Hide, Horn, Fish, and Fowl: Texas Hunting and Fishing Lore

FISHING TEXAS: A PASSION PASSED ON BY MY DAD

L. B. Harris with Northern Pike, 2007 7978-ch01.pdf 10/6/11 8:14 AM Page 50 FISHING TEXAS: A PASSION PASSED ON BY MY DAD by Jim Harris  In any one genre of Texas fishing, I’m going to come up short, lacking in enthusiasm and skills to hold any fishing records. Say, large mouth bass fishing in tournament-quality lakes. I’ve done some of it over the years, and even been in the same boat with professional fishermen piloting bass boats that cost $40,000. But I’ve not done enough of it to say I fished that way with a passion and wanted to do it night and day. Or fishing for large catfish in a river. I’ve done a little of it, even in some places using old gallon milk jugs tied together with fifty yards of trotline weighted down with treble hooks loaded with chicken gizzards. I can truly enjoy floating down a slow-moving river checking lines, some of them hanging from a tree branch, but I wouldn’t say that I ever developed an insatiable desire for that kind of fishing, either. And I enjoy wading out into the surf with a floating shrimp bucket tied to a belt and casting a handful of lead weights out into the gulf as far as my 1950s saltwater rod and reel will allow me. In those salty waters, I’ve caught my share of speckled trout and a fair number of red fish over the years in this summertime ritual, but I never dreamed about the sunburned arms and the spray in the face on winter nights. If I ever had dreams about the jellyfish that one year grabbed hold of my right calf while I waded in the surf, those dreams were nightmares that I thankfully forgot by morning. How about fast-water fishing below dams? Yes, I’ve been on the banks of water moving so fast a small boat could be turned into kindling in a matter of minutes. And despite the swiftness of the river, I’ve caught long and heavy fish in such places. Even as a kid, I’ve taken home bass and catfish from waters flowing out of dams 51 7978-ch01.pdf 10/6/11 8:14 AM Page 51 and enjoyed the time, but today I don’t time my summer vacations so I will be in such places when the locks are opened. There was a period of time when I was in high school that I had a bow and arrow fixed with a spool and line that allowed me to shoot and retrieve carp and drum in the shallows of lakes and rivers. But I quickly tired of that fish-in-a-barrel sport. By most standards, the kind of Texas fishing I have done over the years would not qualify me for any trophies or medals from an angling organization. And my fishing experiences probably wouldn’t serve as the basis for writing an authoritative fishing manual sold in Bass Pro Shops or a philosophical and meditative fishing memoir like Thomas McGuane might write. However, the fishing experiences I have had across the state of Texas have served as a testiment to the incredibly rich variety of fishing experiences to be had in the Lone Star State, and despite the fact that I came away from those experiences without any sort of savvy that would allow me to give up my day job and start guiding for a living, my fishing experiences in different Texas waters have been some of the most rewarding and pleasurable times in my life, times I recall with nostalgia akin to that longing most humans associate with first-time experiences, such as driving a car for the first time or going on a first date, for instance. I’ve been fishing for over sixty years, and I have wet a hook in the northeast and the southwest corners of the state. I’ve fished Lake Texoma in the north and Amistad in the south. I’ve caught fish in Ray Hubbard Reservoir in East Texas and Spense Lake in West Texas. I’ve fished large bodies of water, such as Whitney and Possum Kingdom, and I’ve fished ponds on ranches and farms. I’ve eaten catfish from the Red River along the border with Oklahoma and from the Rio Grande in...