Tales from River’s End – Passport to Adventure

by Janice R. Edwards

Greetings from River’s End. It’s a pretty summer day today as I sit down to write this. I looked back at my last post, and see that I promised to write about Jean Lafitte – last month. I apologize, but last month was just a blur of activity for Roy and me and the friends of the river. I was going to write about Lafitte, but golden opportunity changed my mind. Lafitte has his treasures, and I FINALLY have mine.

From the time Roy started to teach me to fish, I have kept a fish identification book with the dates posted of the different kinds of fish I have caught. Roy and I have fished fresh water and salt water (a lot of inshore, a little offshore). If any of you know me for more than 10 minutes you probably know that my favorite way to fix fish is Amandine. The only reason I ever learned how to cook a fish Amandine was the first bite of Mahi Mahi (Dorado) Amandine I had in Hawaii. It was like a taste of heaven in my mouth. Before then, I thought the only way to cook fish was to fry it in cornmeal, but this Amandine was a whole different animal.

Since then, I have never forgotten the Dorado. Do you know that in the old days when Hawaii was ruled by royalty, that it was against the law for normal folks to eat Mahi-Mahi? If you were caught eating this wonderful fish, you would be killed. That’s bad – but the taste of this fish is almost worth the risk! Anyway, I always wanted to catch one. Roy has tried time and again to make this happen, but my Dorado catch has always eluded me – until Monday.

Mooch and the Goddess have become good friends of Roy’s and mine since FOR San Bernard began. They are both multi-talented people, and good at what they do. Mooch found out that I REALLY wanted to catch a Dorado, and Sunday afternoon he called us with a weather report and an offer to go offshore in quest of the Silver Bullet (King Mackerel) and possibly – Dorado. (If you don’t already know, Mooch used to run offshore charters.) I could hardly believe our good luck. Heck, yeah we were going offshore!

Have you ever been so excited about doing something that you couldn’t sleep because anticipation kept creeping into your night and filling up your every thought? It was a long night even though we had to be up and ready to go at daybreak. I was up before the alarm clock. There, as promised appeared Mooch; his friend, Alan Ham and the WEBCO at our dock ready to carry us off into a sea of blue. Roy put the snacks and the ice chest in the boat, we jumped in, Mooch eased the throttle down and off we went on our great ocean adventure!

Mooch navigated down the San Bernard and hung a left at the Intracoastal Canal. The barge traffic in the canal was like Loop 610 in 5 o’clock traffic on our way to the west flood gates at the Brazos. Wouldn’t you know it; Sweet Baby was on the gates. There was some banter back and forth between the guys and he ended the conversation by telling Mooch we had a nice day for the fishing trip. It was a “guy” kind of thing until Sweet Baby saw me in the back of the boat. He said, “Hey Jan, you going?” Well, duh, yeah. Then Sweet Baby made a big production of how he thought my day was going to turn out as he pretended to “chum” the waters. We motored on down the Intracoastal and made a stop at Bridge Bait and Tackle for Cigar Minnows then out through the jetties we went.

It didn’t take long for Mooch to find the blue water and Allen readied four rods and put them out and the troll for treasure of the deep began. Now, Roy and I truly appreciated Mooch’s and Alan’s talent - they could actually stand up and do things while the boat rocked in the chop. Neither Roy nor I ever found our sea legs and we fished sitting down – believe me, it was safer for Mooch and Alan that way!



Two rods out now, and Alan was bringing one back in to check how the bait was running when the water directly below Alan’s hand exploded, line started disappearing, and the drag started screaming. Allen handed me the rod and the fight was on. Man, was that fish strong! It was war between me and that fish. He’d strip line and I’d reel him in. He’d see the boat and the process started all over again. Roy told me to start reeling in and I think I said something like, yeah me and which army? The guys were great. They “let” me get this one by myself - except Roy did hang on to the rod. Don’t quite know if he was helping me or just didn’t want to replace Mooch’s equipment. Just before my arms fell off, Alan and Roy put that Jack Crevalle on deck. He’d go 30-35 pounds. If you
think this is just a fish story, see my catch below – or was it Alan who caught me as the boat rolled?

While I was pasting my arms back on, Roy, Alan and Mooch each took turns catching King Mackerel. I’d never seen a King Mackerel before and Mooch said they were “babies”. All of them we caught were legal sized – bigger than 27 “and I thought they were big – very big - and scary looking. I found out that Mooch is good with a fish gaff, too.

We each took turns catching fish as we trolled the depths. Alan and Mooch each took turns at the helm, so we all caught fish. Early on, Alan put out a funny winged looking top water bait called a “bird” – that was Mooch’s secret weapon for the illusive Dorado. Though we trolled the floating seaweed patches that Dorado are known to hang out around, we didn’t catch much around them except …seaweed. As Alan was trolling and Mooch was recounting a fish story, it looked like the “bird” had caught another piece of seaweed. So, before removing the seaweed, Mooch finished his story. Then he picked up the rod and started reeling in. The next thing I knew he was putting the rod in my hand and telling me to reel. Not much of a fight later, she was magically on the deck. All blue and yellow – she looked like God’s hand painted porcelain masterpiece. Now I understand why only Hawaiian royalty was allowed to eat these fish – she was breath taking.



I guess the guys caught more fish because we only lacked 2 King Mackerel having a limit for all of us, Mooch caught a Bonito – and I caught my first King Mackerel, too. The afternoon got hot, and it was time to go back to shore and clean the catch. But I was still thinking about that Dorado. I owe a lot to all the guys. I got to do what a lot of folks never get a chance to – catch their first “treasure”. I can mark catching a Dorado off my list of things I just have to do. Too bad she wasn’t big enough for all of us to have Amandine – she sure was good, fellas.



Oh, and I learned a couple of other things on this fishing trip. First, when you see someone is landing a big offshore fish and they have the fish “billy” poised for action – for safety, mind you – don’t get your knee between the fish’s head and the “billy”. I am here to testify that your knee will know it’s beat in that action. And second, Sweet Baby, just so you’ll know, I did NOT provide the “chum” for this trip.

Well, now what’s happening at the end of the river? Check back in a month or so and PROMISE I’ll get around to writing about Jean Lafitte. But I can promise you that the fishing trip I had this week gave me more treasure than all his buried gold. Here’s wishing you a cool air conditioner, a cold lemonade, a full belly, a stretched fishing line, a good story and your own River’s End.

 

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