A fun day of fishing turns from a hot hit to cold fear in seconds.
Illustration. Steve Haefele
My brother, Mark, and I headed out from Conn Brown Harbor in Aransas Pass, Texas, on my Mowdy Cat 25, a locally built shallow-draft center-console catamaran that’s designed for both inshore and offshore. We cruised south on the Intracoastal Waterway to the Corpus Christi shipping channel where it’s 60 feet at the center and always busy with oil tankers, tugs, commercial fishing boats, and offshore resupply boats.
It was a sunny, chilly, calm day, and we were a couple of retired guys looking forward to a relaxing day on the water. We normally fish in shallow bay waters, so I was a little nervous about this adventure. Our target fish were large black drum, which move in from the Gulf in February and March to spawn in the channels. These big drum put up long, hard fights when hooked.
We set up near one side of the channel to bottom fish in 35 feet of water, with the trolling motor holding the boat at anchor. We both quickly caught one (we always release), life was good, and we were enjoying the day. But I soon hooked into a drum that was in a bad mood. Thirty minutes in, my shoulders and arms ached. Mark and I were so focused on the fight, nobody was watching what was going on around us.
Out of the corner of my eye, I was shocked to see a shrimp boat bearing down on us. I recovered enough to take a quick look at the Garmin display – we were in 60 feet, the middle of the channel! The fish was pulling the boat! I was moving in slow motion, waving one arm in the air while still hanging onto the rod. Finally, my brain suggested I start the motor and move. I did, but not in time – luckily the shrimp boat captain decided he’d had enough fun scaring these two old dudes, and he swung to port and sailed past us.
We finally landed that fish and decided it was time to head back to the harbor. We agreed all future fishing trips will be back to the inland bays!