A Fish Tale

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One early summer afternoon my next door neighbor, an old school buddy and I decided to go fishing in Galveston bay. So we loaded the ice chests, rods and reels and tackle boxes in the boat. Hooked the boat and trailer on the truck and headed for the boat launch on the end of the Texas City dike. Being mid-afternoon we were in the water in just a few minutes. 2

Having had some success in the past we motored out to a series of pilings just a mile or so away from the dike. We anchored by a piling that had previously been used to support a gas well. The three of us began fishing using dead shrimp and squid for bait. As I remember we had caught some small croakers and maybe a gaff top ( a saltwater catfish) or two and decided to move the boat to a more productive place. It was Larry’s job to pull up the anchor and Preston’s job to start the motor and drive to a new location. En-route we spotted a group of seagulls working a particular spot on the water about 100 yards away. We positioned the boat so that we could cast our lines directly into the spot underneath the birds. We started catching some fish. It seemed as though each gaff top we caught was bigger than the previous one. After a few minutes the birds moved on and so did the fish. We drifted a while longer but weren’t having much luck. So we decided to move on again. We anchored again by another groups of abandoned pilings and began to catch a few more gaff top. It wasn’t long until we saw the birds working another area a short distance away. In our rush to get the boat over there to the spot Larry forgot to pull up the anchor. When the boat was started Preston hit the throttle and the bow of the boat dived right under the water, immediately swamping the boat. The boat capsized thus beginning one of the most bizarre nights of my life.3

I was the only one wearing a life jacket. So there we were in the middle of Galveston bay swimming for our lives. We were fairly close to the Houston ship channel so there was plenty of boat traffic. The trick was to make one of them see us. As luck would have it the old piling we were fishing by was about twenty yards away. We swam, pulling the upside down boat behind us. Finally we reached the piling, tied the boat off and I climbed up on top of the piling and began waving my life jacket. It was getting near sundown so I frantically waved and yelled, not relishing the idea of spending the night on that piling or in the water. Fortunately our rescuers sailed by a few minutes later when they saw someone in trouble. On their first pass they asked if everyone was OK and threw us a bucket to bail out our boat. We righted the boat and began bailing it out. By the time we got the boat floating again the couple sailed back by and asked us what we wanted to do. The motor wouldn’t start and we had only one oar so rowing back to the dike was out of the question. That’s when they informed us that they couldn’t sail to the dike because the water was too shallow. 4

Step two of the story began. We decided to hitch a ride on the sailboat. We gladly told them “We’ll go with you”. We boarded the sailboat bound for Kemah about a two hour journey under sail. With Preston’s boat under tow. We sat back and enjoyed being dry. They offered us some cookies and soft drinks which were hungrily accepted. I can’t remember the lady’s name now but she was the owner of the boat and the man, Dave, was her boyfriend/lover sailed it for her. It didn’t matter to us what their relationship was to each other as long as they delivered us safely to dry land. In time we finally arrived at the Kemah ship channel where Dave informed us that he would have to dock and go get a battery to start the outboard motor on the sailboat. I didn’t know that you weren’t allowed sail under the drawbridge crossing the channel. We had just maneuvered the boat preparing to dock on the Kemah side of the channel when I spotted a man on the standing on the other side of the channel.5

Thus began the final chapter of this weird tale. The man, obviously irate, began a vulgar tirade against Dave threatening to beat him up because he was on ‘His boat’ with ‘His wife’. Then he did mention us three strangers after his string of explicatives against Dave. Well by the time we got the boat nearly secured to the dock at Johnnie Walker’s Restaurant her husband arrived on the dock there with Dave. He was running and landed the first punch right between Dave’s eyes. Bleeding and without his glasses Dave struggled to fend this wild man off of him. His wife got involved too in the fracas. All this occurred in a matter of minutes and Dave had not had time to secure the boat to the dock. Preston was the only person left on the boat and it had started to drift away from the dock. Preston advised the adversaries that their boat was sailing away without them. That seemed to bring them to their senses and they stopped fighting long enough to get the boat tied up to the dock. Someone inside the restaurant called the police and they arrived just as the melee was going to start again. They immediately handcuffed the lady’s husband and took him to jail for assault and breach of a restraining order. We were questioned one by one as to what we had seen and why we were there in the first place. By this time I was exhausted physically and mentally. It was another hour or so until Preston’s wife arrived with the truck. He was too tired to mess with the boat so he just drove us home. At 3 AM I arrived back home still wet, tired and mentally rattled at undoubtedly the most outrageous night of my life. Needless to say I never went fishing with Preston or Larry again. 6