Gone Fishin’ Instead of Just a Wishin’

There’s a lot to love about “The Great State of Texas” and fishing is at the top of my list. There may not be a better place in the Great Wide World to go fishing. There’s better trout fishing in the rivers and streams of the mighty Rocky Mountains. There’s better flats fishing on the white sandy shores of the Bahamas and better Offshore fishing in Mexico and Cuba. Debatably there’s better Bass fishing in Florida and Georgia but when you consider the entire spectrum of sport fishing, it’s nearly impossible to beat Texas.

Ponds, lakes, reservoirs, estuaries, rivers, creeks, bayous and bays. There’s about a million places to go fishing in Texas. It’s one of the things I miss the most, since we moved away a few years ago. When we lived in Texas, I would challenge myself, to see if I could catch a fish a day for the entire year. I’d start in January, catching fish and keeping a tally but by March or April, I’d usually have the yearly goal completed and quit keeping score. So I never actually got a count of how many fish I caught in a single year. 

Meet You at the Fishin’ Hole

From Emerald City where we live now, the closest places to go fishing are an hour and a half away. Down in the Bayou City, I could be at dozen different fishing holes within 5 or 10 minutes of our house on my bike. With the possibility of a 5 pound Bass in any one of them. So now, when we do our Snowbird migration down to Texas for the Winter, I play the fish a day game and attempt to make up for the rest of the year when I have to drive an hour and a half just to wet a line.

The Bass I chase in the turbid Texas waters aren’t as colorful as the Browns and Brookies that I fish for in the High Country of Colorado but they’re every bit as fun. Heck, some evenings I have a sore back from setting the hook and reeling the pugnacious, green critters in. Then there’s the plethora of places to fish and the possibility of a lunker in every mud puddle or creek. The kicker though is fishing in shorts and sandals in the middle of winter, under a warm sub-tropical sun.

Lookin’ for Lunkers

Late winter is probably the best time for catching a really Big Bass in the Great State of Texas. In Colorful Colorado, February is ski season, not fishing season. And since skiing in shorts and sandals isn’t a thing. I prefer lazy days, in the warm February sunshine, looking for lunkers in the land of the Longhorn. I believe every bucket-mouthed Bass I ever landed in the double digit class was caught in February in Texas.

When I was a kid growing up on the black-earth prairie of Central Illinois, Bass fishing might have been my first – favorite thing. My Dad and my Grandpa both took me fishing at a pretty young age. Dad loved to fish for bream and crappies with a long cane pole. One day while we were doing that, I tied into my first 5 pound bass. She shattered the cane pole I was fishing with but I finally wrestled her onto the shore. My heart was pounding as she stared at me with those big black, mean eyes.

Thrill of the Chase

Dad and Grandpa were slapping me on the back and laughing their ass off. I had just landed a lunker that was nearly as long as me and I was hooked, for life. Nearly sixty years later, I still get that same thrill when I feel that little tap, tap, tap through the line and the rod and set the hook into the jaw of a big fish. Then when they come to the surface and shake their big old bucket-mouth back and forth trying to throw the hook, my heart still pounds like a little boy.

I’m definitely “hooked” on fishin’. Some folks can take it or leave it but for me, I reckon it’s the most fun that can be had with my clothes on. So I’ve been trying to share some of my enthusiasm for the sport with the grandkids. It always makes my heart sing when they come to me and say,”Grandpa, can we go fishin’?” I never say no to them either. It’s always, “Yes we can, let me work out the logistics.”

“There is a fine line between fishing and just standing on the shore like an idiot.” ~ Steven Wright

Hooked

Taking a couple of them at a time generally works out okay but taking three or four kids fishing is not a trivial endevour. I can recall numerous times, hooks getting lodged in various body parts, over the years. No fun for the body part or the person attempting to unstick it. That’s why treble hooks are not allowed with the grandkids. I rig everything weedless, so even if they whack each other upside the head with their jig, there’s no real damage done.

And besides that, there’s really no reason to fish with anything else. A weedless jig, plastic worm or shad will pretty much outfish anything else you can tie on, when it comes to Bass, especially if you’re chasing after a 5 pounder. And that’s my hope for all of them. I know if I can get them tied into a 5 pound Bass now they will be hooked for life, just like I was. And they will be asking the question for years to come. “Grandpa, can we go fishin’?” And I’ll say, “Better than just a wishin’”

Five Pound Bass

I’m not sure why or when the 5 pound Bass became the holy grail for Bass Fishermen but it has. It’s the yardstick that separates just another fish from; Wow, that’s a good one. The soundtrack for my life features a song by one of my favorite Texan, singer / songwriters; Robert Earl Keen. It’s from his 1989 album and if you’re a Texas Bass fisherman, you can’t help but love this song.

Never Stop Exploring!