the sun comes up and find anyone gearing up for a day on the water with less than bright eyes and high hopes as they hurry towards firing up that boat motor or taking that mile walk out on the jetties. You will likely find enthusiasm abounds.
