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As promised for my 750th post here is the next installment of "Fishing with Dave".........Enjoy
Back in the early 90s we had what we called our Annual Fish & Puke down on the beach. We would get a couple of kegs and hit San Luis Pass and would come home till the beer was gone. It was always a great time, good food, good music and of course good drink and we even caught a few fish from time to time. The first couple we had only eight to ten folks show, but each year there were more and with more people the more different types of drinks would show and the wilder the party. Of course this also meant a lot less fishing, but who cared right.
This story is about our very first Fish & Puke and though there were only a few of us that showed up, Dave happened to be one of them. Greg, Steve and I got off a third shift Friday morning and went about getting everything ready. We home and got all our gear then met at Carlos’ Beer Garden to pick up the keg and ice. After we had the most important element of your trip we caravanned down to the pass. We found a spot on the beach in front of the water tower and got busy making camp. By the time we had a fire pit dug, canopy set up and the beer iced down, tapped and flowing good it was time to see about getting some rods in the water. I had two big rods and Greg had one and this would be Steve’s first time so he basically was there to drink and which the rest of us. There were mullet jumping everywhere in the surf and it only took one cast of my net to have bait for the rods and some for later. We got the three rods setup and baited then the three of us, each with rod in hand started making our way out to the third bar. Steve was getting a little freaked out that he had to swim out but Greg and I claimed him down. We got the rods out and started on our way back and once on the beach we put the rods in the holders. We then grabbed a chair and a beer and kicked back BSing.
We had each finished a couple of beers when we heard a truck coming down the beach. We could see that it was Dave green Dodge war wagon and knew the party was about to get started, or at least the laughing. It didn’t take too long for Dave to get started either, as he hadn’t even gotten out of his truck yet. Like I said we had set up a canopy and dug a nice fire pit in front of it. Instead of Dave pulling his truck up next to ours he decided that parking it in the fire pit was a much better idea. The look on his face when the front of his truck dropped about two feet was almost worth all the trouble it took to get his truck out of the pit. There he sat with his left front in the pit and his right rear tire off the ground. He climbed out of his truck and said, “There’s a damn hole here.” Greg replied, “No **** that’s the fire pit we dug.” “That was a stupid place to dig a hole, how are folks going to park?” “Just like we parked, if you park there you would be blocking the view of the water from the canopy.” Dave just shook his head, climbed back in this truck, put it in reverse and gunned it. Of course nothing happened with the right rear off the ground, it just spun and there was no torque applied to the left rear. This is when the fun started trying to get Dave out of the fire pit. The first thing we tried was the three of us climbing in his bed to see if we could get his back tire on the ground. We even bounced up and down trying to rock it, but it was a no go. None of us had a 4x4 back then but we figured one of our 2x4 might be enough to pull is back end down to get some traction. This also failed, and Greg’s truck was also stuck now. Dave was cussing a blue blaze, and calling us every name in the book for digging a hole. We let him go, and busied ourselves with digging Greg’s truck out.
We finally got Greg’s truck unstuck and decided we need to drink a beer or two and think about how to get Dave’s truck out. One of the ideas we came up with was just to move the canopy and keg down the beach some and dig a new fire pit. Dave didn’t like this idea none because we had also said something about just burying his old Dodge. That got a rise out of him and he went stomping around towards the front of his truck not paying any attention and fell in the pit himself. The three of us were now laughing so hard it hurt.
Shortly after Dave pulled himself out of the pit, a guy driving a big 4x4 came by. He saw Dave’s truck and before we could ask him, he offered to help. He had a long tow strap that he hooked to his trailer hitch and handed Dave the other end. Dave proceeded to loop the strap around his bumper. I warned him that was a bad idea, to which he quickly replied, “Bad Idea, I’ll tell you what was a bad idea is you three dumbasses digging a damn hole in the middle of the beach!” I just turned around and walked away as I didn’t want to watch what was about to happen. I had my back turned, gulping my beer when I heard Dave fire up his truck and yell he was ready. By then Greg and Steve had joined me, though Steve couldn’t help but watch. I heard the engines for the two trucks rev up and the 4x4 start to strain. Then there was the sound of metal being ripped and torn and then only Dave was still gunning his truck. Steve yelled and waved at him to stop. I had turned to look by then, and sure enough there was Dave’s bumper now in an “L” shape. Dave climbed from his truck and walked around to see what we were staring at and then the cussing started again. After closer inspection, the heads of the bolts that held the bumper to the right side mounting brackets has pulled through the bumper and when they gave way the bumper bent at its weakest point. Dave then headed towards the guy in the 4x4 fumbling and fluming like a crossed eyed drunk wilder beast with PMS. He cussed the guy and blamed him for the damaged bumper. I had to give the guy credit as he never said a work just climbed out of his truck, gathered his tow strap and then climbed back in and left. We watched him drove off down the beach and then Greg, Steve and I walked around Dave’s truck to the keg for another beer.
