Airboatcapt2
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Ron Henry Strait: When offshore trip is blown out, a back-bay adventure is a big hit
Web Posted: 07/12/2007 09:02 PM CDT
San Antonio Express-News
PORT MANSFIELD — When Charlie Buchen said Monday night at supper that we were not going offshore Tuesday morning, I felt like a fisherman who was left up a creek without a paddle.
It was a trip I had counted on taking with Buchen and Jim Knerr, but all I could do, I knew, was to wait for Plan B, which was Buchen's option.
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The offshore trip had fallen victim to something called "4-to-6-at-4.7." From what I understand, that means tidal swells in the open gulf were running 4 to 6 feet high, and they were coming every five 5 seconds or less.
I have been on a couple of offshore fishing adventures in seas like that — seas where the up-and-down motion is six feet or more — and somewhere in the back of my mind I recalled that the boat rocked side-to-side, too, all the while it was shifting at odd angles across the waves.
Disorienting, to say the least.
On those trips, when you could stand up, it was because your knees were embedded, at least for brief seconds at a time, into the boat's rails.
Otherwise, you were being tossed around or you were doing some tossing of your own, if you get my drift.
Ron Henry Strait
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The memories were vivid enough that I left the last part of my supper on the plate and walked over to where Buchen was finishing his fried shrimp and was about to start on dessert. Apparently, thoughts of 4-to-6-at-4.7 were not upsetting him at all.
OK. No offshore. It probably wouldn't be fun anyway. But what are we going to do?
Buchen said he'd come up with Plan B.
At fault, again, was the weather. The Easter snow and freeze killed a nilgai antelope trip and a Baffin Bay speckled trout trip, and those lost trips were followed by weeks of rain and general discomfort, making 2007 a Plan B year in the outdoors.
Here we go again, up that proverbial creek and about to be paddled again.
The wind had all but laid by 5:30 a.m. Tuesday when I left the Sunset House Motel.
At the dock there were pale pink clouds on the east horizon at first light, and in all directions there were clouds of mosquitoes attacking any bare spot of skin that remained in one place for more than two seconds.
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The aggravating insects were a byproduct of a foot of rain that had hit the area in the past month.
The same rainy spell, as it turned out, was the driving force behind Buchen's backup plan to keep Knerr and I occupied for the morning.
Buchen's airboat took us south in the Lower Laguna Madre along the mainland shore. He pitched the flat-bottom hull up and across a swamped marsh island, made a wide turn over a near-mud flat and beached the boat 100 yards from a narrow cut in a spoil island. The cut was running fast on a falling tide and the water was alive with bait exploding in panicked spray as bait fish were attacked by ladyfish and redfish.
Buchen caught a 23-inch red on his second cast, and we fished the spot briefly before he retrieved his casting net and gathered two-dozen mullet for the bait bucket.
That was the last normal saltwater fishing thing we did Tuesday.
Airboats can go just about anywhere on a tidal plane, and Buchen put his craft through its paces.
We zigged and zagged through an intricate network of channels maybe a foot wide and one inch deep.
Airboat travel is always interesting, and for 10 minutes I wasn't paying real close attention to where we were headed — until we started weaving a course among stands of tall bamboo, fluffy, green scrub mesquites and long lines of Spanish daggers.
Mesquite trees and Spanish daggers on a redfish fishing trip?
Very disorienting.
When Buchen finally stopped, the airboat was nestled in a bed of yellow wildflowers in a foot of water at the bend in an unnamed arroyo in the middle of nowhere.
The water was a beautiful tea-brown color and visibility was two feet.
Buchen said that the arroyo usually barely flows with sandy gray water, six feet wide and two feet deep, with the visibility of chocolate milk.
But runoff from the recent rains had the flood plain 100 yards wide, the channel four feet deep, the current running fast with that lovely tea-brown water.
Buchen's bait casting tackle was loaded with 30-pound-test mono. He tied on a swivel and 18 inches of 50-pound-test leader and a 3/0 stainless hook.
He rigged the same terminal gear on some 12-pound rig and moved to the front of the boat.
Knerr watched for a minute and said to me, "Gar. We're gar fishing."
Buchen drove the big silvery hook up through the dead finger mullet's nose and stood on the bow of the airboat, which put him out over the edge of the channel and looking down into the clear water.
A big gar came cruising along on the far bank and disappeared in the shade of a huisache tree. Buchen made a gentle underhand lob-cast that put the bait in the gar's path, and we watched the white-bellied mullet drift downstream and downward into the brown water until its wobbling descent stopped.
Part of the bait seemed to be gone.
The gar had picked up the mullet and was carrying it away, its wide upper jaw obscuring half of the bait.
Buchen twitched the rod to make the gar think the bait was trying to escape, but he did not pressure the fish.
Gradually, the mullet's shape was gone from view as the big fish had taken the mullet into its mouth, but Buchen waited a few additional seconds before setting the hook.
Then it happened.
The rod doubled over in that beautiful arc that says, "Fish on!" and the gar responded with a dash upstream.
Buchen planted the rod butt in his belly and leaned back on the fish.
Snap!
"I thumbed the reel," he said. "That was the 12-pound line, and I thumbed the spool. I don't know why I did that."
By pressuring the spool with his thumb and blocking release of line, Buchen kept the drag from working to relieve tension on the line.
He re-rigged the lighter tackle, but picked up the 30-pound gear this time.
It didn't take five minutes for several gar to return to the channel.
Knerr and Buchen were ready. They had taken up spots on either end of the boat and were sight-casting to cruising gar. It was a slow-motion bite that was fascinating to watch.
Be patient and a gar would approach the bait, seize it between toothy jaws and carry it away — or attempt to carry it away.
A little jiggle of the rod tip would turn the gar and keep it in sight until the bait was maneuvered to the back of its jaw, at which point the hook was set and the fight was on.
The first fish in the boat weighed about 18 pounds followed closely by an 11-pounder.
We lost another very big fish that we never got a god look at, then landed a gar in the 40-pound class. It was 4 feet long and at least at foot around the middle.
Knerr had a fish pick up his bait and take off downstream. He fought it long distance for five minutes but never saw it. The mystery fish broke the line.
Then a school of blue catfish came by and we caught a few in the 8-pound class.
A couple of huge carp dropped by and a 15-inch redfish took a piece of cut bait. After photos, it was released.
We saw what appeared to be ladyfish and mullet swim past.
Then we caught more gar.
We had three double hook-ups and lots of dropped baits when pressure was put on too quickly or a hook didn't catch in a boney lip.
Two days later, I'm out of the sun, away from the mosquitoes and still trying to get my bearings.
We took an airboat ride across the bay, wandered through a forest of bamboo and mesquite trees, parked a big airboat in a patch of flooded wildflowers and then left the fish biting at noon, with a tally of a dozen gar between 11 and 40-plus pounds, three mystery break-offs, three big blue catfish and a 23-inch redfish for the day.
Buchen's Plan B was fascinating, unscripted and, believe me, just as disorienting as a day of 4-to-6-at-4.7.
