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True Confessions: Ever suffered a beat-down on the water?
We've all had that certain kind of day on the water where the next boat, or wader, even someone in the same boat catches all the fish. As the years go by these trips are often forgotten, but there is humor and lessons to be learned. I recently came across my account from 1982 of such a day, back when details were fresh and not fogged by the prism of time. I've included it below, a very humbling day on the water. And as a bit of fun, I solicited similar confessions from TSF's solid group of guides and writers. One would expect these stories to be dated, and they are. Guides in their groove today, with years of experience, are expected to salvage a day on the water if the fish are biting at all. I'll start off with Houston artist Sam Caldwell's account, since he was kind enough to provide his painting of jumping tarpon.
Sam Caldwell:
Us more-mature fishermen treasure memories of those moments when we yell with delight as a fine fish makes the drag scream, and a nearby fisherman has to watch with envy. "Luck has nothing to do with it," you advise the unlucky angler as you wrestle the big 'un closer. "You have to be prepared for anything."
There are those awful memories of times when the fish Gods smile on someone else. My hands-down favorite resentment story involves two of the best fishermen on the Texas coast, Ben Kocian and Joe Richard.
It is midnight at Pass Cavallo, the tide going out, a full moon beating down. Tarpon time. We are collecting material for an overdue Tide article. Artist Ben Kocian and I are in my little POS boat, Not That Serious, lowering bait, which is shrimpboat cull procured from Bobby's Bait dock. My tarpon gear consists of a handful of sockets and two spark plugs as weights, a few rusty circle hooks and an ancient Garcia 6000 reel. Ben grumbles.
Anchored 25 yards right beside us, editor Joe Richard deploys a spread of four baits from the stern of his 23-foot SeaCraft. There are yells of delight, screaming, too many bull redfish, singing reels and flashes of a camera strobe from Joe's boat. Often. At one point, Ben and I see two huge silver kings they've hooked, a double-header reaching high for that big moon at the same moment, imprinted on our retinas like a brilliant flash.
But there is revenge: Joe missed the photo, so I painted that scene.
Martin Strarup:
Skunked? The first thing that comes to mind was a trip to the wells in West Matagorda Bay, back when plastic shrimptails first hit the shelves. I'd been bragging to a friend who had never fished the bay wells before, to put the shrimp away, get off the reefs and hit the wells instead. "Man, we get our limits fast, the trout are all solid 20 to 24 inch fish, all on plastic!"
I was telling the truth. We were hammering trout at the wells and we'd limit so fast that we could just head on further to the south shoreline for redfish, and still be back in Port O'Connor or Palacios for lunch. I'd found some rootbeer shrimptails that Hogie was making. They were long, slim and had a "fire" tail, that when combined with a 3/8-ounce lead head were just deadly on trout at the wells.
"I want to go," he said, so we planned on a trip next morning.
All the way to Palacios I told him what he needed to do in order to catch those trout. I told him that he would feel a "thunk" when a trout picks the bait up, but don't set the hook. Instead you just raise your rod tip and start reeling. I told him to count-five before he put his reel in gear, give the bait time to get into the zone. I probably went over this 50 times during the ride to the ramp.
We arrived at my favorite wellhead, set the anchor perfect for an incoming tide, told him where to cast and then I moved to my spot in the boat. Before I could get my rod ready he had a fish on and I netted it, handed him the net and I made my first cast. Nary a hit, and before I could get my lure out of the water he had another trout on. Again I netted the fish and again I made an empty cast with nothing to show for it.
This went on until he looked at me and said, "I think I have my limit, do you want me to help you catch yours?" I said no, told him to have a snack and let me fish from the bow where he was fishing. So we changed places, I took his spot and still couldn't get a bite. He got tired of just sitting there eating lunch, so he made a cast and in seconds was hooked up.
It made no sense at all, none. We were casting to the same dang shell pad using the same baits, same reels and brand of line, and the only difference was that he was using a Lamiglass rod and I was using a Fenwick. I didn't know what to make of it but told him, after (much to my chagrin) he released another trout, to go ahead and keep them if he caught any more. He then caught a limit of trout for me. I wasn't happy and pretty sure I tasted blood from biting a hole in my lip. But I was a good sport, I think.
