One Last Cast by Jon Bryan
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On this particular morning’s fishing trip, Brad, a nine year old and by then an accomplished fisherman, and I were meeting my Uncle, and his Great Uncle, Alvin Pyland, better known as, Unkie, to sample some of the great trout action, under the birds, on the east side of the Galveston causeway.

This area, ten or twelve square miles, bounded on the east by the Texas City Dike and Pelican Island; on the south by Galveston Island, on the north by the mainland and west by the causeway, had been a consistent producer all spring. I told Unkie to be at The Pleasure Island Bait Camp, our fishing headquarters, at 7:30 AM and be ready to catch some fish.

We had purchased a beach house in the Jamaica Beach subdivision, ten miles west from the end of the Galveston Sea Wall. Launching at Jamaica Beach, we were now five to ten minutes from some great bay fishing spots; Green’s Cut, the Wreck, Confederate Reef and North and South Deer Islands. My favorite South Jetty spot was only thirty minutes by boat, less time than it took us to drive, launch and then motor out to the jetties!

By 7:00 AM Brad and I had the boat in the water at the Jamaica Beach launch ramp and had started our fifteen, minute trip to meet Unkie at Pleasure Island. I noticed storm clouds in the Gulf south of Galveston Island. Rain coming, what’s different about that?

After picking Unkie up at the bait camp and buying a quart of shrimp, we headed out to find the birds. Trout, feeding on shrimp, push the shrimp to the surface, the sea gulls see the disturbance, and always looking for a free meal, the gulls literally swarm over the shrimp and feeding trout. This is fast and furious action, trout are “jerked” into the boat without using a net, and many times we would use artificial baits rather than taking time to re-bait the hook.

Seeing several groups of birds in the distance we sped toward the nearest ones and began a morning of catching specs as fast as we could, and a morning of, we didn’t know then, high adventure.

We noticed the storm that I had seen earlier had moved almost to the island and storm clouds were also gathering north of us over Hitchcock and Texas City. Being in the bay, in a big bay boat, we felt secure since we were but a short run back to Pleasure Island. Then the southern storm moved on to the island, and we found out later that it had dropped ten inches of rain on the city, and shortly, a lot of that fell on us.

We kept fishing and catching specs, with northern storms getting closer. We paused to look at them and noticed they both seemed to stop right at the edge of the bay. We had storms north and south of us, and birds working, so we started back fishing. I have since learned not to “tempt” Mother Nature.

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