By the time we had finished this beer, Mark, Jeff and Quig showed up and were ready to fish and party. It only took them a few moments though to be bent over laughing as we relayed to events they had missed. Then we started digging and about an hour and many beers later we had freed Dave’s truck from the pit. We then cast netted some more bait and set out the rest of our rods. By the time it as dark and no one else had showed, we figured we had a lot of drinking to do to float that keg between seven of us. Hey we were all still in our twenties, and we were ready for the task at hand. We really started putting some beers down and even having some chugging contests and such. There was another problem, the folks that said they were going to bring the main food, meat and such, were the folks that hadn’t showed. Dave had his normal stock of Cheese Puffs and Little Debbie Cakes (there is another story here I’ll tell some day) and was hitting them pretty hard along with the beer. All I can say about that is cheese puffs, oatmeal cream cakes and beer make for some pretty barf. Too bad we weren’t offshore fishing it would have made some pretty chum. I’m not sure what in this combo interacted but it came out cheese puff orange and was a creamy foam that seemed to grow after it hit the sand. Even as drunk as I was, I was very concerned that from its growth that it might have become a new life form. None of this really affected Dave as he would purge then go get another beer, a new bag of cheese puffs and a couple of oatmeal creams to restart the process. It was almost like clockwork as in about twenty five to thirty minutes he would purge again.
Other than Dave’s frequent purges, everything else was pretty calm. We just sat around the fire drinking, getting drunker and seeing who could tell the biggest lie. This all changes sometime after midnight when one of the guys said, “Derek look at your rod!” We had sit up a lantern down next to the rods so we could keep an eye on them from the fire and my one rod was completely doubled over. Man let me tell you I was well past drunk and was defiantly ten foot tall and bullet proof. I jumped up and stated, “I’ll get him” as I stumbled, ran and somehow made my way to the rod. Things change in the way you move with you have been sitting on your butt for hours drinking. All I know is there were times during my journey from the fire to the rod that I got further away instead of closer. Somehow, I’m not sure exactly how I made it to my rod and grabbed it from the holder to set the hook only to find myself on the sand being dragged into the breaking waves. This fish took me off my feet and before I knew it I was the fish and not the fisherman. The rest of the guys had followed along and thank goodness they had and were able to help me up, though I’m not sure how, as they were just as drunk as me. I will say I never let go of the rod this whole time and wasn’t about to be wiped by this fish. The fish had other ideas and I found that I was losing ground, even though I was on my feet I was moving further and further into the water. One of the guys had grabbed the lantern to shed some light on the situation, but it really wasn’t helping as now I could see I was getting dragged further out. I’m not sure what happened next that gave me a lucid moment, it could have been the waves crashing over my head or the surge of blood pumping through my body, but would ever it was I realized I needed to loosen my drag a little.
After I loosened up the drag, the fight became about the same as any fight with a big fish when you are drunk off your butt. The rest of the guys were great they cheered me on and poured beer in my mouth to keep me hydrated what more could I ask of friends. It was about this time that I had another one of those lucid moments and realized that this was a really big fish and was likely to be a shark. This is when I decided it just might not be a good idea to be shoulder deep in the water and said, “**** we need to get our butts out of the water this is a shark!” Well that is when the three stooges became the seven stooges. Dave was all but walking on water, remember he didn’t like piggies pulling the hair on his legs so he damn sure wasn’t happy about being in the water with a shark. He was screaming like a little girl and ran over Steve and knocked Quig down as he rumbled out of the surf. Jeff helped Steve up and he spit up half the gulf as Jeff dragged him from the surf. Once we were all back on dry sand, the fight with the fish continued for what seemed like years. I’m not sure how long it took as even though I was drunk, this had to be the longest I ever fought a fish in my life. Then again because I was drunk, it just seems that it was the longest. Either way, the big fish finally tired and I started gaining line. It wasn’t too much longer and we had a surprise as what I thought was a big shark turned out to be the biggest Redfish I’ve ever seen even to this day. I mean this thing was huge, so huge his name had to be Shamu or Moby. This is long before the days of digital cameras and the only one we had was a disposable 35mm without a flash. We moved the truck around to get their head lights point on me and the fish to try and get a picture. After developing the pictures, what they captured resembled something that looked like a three legged creator from the black lagoon. This was also before we had Redfish tags so all I could do was drag him back in the surf and revive him before watching him swim off. To this day I don’t know exactly how big he really was, other than he was a long as I was tall and weighed much more than a fifty pound sack of horse feed. Needless to say it was one of those moments in fishing I’ll always remember.
