You Might Like to Know

So now we have the basic fishing accouterments. It's time to find the place. Of course, I do 99% of my research on the web. While looking for forums and web pages that talk about fishing around Galveston I was surprised how many web sites were dead. They were still there but have not been updated since 2008. Then it dawned on me, the hurricane - Ike. Often the last posts were something like "we are still here but we don't know what the future holds" or " can someone give us an update on . . ."

I found that some people on the Island still don't have phone service. Apparently there is a shortage of marinas with working gas pumps for boats. Also many bait shops had completely disappeared. I am guessing internet service isn't at 100 % either which is contributing to the lack of information about fishing locations.

So with sketchy information we headed for Galveston Island. Basically all the fishing peers were destroyed by the storm. There are some jetties along the beach so we headed there. By the way, in Galveston some of these jetties are called "rock groins". Don't ask me.

The weather was GREAT, it was spring break and there were a lot of people at the beach. We picked a promising groin and proceeded to attach the fishing line-bobber-leader-sinker-hook-plastic crab fish catcher. 42 minutes later I started on the second rod. Thank God we only had two. We only had 2 fishing incenses too, so the three girls took turns being Linda.

We were fishing - you could tell by the poles in our hands, not by the fish on our lines. We were the only ones with bobbers. We decided to dismantle the fishing line-bobber-leader-sinker-hook-plastic crab fish catcher and focus on the sinker-hook-plastic crab. Many hours had passed. Fellow fisherman came and left, and there were a stream of tourists that would stroll by and ask "catching anything?" the pressure, the pressure, it was building. On top of that, we had - shrimp envy. Our $5 plastic crabs were being disgraced by dead shrimp.

No kid of mine was going to fry like a sausage on a rock groin without a dead shrimp. Several miles walk (ok maybe it was 3 blocks) there was and Academy (sporting goods store) and they sold cold dead shrimp and we bought some (along with hooks and weights and leaders to replace the ones we lost in the rocks). Now it was back to the groin.



Dragging the cold dead shrimp along the bottom was the key. Finally after 7 hours Katie sunk her hook into a giant 6 inch fish and hauled it up onto the rocks. I am not sure what kind it was, it was white and grey and unhappy. It was a proud moment for all of us. I added to our bounty 15 min later with my own 6 incher. Of course we let them go. And it was time for us to go. It had been a long day. We were dehydrated and our skin was crispy from the sun and wind but . . . we were fishermen.