Pier Pressure Part 9

  A few months ago, my mom and I took a day trip down to Rockport to see how much the town had changed. It had been almost 14 years since they sold their house on the bay, and at least 6 years since I had been there right after Hurricane Harvey came through. Anybody who has visited Rockport is aware of the famous seafood restaurant that sits right on Aransas Bay, Charlotte Plummer's. We decided that this would be a great place to have lunch and wax nostalgic about the old days.
What didn't dawn on me was the fact that Charlotte Plummer's is directly across from the Fulton turning basin, which is protected from Aransas Bay by the Fulton seawall. And although the Fulton Seawall is NOT technically a "pier", for many years in my youth, it damn sure did function as one.

  Most people who utilized the seawall as a pier fished the outside that faced Aransas Bay. Certainly, this would be the side to fish if you were after Speckled Trout. The problem is that from St. Joseph island to the Fulton seawall lies about 5 miles of deep water that the wind has plenty of time to whip into a frenzy, usually resulting in a pretty rough set of waves crashing into the wall itself. On the inside of the wall where the shrimp boats docked however was a different story...this was the side we liked to fish.

  As I sat there at Charlotte Plummer's eating my shrimp and drinking my tea, I couldn't help but think about what a radically different world I grew up in. Looking at that sea wall reminded me of all the times my mom would take me and a buddy down to one of the adjacent bait stands to buy a pound or two of fresh dead shrimp, then drop us off at the seawall, completely unattended for hours while she went shopping. Most parents today wouldn't dream of leaving a 12-year-old unattended, for fear of all the crazy things that happen to kids in today's world, but in 1984 it was no big deal. Anyhow, we used to spend hours on that seawall catching the fire out of those hardhead catfish that schooled up in the basin. And occasionally, if the catfish would leave your bait alone long enough, it was not uncommon to hang into a nice Redfish or Flounder as well.

  One year, we decided it would be a good idea to level the playing field a little bit between the angler and the hardhead catfish in the basin. My buddy and I somehow found a place in South Texas, that sold super ultra-light rods, much like an ice rod. We mounted micro spinning reels spooled with 6-pound test monofilament, a small split shot weight, and a treble hook, and off we went. I'm sure the locals who saw us on the sewall thought we were out of our minds, treating those hardhead catfish like they were some kind of exotic gamefish to be revered by fishing with tackle that gave them a fair fight. The joke was actually on them though, because when a 3 or 4-pound Redfish got a hold of the business end of that 6-pound line, and micro rod/reel combo, the advantage clearly had to go to the fish. As a side note, I still have that micro rod and reel combo in my shop with the rest of the antique tackle from my youth that I cant bring myself to dispose of.

  As I sit here and think about how much fun we had catching those fish on micro-spinning tackle, it isn't any different than fishing for schooled-up Speckled Trout under the lights of a pier with a 4wt. Yes, Speckled Trout might be a fair bit more glamorous than a Hardhead Catfish, but in the end, at least when you're young,  it's really all about getting that rod bent, regardless of species... I guess Flip Pallot was correct when he opined that fishing really does bring out the adolescent in all of us.

  Mom and I finished up our lunch and began the three-hour trek back to the "highlands" north of San Antonio. As she dozed off in the passenger seat for a nap, I couldn't help but think to myself how fortunate I was to grow up in a time and place that facilitated the types of unsupervised angling experiences that I now look back on with an extreme amount of gratitude.

Hope you all are having a great week,

Andy