The fishing wasn’t over though. No sooner than we had gotten new beers and were resuming our spots around the fire, than one of Dave’s rods doubled over. Remember Dave had a thing for K-mart blue light special rods, well his taste in surf rods were no different. He had bought two brand new K-mart special surf rods, both were ten feet long and had No-name bait casting reels spooled with that ole trusty blue three thousand pound test K-mart line. Dave once more took off towards the surf looking like and even drunker version of the wilder beast with PMS. He fell down once floundering in the sand for a moment or two before reaching his rod. He pulled the rod from the holder and set the hook. To this the big fish headed to Cuba and what happen next took all of us by surprise. I mean I have never before or since seen anything like what was about to happen and it will be forever burned into my memories. Dave’s reel literally explored! The sides and front part of the reel went into pieces and before we realized what had just happened, the spool came flying out and stopped up against the first eye of the rod. The looks on everyone’s faces, even Dave’s, was complete awe as we watched the spool spinning against that eye as it gave out line. I’m not complete sure what happened next, but the spools stopped spinning. It could have been it came to the end of the line or it backlashed but it was no longer giving the big fish line. Dave had a good hold on the rod and held his ground as the rod started to strain under the pressure. Dave then yelled, “Get my truck!” We weren’t sure why he wanted his truck, nor were we able to find out because before any of us could move the first eye on the rod gave way. This started a chain reaction and we all watched as one by one the eyes separated from the rod until it was down to the last one. They last eye held on long enough for Dave to repeat his request for his truck before it to let loose and the spool and all the eyes headed to Cuba with the fish.
Nothing more happen on this trip. We did float the keg, but to do it we had to make a run to get some V-8 juice and hot sauce the next morning to mix with it. This took care of the rest of the beer, as well as our hangovers. BTY if you ever get invited to a Fish and Puke, stay away for your own safety…….
The End
Back in the early 90s we had what we called our Annual Fish & Puke down on the beach. We would get a couple of kegs and hit San Luis Pass and would come home till the beer was gone. It was always a great time, good food, good music and of course good drink and we even caught a few fish from time to time. The first couple we had only eight to ten folks show, but each year there were more and with more people the more different types of drinks would show and the wilder the party. Of course this also meant a lot less fishing, but who cared right.
This story is about our very first Fish & Puke and though there were only a few of us that showed up, Dave happened to be one of them. Greg, Steve and I got off a third shift Friday morning and went about getting everything ready. We home and got all our gear then met at Carlos’ Beer Garden to pick up the keg and ice. After we had the most important element of your trip we caravanned down to the pass. We found a spot on the beach in front of the water tower and got busy making camp. By the time we had a fire pit dug, canopy set up and the beer iced down, tapped and flowing good it was time to see about getting some rods in the water. I had two big rods and Greg had one and this would be Steve’s first time so he basically was there to drink and which the rest of us. There were mullet jumping everywhere in the surf and it only took one cast of my net to have bait for the rods and some for later. We got the three rods setup and baited then the three of us, each with rod in hand started making our way out to the third bar. Steve was getting a little freaked out that he had to swim out but Greg and I claimed him down. We got the rods out and started on our way back and once on the beach we put the rods in the holders. We then grabbed a chair and a beer and kicked back BSing.
We had each finished a couple of beers when we heard a truck coming down the beach. We could see that it was Dave green Dodge war wagon and knew the party was about to get started, or at least the laughing. It didn’t take too long for Dave to get started either, as he hadn’t even gotten out of his truck yet. Like I said we had set up a canopy and dug a nice fire pit in front of it. Instead of Dave pulling his truck up next to ours he decided that parking it in the fire pit was a much better idea. The look on his face when the front of his truck dropped about two feet was almost worth all the trouble it took to get his truck out of the pit. There he sat with his left front in the pit and his right rear tire off the ground. He climbed out of his truck and said, “There’s a damn hole here.” Greg replied, “No **** that’s the fire pit we dug.” “That was a stupid place to dig a hole, how are folks going to park?” “Just like we parked, if you park there you would be blocking the view of the water from the canopy.” Dave just shook his head, climbed back in this truck, put it in reverse and gunned it. Of course nothing happened with the right rear off the ground, it just spun and there was no torque applied to the left rear. This is when the fun started trying to get Dave out of the fire pit. The first thing we tried was the three of us climbing in his bed to see if we could get his back tire on the ground. We even bounced up and down trying to rock it, but it was a no go. None of us had a 4x4 back then but we figured one of our 2x4 might be enough to pull is back end down to get some traction. This also failed, and Greg’s truck was also stuck now. Dave was cussing a blue blaze, and calling us every name in the book for digging a hole. We let him go, and busied ourselves with digging Greg’s truck out.