I made him buy us lunch at the Y Cafe in Palacios. True story and to this day he'll grin and ask if I've been fishing the wells lately. And that was 30 years ago.
Joe Doggett:
Doug Pike and I stood side-by-side on a lighted pier at Port Aransas, casting frantically at the ghosting images of speckled trout swirling and "popping" amid the yellow glow. Pike and I are great friends but always competitive on the water.
The score following an hour of trial and error with soft plastics, spoons, and the latest "killer plugs" was zero-to-zero. And these were good trout, most in the two- to three-pound class. The skunking was frustrating but at least Pike was equally inept.
He clipped a jig from his line and eyed my plastic box of baits. "Mind if I take a look?"
"Help yourself, rookie." If I couldn't produce, it wasn't happening.
Pike pawed through the trays and held up a forgotten Bingo Flash plug. The slow-sinking lure was a stubby baitfish imitation with a white head and opaque gold-foil sides. He knotted the Flash and lobbed to the edge of the illuminated water.
The little plug drifted and fluttered about a foot under the calm surface. It canted on its flat side like a crippled minnow.
Uh-oh, I thought. The Flash had an immediate and undeniable correctness, both in motion and profile. A three-pound trout thought so, too; Pike's rod lunged against the solid strike. Naturally, that was the only Bingo Flash in my pier box.
"Care to switch?" I asked.
"Can't hear you in all this wind, partner."
When the tide quit running 30 minutes later, Pike had six or seven solid trout on the planks. My tally remained zero. I had suffered a severe whipping with my own lure. The white Flash (flatter and wider than the regular Bingo) with gold foil sides remains a killer bait under lights. I've used if often since then. It has a ghostly look and very slow and subtle sink rate. But I've got to give Pike credit for picking up on it.
Joe Richard:
Our worst beat-down happened at Galveston's south jetty. By then we'd been spoiled by a decade of great fishing using artificials on our home turf at the Sabine jetties, and knew better than to fish Galveston's rocks without live bait; we'd been burned there a time or two before. Yet there we were, anxious to launch my brand new 14-foot jonboat and have some fun. My former college buddy Shmo used poor judgement, spending our last dime on a 12-pack, so we didn't have money for the boat ramp fee. Instead, we'd have to lug my boat over granite rocks and launch in the ship channel. It was 1-2-3 and heave-ho, my new boat flew sideways, cleared the rocks with a big splash, christened minutes later with the name Slutpuppy. Then, we strapped on my balky 15-horse Evinrude that hated cold weather. No problem, it was August and the channel calm. Safely loaded up, we then cruised down that long line of rocks, sticking close for safety. Around the jetty's end, and we were there. Anchored only 50 feet from granite, we then began casting gold spoons and MirrOlures. But the water was murky and we had no hits...
That's when a 25-foot center console, the only other boat out there, pulled around the jetty and joined us, anchoring only 30 feet away. (Potlicked by a bigger boat, nobody pays attention to jonboats). The skipper was shirtless and well-muscled, actually wore a captain's hat with gold anchors. His two hottie shipmates looked great in scanty swimsuits. Real party gals. Snapping out of our trance, we watched this guy lob a big, kicking brown shrimp near the rocks, weighted with only a couple of BB split shot. He paused, tensed, then rared back into something big, and pretty soon a 12-pound redfish surfaced. Still green, too: the fight was prolonged, because first one beauty and then the other took shots with a perfectly-ample landing net. They hung jackknifed over the gunnel for half a minute at a time, first this way and that, port side and starboard, flailing, reaching with the net over and over, straining, thrashing the water. Finally an exhausted redfish was landed.
I was exhausted, myself. "Jebus, I need a cigarette," said Shmo. This happened nine more times, the bag limit for redfish was 10. This guy fought more fish than that, but his gals knocked several loose with the net. Our own gold spoons easily landed by the same rock he was casting to, but we never drew a hit. We let the spoons sink deeper, only to snag rock. Finally, after about 90 minutes of serious action and putting on a show, the bigger boat was done. He pulled anchor, cranked the engines and sped off with about 100 pounds of redfish, and seemed to be in a bit of a hurry.
