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Texas Oilmans Tournament.
The Good, The Bad, The Ugly.
The Good.
It was great to see all the guys from National Oilwell. Some I’d fished with, others I had met last year. This year Chuck Wilson had a new crew on board, Phillip, Jerry and Jim. Also I visited with the Capt. James Howell on the “Easy Come Easy Go” and the skipper of “Who Your Daddy”.
The Bad.
We started in West Matagorda Bay. I like fishing near Cottons and that’s were we started this year. The bite was slow and small. Between the 5 of us we landed around 30 trout and one flounder. Of the 30 trout we had one keeper and the flounder went into the box. We moved SW to POC jetties and hit the surf looking for birds, bait or slicks. I ran the entire surf from the POC jetties to the Matagorda jetties and never seen a thing. We stopped by the tournament headquarters for a snack and see if anything of interest had hit the scales. All reports were fishing was slow.
We loaded back into the boat and headed for East Matagorda Bay. We stopped at a flock of bird working over a school of fish which turned out to be small Gafftop. Left them and headed for a reef on the North shoreline. The water was in great shape and there were a few gulls working in the area. Each of us missed a fish or two which made me feel the trout were very small. Finally Jerry hooks up on a 9” trout, smallest trout I think I have ever seen on artificial bait.
The Ugly.
As we were making our way towards the boat the storms from the north we had been expecting started to roll in. I got everyone in the boat; hit the key, the engine cranked but wouldn’t start. I pumped the bulb, still no fire. The wind started picking up, then the lightning started. I got everyone to put their rods down while I got under the console….NO not to hide, but I hoped to find the problem. NOTHING! Pulled the engine cover off…everything there looked fine. Tried it again…still won’t fire off.
The lightning was still several miles away, but it was still to close for me. We were about two hundred yards off the north bank, so I jumped in and walked the boat in that direction. Once we were close enough to not the tallest thing around I got on the cell phone and called a guide buddy, Capt. David Kneeland, of mine for a tow. Luckily, he was at the Matagorda Harbor and had just dropped off his party. He made the 10 mile run pretty quickly. I had him run my customer back to the harbor, then come back to get me and the boat.
As the weather started to clear, I paddled the boat over to ICW to wait for my tow. Time was really dragging when I seen another guide buddy, Capt. Gary Luetge. I flagged them over just as the phone rings, it’s Capt. David, as he was trying to leave the harbor he notices that his boat is listing hard to port. He pops a hatch open only to find one side of his Trans Cat is full of water. He beached the boat to keep it from sinking in the ICW.
Well I had to hit Capt. Gary up for a tow back to Matagorda. Guess what! He was almost out of fuel and we were a lot closer to Sargent than Matagorda. So he pulled me to our beach house there.
I finally get back to Matagorda at 11pm Friday night to cold ribs and BBQ chicken.
Who said guides have it made?
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