Snook Sandwich

I went fishing with the New Sheriff the other day.

He wanted to go early, up the Brownsville Ship Channel looking for snook, wanted to leave around six AM, to which I reluctantly agreed. D and Jen (Ms. Sheriff) were having a yard sale, so it seemed like the perfect time to duck out. But then I decided, ahhhh, fuck it, six AM is way to early, so I laid around like a big bed pig until around ten or so, when I was awaken from a soporific sleep by the whistling wind outside rattling the windows.

Spring time is normally a windy season here on the coast when the late season northers march their way south, only to meet equally powerful high pressure ridges advancing from the distant tropics, colliding in a leviathan shoving match which usually creates severe weather along its boundaries somewhere up there, but leaves us with only a violent howling south wind that pushes great quantities of dust and dirt derived from the vast loma expanses to the south, and the dredge spoils heaped up along the ship channel fouling everything in a thirty mile radius. I spent over two hours cleaning Menagerie washing fine silt, leaves and garbage that had blown onto the foredeck and under the cockpit seats, only to have the winds return the next day and start the process all over. I felt like Atlas rolling the stone up a hill only to have it roll back down, over and over again….

So the New Sheriff called and said that he was going fishing anyhow, and did I want to go? Ah, what the hell. I grabbed a few things and decided to go flog the water for a bit anyway. We stopped and got ice, braving the spring break crowds. About ten thirty or so I cracked open a breakfast Tecate.

The New Sheriffs’ skiff is an ancient Jon Boat, resurrected from its final resting place at his dads house in Florida. The Rusty Duck has a center console, with a steering wheel that’s broken off, and is nothing more now than a stub, but it still turns, still works. It has an vintage Johnson Seahorse Sixty Horse engine that makes it go like a bat out of hell. Most importantly, mounted on the bow is a trolling motor. Now this particular trolling motor did not come straight out of the pages of Bass Pro catalog…no, this trolling motor has seen far better days, but it still works, and that’s the important thing. The corroded cover has been wrenched off, and the New Sheriff now has to use a cut off ax handle, jammed into the pinion gear to change it from forward to reverse, but he’s got the whole cantankerous thing under control.

Hell, I used to have a skiff like this one. Named “the pickle”, it was a modicum of idiosyncratic behavior. Like Steinbecks Sea Cow, it generally ran, but it generally never ran right. It did however lead us to catch a lot of fish.

And so it is with the New Sheriffs boat.

Like myself, he has fallen thoroughly in love with catching the mysterious snook that live up in the reaches of the Brownsville Ship Channel. We’re fortunate to live in the only place along the Gulf (outside Florida) where there is a population of them. I discovered fishing for them about ten years ago or so, when during a particularly strong cold front that had us shut out of the Laguna Madre, we decided to explore the Ship Channel and the adjacent shrimp basin. I was bored with drowning shrimp for mangrove snapper, so I tied on a topwater bait and mindlessly plopped it close to the shore along the rocks. After the ripple dissipated, I twitched the lure, made it do a big GLUG when instantly; WHAM!, the water swirled, and my rod doubled in a “U” shape. It was like tying into a largemouth black bass with a supercharger up its ass….

The fight lasted no more than about thirty seconds before the fish cut the line with its razor sharp gill plate.

I fell instantly in love.

Now launching the New Sheriffs’ boat in this gale, years later, I remembered each snooking trip, each savored experience, each one as much about the adventure as about the catching. However, I couldn’t help hoping that I might again tie into one of these rockets. ….

Heading out south towards the open channel from the Highway 48 ramp, past the Saturday crowds who were braving the sandblasting wind, throwing great hunks of mullet into the water in hopes of catching a big red or maybe black drum, or maybe even, a snook, the New Sheriff deftly steered the little skiff with the stub steering wheel through the chocolate whitecapped water. Other gente lined the shoreline crabbing with string and turkey necks. Once out into the open Ship Channel, the New Sheriff carefully put the Rusty Duck on plane as we bounce along the south shoreline.

Cutting back across the channel, we stop along the north shore, where we toss soft plastic baits up against the rocky slope. Almost instantly, something smashes my bait, doubling the road. After about ten minutes, I land a Jack Crevelle about ten pounds.

One of the strongest fish around, Jack Crevelle can make a wreck out of even the best fishing gear. I return this one to the water, and the New Sheriff and I have a laugh, and a fresh Tecate.

Working our way up the channel, we ease down a side cut lined with mangroves, one I used to fish in years ago. We watch a belted kingfisher flying along the shoreline, working the oyster lined banks. In here the persistent wind is almost calm, shielded on both sides by high banks and vegetation, mesquite and retama trees lining the banks, creating a cool and shady hideaway. We work the spot hard, but don't find any fish. That’s OK though, because the New Sheriff is a great guy, full of interesting stories, and so the intense silence is punctuated only occasionally by observations and commentary. The way any good fishing trip should be. Anyway, I’m always in a reflective mood on any good fishing trip, remembering friends and experiences from past trips, adding the current one to the collage.

We venture back into the wind, and working along a wall, just past the granary for awhile, trying to get the mangrove snapper to bite, but the wind is so violent that it is hard to get the bait down where it needs to be. Finally the New Sheriff catches a fat sixteen incher, which he immediately deposites into the fishbox where it protests by smaking its tail against the platic begging to be released. No dice fucker.. The wind here is so bad, that it was blows seagull shit and feathers off of the dock and down on top of us, and we are afraid that our open beers might get compromised, so we put away the trolling motor, and steam up to the end of the Ship Channel, near where long ago, was held the La Frontera Blessing of the Fleet (and Shrimp Festival)…that however is a story for another time.

Up here in the unprotected turning basin, the wind is blowing way too hard to fish effectively, so we flee and duck under the Montagine Fuel docks, where I used to fish with El Estomigo, Mr. Vamanos hisself. A former outdoor TV celebrity, we’d fish for huge snook there late at night, misbehaving badly in the process.

The New Sheriff and I cast up under the shady pilings to the snook we see laying there, finally enticing two small fat ones to bite, both of which we turn back. By this time it is about two in the afternoon or so, and we figure we better on meander back so we could get ready to do a full assault on Matamoros Mexico with the Ladies that evening….

Back out on the open water, and one last fishing spot. I was recounting a story about something, as I casually flipping the soft plastic bait up toward the shoreline. On the first cast a sizeable snook smacked the bait. I lead him to the net, deciding to keep this one for fish sandwiches….

The wind has now increased to a frantic speed, and the channel is eerily, obnoxiously obscured by blowing dust, which works its wretched way into every clothing opening, all of our pores, into open eyes, ears noses and mouths. We pass a bay boat, as it chugs along, deep in the hole. I guess they are afraid to get up on plane for fear of running into something. It is like a brown terribly toxic and abrasive fog. I feel like some sort of fucking aquatic Lawrence of Arabia or something, lost in a blowing sand/shit storm. I could barely make out the side channel leading to the boat ramp….

My eyes felt sandpapered for three days afterward…..

Back at the docks, I try to drive the Rusty Duck on to the trailer, but it is a losing battle. Like my own skiff of long ago, it only wants its owner and nothing else. We finally load up , and crack open the final Tecates of the trip, washing about a pound of silt and sand, down our throats.

I wasn’t hungry for over an hour after that……