"Yeah, I know why," muttered Greg.
Our humiliation that day was perfect, and we vowed never again to fish the Galveston jetties without live bait. Soon after, carrying my boat and motor back across green, slippery rocks and into the truck was less fun that it sounds. However. On a positive note, next time I visited Galveston the following summer, this time in a 21-foot boat, we won the first annual Tournament of Kings while competing against 600 offshore anglers. That was quite a switch. So, there is a lesson here in that song by Dire Straits called The Bug:
Sometimes you're the windshield,
sometimes you're the bug,
sometimes it all comes together,
sometimes you're just a fool in love
Everett Johnson
Last week of April, 1999. I was still working full time. Pam and I arrived in Seadrift late Friday afternoon, fixed a margarita and got the boat ready. We fished almost daylight 'til dark Saturday and again Sunday. The fishing was onbig time.
So work plans changed. Sunday evening I called and left a message; I'd be at work after lunch.
At first light on Monday we headed straight to the spot where we left them biting the evening before. Everything looked right and Pam fell right back in the groove. Evidently I wasn't holding my mouth right.
After an hour or so I retrieved the boat and idled up to Pam, telling her I had another spot in mind. "Oh, you're just jealous," she said, "Look – I just got another blowup!"
We were not married yet, so I pretended not to hear and sweetly coaxed her into the boat. Rounding a nearby bend further down the shoreline, I noticed Jimmy Skalak's big scooter, he and Barbara wading ahead. Jimmy gave the c'mon wave and we joined them.
Now you have to know Skalak; he nearly always forgets or loses something. This day a gear bag was missing, along with his wading pants and stringer. What a sight, knee-deep in boxer shorts, chunking a woodpecker Top Dog along the Spartina grass, and knotted around his waist was a long piece of clothesline trailing a limit of really nice trout and two reds.
"Come on in here," he called over his shoulder. "I'm almost done and Barb only needs a couple."
So in we went, armed with Top Dogs, same color. Pam hooked up on the first cast, and again, and again. Jimmy was releasing fish and by then so was Barb.
The bite finally ended. Pam lacked one trout for a limit, my stringer still empty. We turned to wade back to the boat and Skalak says, "You know Johnson; it happens. Some days you're in 'em, but you're just not on 'em."
They all had a good belly laugh and I did my best.
Sam Caldwell:
Us more-mature fishermen treasure memories of those moments when we yell with delight as a fine fish makes the drag scream, and a nearby fisherman has to watch with envy. "Luck has nothing to do with it," you advise the unlucky angler as you wrestle the big 'un closer. "You have to be prepared for anything."
There are those awful memories of times when the fish Gods smile on someone else. My hands-down favorite resentment story involves two of the best fishermen on the Texas coast, Ben Kocian and Joe Richard.
It is midnight at Pass Cavallo, the tide going out, a full moon beating down. Tarpon time. We are collecting material for an overdue Tide article. Artist Ben Kocian and I are in my little POS boat, Not That Serious, lowering bait, which is shrimpboat cull procured from Bobby's Bait dock. My tarpon gear consists of a handful of sockets and two spark plugs as weights, a few rusty circle hooks and an ancient Garcia 6000 reel. Ben grumbles.
Anchored 25 yards right beside us, editor Joe Richard deploys a spread of four baits from the stern of his 23-foot SeaCraft. There are yells of delight, screaming, too many bull redfish, singing reels and flashes of a camera strobe from Joe's boat. Often. At one point, Ben and I see two huge silver kings they've hooked, a double-header reaching high for that big moon at the same moment, imprinted on our retinas like a brilliant flash.
But there is revenge: Joe missed the photo, so I painted that scene.
Martin Strarup:
Skunked? The first thing that comes to mind was a trip to the wells in West Matagorda Bay, back when plastic shrimptails first hit the shelves. I'd been bragging to a friend who had never fished the bay wells before, to put the shrimp away, get off the reefs and hit the wells instead. "Man, we get our limits fast, the trout are all solid 20 to 24 inch fish, all on plastic!"
