Fish 1, High Technology 0

Saturday, October 18, 2003 -- The boys have a bad habit of telling people I'm still in bed on weekend mornings. It's true, I just don't want them telling people that over the phone. When Uncle Ronnie called this morning to invite the boys and I fishing, I could hear aunt Diann laughing "It's 10:30 Keith, time to get up!" Ronnie picked us up around 2 in the afternoon for the trip into Aransas Pass to try out his cool new boat. The plan was to "put in" at one of the public boat ramps and motor the 5 miles out to Mud Island. Ronnie put me at the wheel while he manned the GPS and depthfinder (pretty high tech huh). Everything went according to plan except that, as usual, the fish didn't show up for the party. We still had a good time though. Zach and Ronnie both caught "trash" catfish which they threw back. I noticed that Josh was looking pretty glum at one point. I asked what was up and he admitted "I hate fishing." Funny, he hadn't mentioned that before. Things picked up a bit once the sun went down and we fired up the lights and air motor (an airplane-like propeller like the kid's dad on Flipper had). This was the first time the boys and I floundered from a boat. Our previous routine was to wade along the banks in old tennis shoes with a sharp stick (gig) and a Coleman lantern. At one point, a pair of Dolphins began swimming just 10 or 15 feet from the boat. They appeared to be following us to take advantage of the fish we were running out of the shallow areas. We also came across a pair of racoons and scores of crabs (which we decided against gigging due to questions of legality and my willingness to pay a huge fine). This upset the boys who were ALL FOR turning our fishing trip into a crabbing trip. I did allow Zach to scoop up one crab with the dip net but even that I'm not sure is legal. After several hours searching the banks and staring at shadows in the unfortunately murky water, we finally called it a night without a single flounder to show for our efforts. I admit, I was secretly glad I wouldn't have to clean fish tomorrow.


A boy and his fish.

Zach lets one go.