Rick's Story Of The Week

[reevesr1]

My dad had his own army. They weren't armed with guns, like good Americans should, but with fishing rods. To understand a bit, let me set the stage:

 

My dad got pretty well known around Galveston Bay as an exceptional fisherman when he was pretty young. When he was in High School, a bunch of teachers got together and started a Fishing class during PE. Not that they were good fishermen, their plan was to get my dad to attend so he would teach them how he caught so many fish before school every morning. When dad was 18, he was written up in a Texas monthly magazine about his fishing prowess.

 

What really upped to popularity was the following picture.

It was taken by a photographer from Ft. Worth who was in town to cover a fishing tournament for one of the local refineries. Dad and Kenneth (dad on the left) were not involved in the tourney, but they happened to hit the dock at the same time as the folks coming in from the tournament. They had WAY more fish than anyone in the tourney! The photographer published the picture in Ft. Worth, AP picked it up and it was published in most of the papers in Texas, including the Houston and Galveston papers. Instant notoriety for dad and Kenneth.

 

So the next time dad goes fishing, there are literally people waiting for him at the dock. The started to follow him everywhere he went. They became known as Richard's Army. He tried lots of diversionary tactics to get rid of them. One was to go to a very known reef system, get out to wade and wait until everyone was out of their boats. Then he would run back to his boat and try to make a clean getaway. Unfortunately, boats weren't very fast in those days and he couldn't get out of sight fast enough. He said the only way to make it stop was to just not catch any fish for a few weeks and finally people just stopped following him. But afterwards he was very careful about where he cleaned his fish so people wouldn't see just how well he was doing. And he stayed away from photographers!

 

As an aside, Kenneth went on to play professional football. He was drafted by the Green Bay Packers as a wide receiver and was the last player cut the year he got drafted. The player the Packers kept instead was Max McGee who was the hero of Super Bowl I. Kenneth played a couple of years for the Eskimos (I think). He also at one time had the Boone and Crockett record atypical Elk, shot in Alaska. Also one hell of a big shark fisherman.

 

The picture also ended up being posted at NASA in Houston under the heading "Things to do in South Texas" .

[OneMoreLastCast]

Cool story again Rick.

 

Did your Dad always put the number of fish he caught on his shirt? I'm gonna start doin' that.

[SteveM]

Are they preparing to release those fish in the picture? No? Oh, yeah, that's Texas; they don't even C & R their criminals!

Criminals, fish- FRY'EM ALL!

BTW, great story again, Rick. Looking forward to next weeks installment.

Later!

[toolman]

Great story Rick. Thanks for sharing it with us.

[Taco]

Thanks Rick

 

Really like those old photographs of the loaded down game poles and the like, shows how attitudes have changed over the course of time.

 

 

[LynnF]

Wow....great story Rick.

[reevesr1]

57 is 1957, the year he graduated HS.

 

I remember asking him one day, jokingly: "I only count like 50 fish there. Was it a slow day?"

He replied "Nope, they didn't want all the fish in the picture. That's about half of 'em." It was stupid how many fish they caught. What is also funny is how many of todays well known fishing areas in south Galveston Bay were "discovered" by Dad and/or Kenneth.

 

Attitudes certainly have changed. He grew up keeping everthing he caught and selling what the family could not eat. In his later years, he kept very few, just some to eat. Released the vast majority of his fish. Pretty drastic change in 1 generation.

[SteveM]

The only thing constant is change, right? Attitudes change with education, or with circumstances. I grew up po' (that's worse than poor)

in Newfoundland. With 12 mouths to feed, there was no C & R going on; being the youngest, there was the constant threat of being

cannibalized if we ran out of food. Got worried a few times when Mom was adding 4 cans of water to a can of Campbell's soup to make

enough for everyone! Wasn't unusual for us to bring home 10-12 dozen little brookies from a daytrip; not one ever was wasted, either.

Nowadays, I'll go years without keeping a fish; very rarely keep a few for a shore lunch when camping with my brothers. Been years

since I've done that, even. Now when I catch a nice trout from a creek, I am appalled at the thought of taking any of the brood stock

out of the population; admire it, maybe a photo, release it. 30+ years ago, that trout would have been dinner- no doubt about it.

My attitude change came about because of a change in circumstances, plus some education. Guess we all evolve some, right?

 

Later,

Steve M.