I was telling the truth. We were hammering trout at the wells and we'd limit so fast that we could just head on further to the south shoreline for redfish, and still be back in Port O'Connor or Palacios for lunch. I'd found some rootbeer shrimptails that Hogie was making. They were long, slim and had a "fire" tail, that when combined with a 3/8-ounce lead head were just deadly on trout at the wells.
"I want to go," he said, so we planned on a trip next morning.
All the way to Palacios I told him what he needed to do in order to catch those trout. I told him that he would feel a "thunk" when a trout picks the bait up, but don't set the hook. Instead you just raise your rod tip and start reeling. I told him to count-five before he put his reel in gear, give the bait time to get into the zone. I probably went over this 50 times during the ride to the ramp.
We arrived at my favorite wellhead, set the anchor perfect for an incoming tide, told him where to cast and then I moved to my spot in the boat. Before I could get my rod ready he had a fish on and I netted it, handed him the net and I made my first cast. Nary a hit, and before I could get my lure out of the water he had another trout on. Again I netted the fish and again I made an empty cast with nothing to show for it.
This went on until he looked at me and said, "I think I have my limit, do you want me to help you catch yours?" I said no, told him to have a snack and let me fish from the bow where he was fishing. So we changed places, I took his spot and still couldn't get a bite. He got tired of just sitting there eating lunch, so he made a cast and in seconds was hooked up.
It made no sense at all, none. We were casting to the same dang shell pad using the same baits, same reels and brand of line, and the only difference was that he was using a Lamiglass rod and I was using a Fenwick. I didn't know what to make of it but told him, after (much to my chagrin) he released another trout, to go ahead and keep them if he caught any more. He then caught a limit of trout for me. I wasn't happy and pretty sure I tasted blood from biting a hole in my lip. But I was a good sport, I think.
I made him buy us lunch at the Y Cafe in Palacios. True story and to this day he'll grin and ask if I've been fishing the wells lately. And that was 30 years ago.
Joe Doggett:
Doug Pike and I stood side-by-side on a lighted pier at Port Aransas, casting frantically at the ghosting images of speckled trout swirling and "popping" amid the yellow glow. Pike and I are great friends but always competitive on the water.
The score following an hour of trial and error with soft plastics, spoons, and the latest "killer plugs" was zero-to-zero. And these were good trout, most in the two- to three-pound class. The skunking was frustrating but at least Pike was equally inept.
He clipped a jig from his line and eyed my plastic box of baits. "Mind if I take a look?"
"Help yourself, rookie." If I couldn't produce, it wasn't happening.
Pike pawed through the trays and held up a forgotten Bingo Flash plug. The slow-sinking lure was a stubby baitfish imitation with a white head and opaque gold-foil sides. He knotted the Flash and lobbed to the edge of the illuminated water.
The little plug drifted and fluttered about a foot under the calm surface. It canted on its flat side like a crippled minnow.
Uh-oh, I thought. The Flash had an immediate and undeniable correctness, both in motion and profile. A three-pound trout thought so, too; Pike's rod lunged against the solid strike. Naturally, that was the only Bingo Flash in my pier box.
"Care to switch?" I asked.
"Can't hear you in all this wind, partner."
When the tide quit running 30 minutes later, Pike had six or seven solid trout on the planks. My tally remained zero. I had suffered a severe whipping with my own lure. The white Flash (flatter and wider than the regular Bingo) with gold foil sides remains a killer bait under lights. I've used if often since then. It has a ghostly look and very slow and subtle sink rate. But I've got to give Pike credit for picking up on it.
Joe Richard:
Our worst beat-down happened at Galveston's south jetty. By then we'd been spoiled by a decade of great fishing using artificials on our home turf at the Sabine jetties, and knew better than to fish Galveston's rocks without live bait; we'd been burned there a time or two before. Yet there we were, anxious to launch my brand new 14-foot jonboat and have some fun. My former college buddy Shmo used poor judgement, spending our last dime on a 12-pack, so we didn't have money for the boat ramp fee. Instead, we'd have to lug my boat over granite rocks and launch in the ship channel. It was 1-2-3 and heave-ho, my new boat flew sideways, cleared the rocks with a big splash, christened minutes later with the name Slutpuppy. Then, we strapped on my balky 15-horse Evinrude that hated cold weather. No problem, it was August and the channel calm. Safely loaded up, we then cruised down that long line of rocks, sticking close for safety. Around the jetty's end, and we were there. Anchored only 50 feet from granite, we then began casting gold spoons and MirrOlures. But the water was murky and we had no hits...
