This picture of the Galveston ship channel was taken in December 2014.
I responded to the irresistible “Pull” of Galvezemories1 and took a trip to celebrate my 78th birthday.
I appreciate and respect the advice given to me by my good friend Dale Lockwood — “There is value in solitude.”
But value be damned — my existence is lonely.
And nostalgic reminiscence, centered on Galveston, seemed on that day of December 27th, 2014 to offer solace. So I got into my truck …
When I crossed the causeway onto the island I felt like I was returning home. When I reached 61st Street, coming into town on Broadway, I naturally turned toward the Beach.
As I crossed the bisection of Offat’s Bayou — East Bayou on the left, West Bayou on the right — I remembered the many times that John and I bought bait at one of the live bait stands along the west side of the road. A quart of live bugs for a dollar.
How many shrimp in a quart? I don’t know – now, or then. But there seemed to be enough. We seldom ran out — and if we did we’d simply switch to working artificials. Many times when John and I ended our early morning quest for the speckled trout that we so eagerly sought, there would be enough live shrimp left to take home for table fare.
When I got home and emptied the remaining shrimp into the kitchen sink to prepare them for the skillet, at least one of them always did an athletic cartwheel, straight up into the air — to a height level with my eyes.
And my five year old daughter Elizabeth, watching in fascination, always screamed in fright at the spectacle.
We fished hard, John and me. At least twice a week, sometimes more, we’d have a line in the water somewhere.
The beachfront, working spoons in the surf — especially alongside the groins, where the deep erosion produced by the currents provided the cline the fish favored.
If the specs were not responding, then we’d move out away from the groin and throw our silver spoons into the surf, seeking and finding schools of ladyfish. While not table fare, they were a delight to catch. Invariably, within a few seconds of taking the hook, they would begin an acrobatic aerial display that would be worthy of any tarpon.
One Sunday morning we were enjoying the ladyfish in the surf, when I hooked one that didn’t jump.
“I notice he’s not jumping” John said.
“Yeah, I know…”
And I pulled in the only spec of the day — a nice one of about three pounds.
Other times we’d wade the flats of West Galveston Bay. Except for the occasional flounder, I don’t recall much success there.
While there, one morning, I ate the second of the two raw oysters that I ever ate in my life.
The first had been at home in 1952 when Pop was enjoying a mess of oysters. He invited me to try one — and I declined. He offered me fifty cents to eat one. I did — but I didn’t enjoy it.
On that morning a dozen years later, with John in West Bay, I did it on a dare. I watched him reach down into the shallow reef we were fishing to take an oyster, which he proudly opened and ate from the shell. He offered me one. I declined.
He dared me. I accepted the challenge.
And remembered why I found no pleasure in the earlier experience.
After we built our boat, we worked the Spanish mackerel that schooled off the beach just beyond the outermost row of breakers.
While it took some effort to get our little boat through the waves to get beyond the last breaker, once we were in the smooth water we could guide the boat in circles to work our bait through the schools of the tasty mackerel.
The only tarpon that I ever hooked
followed my silver spoon as I worked it along the bottom. We were
anchored near the outer end of the jetty, just twenty yards out
toward the ship channel from the rocks. We fished, from our boat, in
the deep clear water alongside the ship channel. The water was about
twenty feet deep.
I watched the tarpon come out of the depths of the ship channel, to overtake and inhale my spoon. I could see it clearly.
As tarpon go my tarpon wasn’t a big fish, probably about twenty or thirty pounds — but the thrill of watching it take the bait, and the fight that followed is memorable. I had the fish close to the boat — it was probably about twenty feet away, and near the surface when it spit out the spoon and swam away. I was disappointed — but what a thrill !
And a lasting memory.
But sometimes we liked to wade out from the jetty, within a half mile of the seawall, to stand in waist deep water and fish out toward the channel.
In the 2014 photograph of the channel, with ships anchored in the distance, there is a dark line running parallel to the channel about three quarters of the way from the rocks of the jetty to the horizon. That marks the drop-off to the channel. John and I would wade out to approach that drop-off, and fish toward the depths of the channel.
Problem was that just alongside the jetty there was a deep gut, all along the rocks, which I was just able to wade across — with my chin held high.
John was rather heavy, but quite a bit shorter than me. I called him “the big fisherman.” The water in that gut was well over his head.
No problem — we worked out the “buddy system”.
I took his hand and supported him, and while I walked across the bottom of the gut he floated across.
Yeah, we fished a lot. Good memories. I expect to live to a ripe old age — purely because of the old adage, oft repeated among fishermen — that the time spent fishing does not count against your allocated life span.
1 The relevant word is neologism.
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