We finally got Greg’s truck unstuck and decided we need to drink a beer or two and think about how to get Dave’s truck out. One of the ideas we came up with was just to move the canopy and keg down the beach some and dig a new fire pit. Dave didn’t like this idea none because we had also said something about just burying his old Dodge. That got a rise out of him and he went stomping around towards the front of his truck not paying any attention and fell in the pit himself. The three of us were now laughing so hard it hurt.
Shortly after Dave pulled himself out of the pit, a guy driving a big 4x4 came by. He saw Dave’s truck and before we could ask him, he offered to help. He had a long tow strap that he hooked to his trailer hitch and handed Dave the other end. Dave proceeded to loop the strap around his bumper. I warned him that was a bad idea, to which he quickly replied, “Bad Idea, I’ll tell you what was a bad idea is you three dumbasses digging a damn hole in the middle of the beach!” I just turned around and walked away as I didn’t want to watch what was about to happen. I had my back turned, gulping my beer when I heard Dave fire up his truck and yell he was ready. By then Greg and Steve had joined me, though Steve couldn’t help but watch. I heard the engines for the two trucks rev up and the 4x4 start to strain. Then there was the sound of metal being ripped and torn and then only Dave was still gunning his truck. Steve yelled and waved at him to stop. I had turned to look by then, and sure enough there was Dave’s bumper now in an “L” shape. Dave climbed from his truck and walked around to see what we were staring at and then the cussing started again. After closer inspection, the heads of the bolts that held the bumper to the right side mounting brackets has pulled through the bumper and when they gave way the bumper bent at its weakest point. Dave then headed towards the guy in the 4x4 fumbling and fluming like a crossed eyed drunk wilder beast with PMS. He cussed the guy and blamed him for the damaged bumper. I had to give the guy credit as he never said a work just climbed out of his truck, gathered his tow strap and then climbed back in and left. We watched him drove off down the beach and then Greg, Steve and I walked around Dave’s truck to the keg for another beer.
By the time we had finished this beer, Mark, Jeff and Quig showed up and were ready to fish and party. It only took them a few moments though to be bent over laughing as we relayed to events they had missed. Then we started digging and about an hour and many beers later we had freed Dave’s truck from the pit. We then cast netted some more bait and set out the rest of our rods. By the time it as dark and no one else had showed, we figured we had a lot of drinking to do to float that keg between seven of us. Hey we were all still in our twenties, and we were ready for the task at hand. We really started putting some beers down and even having some chugging contests and such. There was another problem, the folks that said they were going to bring the main food, meat and such, were the folks that hadn’t showed. Dave had his normal stock of Cheese Puffs and Little Debbie Cakes (there is another story here I’ll tell some day) and was hitting them pretty hard along with the beer. All I can say about that is cheese puffs, oatmeal cream cakes and beer make for some pretty barf. Too bad we weren’t offshore fishing it would have made some pretty chum. I’m not sure what in this combo interacted but it came out cheese puff orange and was a creamy foam that seemed to grow after it hit the sand. Even as drunk as I was, I was very concerned that from its growth that it might have become a new life form. None of this really affected Dave as he would purge then go get another beer, a new bag of cheese puffs and a couple of oatmeal creams to restart the process. It was almost like clockwork as in about twenty five to thirty minutes he would purge again.