That's when a 25-foot center console, the only other boat out there, pulled around the jetty and joined us, anchoring only 30 feet away. (Potlicked by a bigger boat, nobody pays attention to jonboats). The skipper was shirtless and well-muscled, actually wore a captain's hat with gold anchors. His two hottie shipmates looked great in scanty swimsuits. Real party gals. Snapping out of our trance, we watched this guy lob a big, kicking brown shrimp near the rocks, weighted with only a couple of BB split shot. He paused, tensed, then rared back into something big, and pretty soon a 12-pound redfish surfaced. Still green, too: the fight was prolonged, because first one beauty and then the other took shots with a perfectly-ample landing net. They hung jackknifed over the gunnel for half a minute at a time, first this way and that, port side and starboard, flailing, reaching with the net over and over, straining, thrashing the water. Finally an exhausted redfish was landed.
I was exhausted, myself. "Jebus, I need a cigarette," said Shmo. This happened nine more times, the bag limit for redfish was 10. This guy fought more fish than that, but his gals knocked several loose with the net. Our own gold spoons easily landed by the same rock he was casting to, but we never drew a hit. We let the spoons sink deeper, only to snag rock. Finally, after about 90 minutes of serious action and putting on a show, the bigger boat was done. He pulled anchor, cranked the engines and sped off with about 100 pounds of redfish, and seemed to be in a bit of a hurry.
"Yeah, I know why," muttered Greg.
Our humiliation that day was perfect, and we vowed never again to fish the Galveston jetties without live bait. Soon after, carrying my boat and motor back across green, slippery rocks and into the truck was less fun that it sounds. However. On a positive note, next time I visited Galveston the following summer, this time in a 21-foot boat, we won the first annual Tournament of Kings while competing against 600 offshore anglers. That was quite a switch. So, there is a lesson here in that song by Dire Straits called The Bug:
Sometimes you're the windshield,
sometimes you're the bug,
sometimes it all comes together,
sometimes you're just a fool in love
Everett Johnson
Last week of April, 1999. I was still working full time. Pam and I arrived in Seadrift late Friday afternoon, fixed a margarita and got the boat ready. We fished almost daylight 'til dark Saturday and again Sunday. The fishing was onbig time.
So work plans changed. Sunday evening I called and left a message; I'd be at work after lunch.
At first light on Monday we headed straight to the spot where we left them biting the evening before. Everything looked right and Pam fell right back in the groove. Evidently I wasn't holding my mouth right.
After an hour or so I retrieved the boat and idled up to Pam, telling her I had another spot in mind. "Oh, you're just jealous," she said, "Look – I just got another blowup!"
We were not married yet, so I pretended not to hear and sweetly coaxed her into the boat. Rounding a nearby bend further down the shoreline, I noticed Jimmy Skalak's big scooter, he and Barbara wading ahead. Jimmy gave the c'mon wave and we joined them.
Now you have to know Skalak; he nearly always forgets or loses something. This day a gear bag was missing, along with his wading pants and stringer. What a sight, knee-deep in boxer shorts, chunking a woodpecker Top Dog along the Spartina grass, and knotted around his waist was a long piece of clothesline trailing a limit of really nice trout and two reds.
"Come on in here," he called over his shoulder. "I'm almost done and Barb only needs a couple."
So in we went, armed with Top Dogs, same color. Pam hooked up on the first cast, and again, and again. Jimmy was releasing fish and by then so was Barb.
The bite finally ended. Pam lacked one trout for a limit, my stringer still empty. We turned to wade back to the boat and Skalak says, "You know Johnson; it happens. Some days you're in 'em, but you're just not on 'em."
They all had a good belly laugh and I did my best.