Reflections

The Way It Was

It’s about five in the morning   as I turn off the highway at the foot of the tallest bridge in the southwest and go over some culverts that allow you to cross a narrow canal that runs parallel to the bridge. The road is made from oyster shell and is full of pot holes that bounces and jars you around in the old rusted out  chevy  truck as you try to pull the boat to the ramp at the end of the road.  You go past a variety of boats  tied in make shift slips to a low narrow building that sits half on the land and half over the water.  This serves  as a bait shop in the morning  and a beer joint at night. Its dark and the only light is from a bulb  mounted  on the corner of the building. I swing the truck and start backing down the oyster shell ramp  until the boat is almost in the water. It is about mid May in the early sixties and the spring shrimp  season  in Sabine Lake is open.  I get out of the truck, there is not much breeze here, and I am immediately swarmed with mosquitoes . I check out the drain plugs making sure they are in and unhook the trailer winch.  I quickly get back in the truck and back the boat down in the water. As the boat floats free of the trailer I tie it off and pull the truck and trailer out and park it.

As  I am walking back to the boat  the Cajun gentleman who runs the bait shop drives up. We exchange greetings  and I pay him the fifty cent launching fee. He goes inside and brings out a half dozen bushel baskets with lids  and  tells me he would like to buy all the crabs I catch today, and so begins another working day of a commercial fisherman.

Getting in the boat and heading down the canal you can hear the traffic on the bridge above you. It’s that time of the morning when the refinery workers are heading in for their shift change. When I get to the end of the channel you can start to feel the breeze as I turn into the Neches River. I run east down stream across the intercoastal water way  into the north end of Sabine lake. By now the sky is starting to lighten and I head toward the center of the lake.  At this point I take time to check out things in the boat making sure the “Arkansas water pump” is sucking the water out of the boat  and the water pump on the motor is discharging. The boat is an old sixteen foot plywood boat that has had an extra layer of plywood put on the bottom because of too many years of hard use and the motor is a not to dependable 40 horse hand crank Johnson.  I do have the convince of cable steering  mounted on the starboard side of the boat about midway.  There is 55 gallon oil drum laying on its side strapped down in the bow that serves as a gas tank.  In the middle of the boat there is a large homemade ice chest with two fifty pound blocks of ice it  along with the crab baskets and a culling board. Adding two 2x4 trawl doors and the 25 foot net and about 400 foot of nylon rope in the back of the boat we are a little crowded.

Reaching the area I want to start fishing I turn the boat port side to the wind and put the motor in neutral, you never never turn the motor off.  As the boat starts drifting  I throw the tail buoy over  and start laying out the trawl  until it pulls on the trawl doors. Next go over the trawl doors. You have to hold on to the bridle ropes and make sure the doors spread and open the net. When I see this happening I put the motor in forward and play out the rest of the towing ropes  until they are taught on the towing post.