It was with much anticipation and night-filled dreams of picking out back lashes that the Levee headed down south, “Down to Laguna Madre, cruising over the causeway…”, for some 3rd world living and 1st class fishing. But let’s start where most adventures start, in the shower. Thinking I was way ahead of schedule for my 1pm flight, I was applying the last good scrubbing I knew I had coming for the next 72 hours when I was summoned by the shake and squeal of my phone. Who on earth could be calling at 10am on a Thursday I thought. Hadn’t everyone set up the automated out of office replies and told their clients they “would be in spotty coverage areas” for the next few days? Well Southwest Airlines automated system apparently wasn’t mentally checked out yet, and decided to let me know that my flight had been canceled. And in the spirit of first class customer service asked if I would like to speak to a representative to make other arrangements?!? No, I think I will just blow off my fishing trip and head to Hotel Zsa Zsa and watch leather faced grandpa’s spend their waning 401K’s on young ladies that all seem to be working on their Master’s Degree’s. But I digress, so I did as instructed, pushed the #1 key on the phone and proceeded to figure out it was going to take an act of Barry O to get to Harlingen in time for my appointment and keep my well regimented crew on our planned schedule. So after a quick change it was off to Love Field to test my luck at the standby game. Having a few Mexican Nationals and their hefty cinch sack luggage in line in front of you is usually a bad sign. I was already thinking about what I was going to order at Chili’s and see how many El Presidente margaritas I could throw down until the much later flight, when like Barry O himself, a Southwest ticket agent appeared to make my southwestern eggroll and tequila dreams disappear like a new Huffy in West Shreveport. Turns out I was not only going to get on a different flight, but even better my Tex-Mex vacation was going to start an hour earlier. At this point I am at the gate, people watching, which outside of a good shoe shine and a Hudson News every 15 paces, is my most treasured airport pastime. I would not be disappointed, but how could I not have expected to be. I mean come on, flying from Dallas, stopping in Austin and terminating in Harlingen. Mix in some Lubbock trash and you’ve got all the makings for a proper Texas stew. You’ve got your Dallas its, that think the world gives a flying hippo about whatever happened to them 5 minutes ago, jabbering on their I Phones at levels that Chuck Yeager would find annoying. The suave business traveler hustling home to take Jr. to tee-ball and refresh his memory on what his wife looks like before he’s off again next week to close big deals, which we all know aren’t happening. But hey, those cuff links aren’t going to where themselves are they. And then there are those with the Valley as their permanent or weekend destination. These are the best, really they are, and did you know that 9 out 10 valley locals went to Texas University? Seriously, you have to be an alumnus to get that shirt, hat, and pompous ass entitled attitude package. And Vince Young is still the bestes ball thrower ever man. Poor Texas A&M Kingsville, how are the Javelinas ever going to build a solid fan base? Let’s fast forward; I will save you the pain I incurred of having a man of my demographic order a Bailey’s and coffee at 12:30pm, because the female he was trying to gab with had ordered the same thing. If it weren’t for their 6 kids combined, I bet mimicking her order would have surly sealed the deal.
It’s 11:00am Friday, we have successfully launched the boat, the trip is underway and apparently my “Out of office reply” is deterring no one. The fishing was good, we all remembered how to catch fish and turn a large cooler into a fish holder, food keeper colder and personal beer dispenser. Now balancing the boat taking into consideration the two arena league O-linemen I was on board with was more of a challenge. I mean heaven for bid we get wet after having just waded in 4ft of water for 6 hours. There was about 4 hours of not so much peril but frustration that faded to exhaustion and for me at least eventually hallucination. At one point I thought headlines were going to read “Three fishermen lost at Sea, all within a 6 iron of land in every direction.” We had taken the “shallow sport” a term obviously used loosely into some very “skinny” water with a not so “skinny” crew. Do the math and you see where this is headed. But with a true team effort, lots of pushing and some good old elbow grease, we were back up and running. The fishing tapered off a bit with an occasional lady tarpon, trout, hard head and clump of grass still bending our rods. The rest of the night was filled with good hearted ribbing, catching up and fantastically poor service at “The Donkey” in SPI. Now it was off to our smoking friendly hotel rooms for a guaranteed cold catching, wheezing, scratchy throat nights sleep. For tomorrow it mattered, the tournament was to start.
Up at 5:45am straight to the dock, to find that our fellow competitors had already headed out. No worries, there’s plenty of fish in the sea, right? Well for some of you there might be, but for us it was a slow day. You see a Sat. on any water way brings out every Dick and Tom with a boat and an understanding wife. Every spot that we had had any luck at or had heard about was stacked 4-5 deep with little pastel dots flinging their mass produced, lab engineered scent, Chinese manufactured lures, that by the way really resemble nothing from nature, into the water to try and allure the coveted trout and red fish. We gave our best and met very average results, but like a wise man once said, “that’s why the call it fishing not catching!” actually that was a crappy fishing guide that told me that once, far from a wise man. Our numbers however were much better with the cold beverages, although they can be quit slippery and squirt away when too much pressure is applied, I feel confident in saying bag limits were achieved by all.
As the trip was regrettably coming to an end, we got word from a very lively source that made it all make sense. For Friday night was a full moon in the South Texas area. Well that made all the sense in the world, that’s why Friday had been good and Saturday was a grind. Anyone worth their salt knows that fish can feed all night under a full moon, kind of like what happened to my roommate for the weekend, meaning that during the day they can retreat to their happy/protected areas and let us fools get excited every time the non-elusive grass fish taps our lines. So in light of the recent news we all picked our heads up, looked strangers in the eye again and put a little pep back in our steps as we canvassed the town that evening, for we were great fishermen, it was mother nature that screwed things up. Well, this confidence was quickly dashed when on Monday we find out that a guy in Corpus Christi had caught and landed what might be a state record trout, currently leading the statewide Star Tournament, he must have found the “happy/protective” place because this guy brought in a 10.7lb trout. For any bowlers that are reading this, that’s like bowling a 330! I know 300 is the max. The point is outside of soaking croakers, neither you nor I or anyone we have ever broken bread with will ever catch a trout this size.
All in all great trip, great company and great times were had. I thank those that made it happen and please share my gratitude with the numerous illiterate people that played a part as well
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