Other than Dave’s frequent purges, everything else was pretty calm. We just sat around the fire drinking, getting drunker and seeing who could tell the biggest lie. This all changes sometime after midnight when one of the guys said, “Derek look at your rod!” We had sit up a lantern down next to the rods so we could keep an eye on them from the fire and my one rod was completely doubled over. Man let me tell you I was well past drunk and was defiantly ten foot tall and bullet proof. I jumped up and stated, “I’ll get him” as I stumbled, ran and somehow made my way to the rod. Things change in the way you move with you have been sitting on your butt for hours drinking. All I know is there were times during my journey from the fire to the rod that I got further away instead of closer. Somehow, I’m not sure exactly how I made it to my rod and grabbed it from the holder to set the hook only to find myself on the sand being dragged into the breaking waves. This fish took me off my feet and before I knew it I was the fish and not the fisherman. The rest of the guys had followed along and thank goodness they had and were able to help me up, though I’m not sure how, as they were just as drunk as me. I will say I never let go of the rod this whole time and wasn’t about to be wiped by this fish. The fish had other ideas and I found that I was losing ground, even though I was on my feet I was moving further and further into the water. One of the guys had grabbed the lantern to shed some light on the situation, but it really wasn’t helping as now I could see I was getting dragged further out. I’m not sure what happened next that gave me a lucid moment, it could have been the waves crashing over my head or the surge of blood pumping through my body, but would ever it was I realized I needed to loosen my drag a little.
After I loosened up the drag, the fight became about the same as any fight with a big fish when you are drunk off your butt. The rest of the guys were great they cheered me on and poured beer in my mouth to keep me hydrated what more could I ask of friends. It was about this time that I had another one of those lucid moments and realized that this was a really big fish and was likely to be a shark. This is when I decided it just might not be a good idea to be shoulder deep in the water and said, “**** we need to get our butts out of the water this is a shark!” Well that is when the three stooges became the seven stooges. Dave was all but walking on water, remember he didn’t like piggies pulling the hair on his legs so he damn sure wasn’t happy about being in the water with a shark. He was screaming like a little girl and ran over Steve and knocked Quig down as he rumbled out of the surf. Jeff helped Steve up and he spit up half the gulf as Jeff dragged him from the surf. Once we were all back on dry sand, the fight with the fish continued for what seemed like years. I’m not sure how long it took as even though I was drunk, this had to be the longest I ever fought a fish in my life. Then again because I was drunk, it just seems that it was the longest. Either way, the big fish finally tired and I started gaining line. It wasn’t too much longer and we had a surprise as what I thought was a big shark turned out to be the biggest Redfish I’ve ever seen even to this day. I mean this thing was huge, so huge his name had to be Shamu or Moby. This is long before the days of digital cameras and the only one we had was a disposable 35mm without a flash. We moved the truck around to get their head lights point on me and the fish to try and get a picture. After developing the pictures, what they captured resembled something that looked like a three legged creator from the black lagoon. This was also before we had Redfish tags so all I could do was drag him back in the surf and revive him before watching him swim off. To this day I don’t know exactly how big he really was, other than he was a long as I was tall and weighed much more than a fifty pound sack of horse feed. Needless to say it was one of those moments in fishing I’ll always remember.
The fishing wasn’t over though. No sooner than we had gotten new beers and were resuming our spots around the fire, than one of Dave’s rods doubled over. Remember Dave had a thing for K-mart blue light special rods, well his taste in surf rods were no different. He had bought two brand new K-mart special surf rods, both were ten feet long and had No-name bait casting reels spooled with that ole trusty blue three thousand pound test K-mart line. Dave once more took off towards the surf looking like and even drunker version of the wilder beast with PMS. He fell down once floundering in the sand for a moment or two before reaching his rod. He pulled the rod from the holder and set the hook. To this the big fish headed to Cuba and what happen next took all of us by surprise. I mean I have never before or since seen anything like what was about to happen and it will be forever burned into my memories. Dave’s reel literally explored! The sides and front part of the reel went into pieces and before we realized what had just happened, the spool came flying out and stopped up against the first eye of the rod. The looks on everyone’s faces, even Dave’s, was complete awe as we watched the spool spinning against that eye as it gave out line. I’m not complete sure what happened next, but the spools stopped spinning. It could have been it came to the end of the line or it backlashed but it was no longer giving the big fish line. Dave had a good hold on the rod and held his ground as the rod started to strain under the pressure. Dave then yelled, “Get my truck!” We weren’t sure why he wanted his truck, nor were we able to find out because before any of us could move the first eye on the rod gave way. This started a chain reaction and we all watched as one by one the eyes separated from the rod until it was down to the last one. They last eye held on long enough for Dave to repeat his request for his truck before it to let loose and the spool and all the eyes headed to Cuba with the fish.
Nothing more happen on this trip. We did float the keg, but to do it we had to make a run to get some V-8 juice and hot sauce the next morning to mix with it. This took care of the rest of the beer, as well as our hangovers. BTY if you ever get invited to a Fish and Puke, stay away for your own safety…….
The End
Great stuff!
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