A whale of a story

Helena Handbasket

By Cletus Bianchi

There’s a boatload of reasons I love to fish the Laguna Madre. Awesome sunrises and sunsets, time with good friends, and the anticipation that the next cast will find the fish of a lifetime are just a few.

Catching however is not really near the top of the list, at least as a gauge of success. Sure, it’s nice to have a few tasty fillets for supper or to share with friends, but the going is much more important and memorable.

Every trip we see or experience something new, unique, or exciting, even when we return to the same place over and over. Those are the stories I like to share and the primary reason I like to slip my boat into salty water.

Our most recent trip to Port Mansfield is a prime example. Just a few miles from the marina, we could see hundreds of birds, gulls, pelicans and terns, attacking the water surface. That’s always a sign of fish, whether you’re in South Texas or Boston Harbor.

As we idled up to the raucous gathering, we saw clouds of bait just below the surface. Every few seconds the water would erupt as these smaller links on the food chain tried to leap free from thrashing, flashing larger links.

I don’t know if I’ve ever encountered anything more likely to create a backlash than several acres of nervous water.

Although we saw dolphins, crevalles, and other unidentified species in the melee, we just caught a few skipjack. They are amazingly acrobatic fish and love to let you see exactly what has taken your lure and is about to spit it back at you. It was a memorable spectacle.

Oh, and we did get a close-up view of a pelican’s beak when one got tangled up with one of our lures. Took all three of us to set him free and we were convinced he could snap a finger off as he ‘clomped’ his beak at us. I definitely felt uncomfortable about my bare toes peeking out of my sandals. I guess he felt a little uncomfortable about bone-colored top water lures after that incident, too.

The next day after a fabulous sunrise and successfully boxing a few fish, we were drifting down the Intercoastal Waterway (ICW), casting to the edge and chatting. It is quite common to have bottlenose dolphin come by for a visit when you are in the ICW. They swim past in small groups and occasionally, if you whistle and smack the water, they will swim close to the boat. I suppose they are as curious as I am.

I’ve seen them surround and attack schools of smaller fish with incredible coordination and also watched one swim right up to a buddy one morning, letting him reach out and nearly pet it. I used to complain that they were eating ‘my’ trout, but now I enjoy their antics.

This time, they were just swimming past, but we noticed one on the far edge of the ICW that was larger, darker and swam differently. It rolled rather than rising to the surface and its tail was much broader at the base than any dolphin we had seen before. It also seemed to have a different dorsal fin. Since it lingered in our area for several minutes we had several opportunities to watch it and noticed that its head was blunt and did not have the telltale bottlenose.

We shrugged and wondered. The good folks at the Texas Parks & Wildlife Department answered our questions a few days later. It seems that the short-finned pilot whale is a periodic visitor to the Texas coast and will sometimes follow its food sources into the cuts and ICW of the bay system.

Another first and a really cool one at that – whale watching from my bay boat in the Laguna Madre! Check them out at www.acsonline.org/factpack/PilotWhale.htm if you are interested.

The next morning’s goal was to spend some time casting to tailing redfish. The tides were right and we spent the first few hours of daylight aiming at large tails, lazily waving on the surface of shin-deep water as the redfish rooted about for tasty treats.

While turning to admire another glorious sunrise, we noticed a large log drifting between the shallow flat and the channel. When I glanced back a few minutes later, that large log had sprouted a tail with a spot on it. Any redfish whose back and tail breaks the surface merits attention, but when you can see it from 250 yards away, it merits special attention.

I set off in the shallow water, looking into the sun and watching this brute of a fish swim back and forth between the channel and the flat. It’s not easy to sneak when your target is so huge and visible, especially when you are walking up on smaller redfish as you proceed. The overwhelming urge I experience is to run toward the fish, casting madly as I go. Not a tactic I recommend, by the way, but one that crossed my mind several times.

I managed to close the gap a bit and the closer I got, the more my heart pounded. This big girl, and I’m convinced it was a female, was so big, half of her eyes were above the water and she was getting stuck on the sand hump by the channel. I figured if I could see her eyes, she could see me, so I got down on hands and knees and began to crawl through the water toward her.

Here’s the visual for you … a guy on all fours in shin to knee-deep water with his rod in his teeth, trying to sneak up on a huge fish. There’s nothing like stepping off the deep edge in shallow water.

I was finally able to get the breeze and sun at my back after covering several hundred yards. She had submerged into a little deeper water, so I stood up quickly and prepared to cast at her when she next surfaced.

This is a good time to describe the heart beat pounding in my ears, the way my rod tip was shaking in anticipation, and how I was coaching myself on the likelihood of only getting one cast at her. My shirt was completely soaked, the front from the water and the back from sweat. My glasses were now fogged.

As I struggled with all of these self-inflicted obstacles, the big girl began to rise to the surface again … headed straight for me … about fifteen feet away. I’m sure I looked like one of those herons you see on the flats, poised to strike, but not moving a muscle … except for the rod tip which was now oscillating wildly, matching my pulse rate.

She swam so close I could have touched her with the rod. I could see her eyes looking at me. And I could appreciate her size. She was easily the largest red I’ve ever seen in shallow water, and maybe ever seen at all.

As she moved past and turned her broad back to me, I prepared to cast. She moved out a few more yards and I let the gold spoon fly. Amazingly, there was no backlash and the spoon flew true, a few feet beyond and in front of her. I could see it pass within a foot of her nose. She didn’t even blink.

Reload, cast again. Same result. Again … no interest. After five casts, she eased back to the deeper water and disappeared.

I straightened up and stretched my back, holstered my rod and tipped my hat to that big red monster. I had stalked her for nearly an hour and over several hundred yards just for the chance at one cast. She hadn’t bitten.

Frankly, if she had taken my lure, she probably would have pulled me into the Gulf if my tackle didn’t fail first. But it was sure fun trying to find out.

Now, some of you might be wondering why I wasted so much newsprint and time, yours and mine, to tell a story about two fish (well, one fish and one mammal) I didn’t catch … I can only shrug.

Granted, not every trip is as eventful or exciting as this one … but it might be.