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We were just about to put the boat into the water when a guy sauntered over purposefully (they never seem to move with much more purpose than a saunter in Texas).

 “They just hit the World Trade Centre” he told our guide.  It was 8.25am CST on the 11^th September 2001 and terrorists had just flown 2 hi-jacked United Airlines jets into the World Trade Centre in New York City, one jet for each tower.

 The sense of disbelief amongst the small group of marina staff and fishing guides who were there was palpable. When we saw the pictures on the TV in the marina’s store it was simply numbing – how could someone do such an awful thing?

It was strange to be going fishing with all of this going on, but we’d booked the charter, paid the guide and the boat was in the water. Besides, what was there that we could do? So we went fishing.

My friend Suzanne had been working in Houston for several months and was being pulled off the contract she was on and “ordered” back to Minneapolis, so she’d decided to take a days vacation time and tag along with me for the fresh air. As it turned out that was the smart move as all US air traffic were grounded and the airports in chaos.

The day had started early with the guide, a guy called Bill Cannan, picking us up in his outrageously large 4WD Suburban. This thing was the size of a small garage and was super comfortable, but at 14 mpg I reckoned it would be just a bit much for Scottish roads and pockets; fuel prices in the USA are £1 ($1.35) a gallon compared with UK prices of almost £4.00 ($6.00) per gallon.

His boat was a 25ft Boston Whaler and it was in good shape, with new outboard (just put in last week at a cost of $14,000 – serious hardware) and a bunch of newish, high quality rods and reels.  Before we set out, he’d told me that Galveston has “world-class fishing, it just don’t look too pretty.” He was right; we sped out through the island’s ports between barges and oil rigs and container ships. It wasn’t pretty in aesthetic terms, but it was pretty interesting to see nonetheless.

The wind had fanned the waves up to a good 4ft chop and the whaler was getting slammed about as we started to get outside. This wasn’t good as we’d originally chartered for a days tarpon and shark fishing, but with this swell it was clear that we’d be anchored up after “bull reds”: large male redfish that arrive at this time of year. To get out of the chop, Bill headed into the lee of one of the jetty’s. These are huge man-made breakwaters stretching some 3 – 5 miles offshore and the difference on the lee-side was welcome.

We sped out to the end of the jetty where Bill dropped anchor and rigged up a few rods with heavy lead and a large shad dead bait. I have to say that this is the most mind-numbingly boring fishing for me. I just can’t get into dead-bait fishing at anchor, well at least not unless the fish are biting and even then not for very long. There isn’t much I can really say about this bit of the day. The fishing was slow and Bill and Suzanne’s mobile phones were ringing constantly with people checking that they were ok and giving us updates on what was now being called the Attack on America. By 10.30 we’d heard that the Pentagon had been hit and also heard the other stories of car-bombs, other rogue jets being shot down by F-16 fighters, commercial aircraft hi-jacked all over the world. Disturbing, terrifying stuff, most of which proved to be rumour in the final analysis.

At about 11.00, I felt a couple of sharp digs on the rod. I thought it might be another catfish as we’d been losing baits to them regularly, but this just felt a bit heavier and then the rod just bent over. Bill said “Hit’im now Chic” so I hit ‘im and boy did that make him mad! The fish tore off under the boat and headed determinedly out past the end of the jetty. My old buddy from Florida, Captain Butch, is a redfish expert and he’d told me if they run under the boat, get your rod point right down into the water so that they can’t break you on the hull. So I did this and silently thanked Butchie. The fish stayed on. This was a serious redfish and it took a fair bit of grunt to get him to the boat. Suze let out a “Wow!” when she saw the fish and no wonder – it was at least 40 inches and weighed around 30lbs: a very nice red. But that was that – no more redfish strikes and only the constant annoyance of hard-head cats stealing the baits. Somewhere along the line though, the wind had fallen off and Bill decided to try another jetty. Once under way, we quickly realised that the swell had dropped dramatically along the beach front too and was down to a more manageable 2 ft with no whitecaps. So Bill cranked up the big Evinrude and headed outside again.

When fishing for tarpon here, it’s impossible not to catch sharks. The reason is that you use a large, free lined shad dead bait which is as good a shark snack as any and the technique is simple: you look for one of the many shrimp boats that are trawling up and down, you get into the wash behind it, sling the baits out and wait for a strike while drifting in the wake. After about half an hour or so if you haven’t hooked up, you go find another shrimper.

Tarpon, jacks, sharks, kingfish and dolphins all follow the shrimpers, hoovering up the bait fish stirred up by the activity. Simple food-chain mechanics.

Like Bill said, world class fishing but it don’t look too pretty.

That aside though, I much preferred this to being anchored up and we did catch fish. Before I came away, I told my boys that I would be fishing for tarpon and sharks. They ignored the tarpon bit (the bit I was interested most in) and went straight to the “Wow – are they BIG sharks?” followed by the usual 20 questions: how will I get them, what will happen if they jump in the boat, are the teeth very big. The whole kids interrogation process. You know the drill.

I’ve never caught a tarpon and I really wanted too. Bill said that they run up to and even over 200lbs here and that definitely makes it a world class tarpon fishery. On the other hand, I’d never caught a shark either and to be honest I didn’t really want to. I guess I am maybe a bit snobbish about this; shark fishing has just never appealed to me and I don’t really like sharks. What can I say?

But I allowed that I was actually fishing for tarpon anyway and if , by any chance,  I did happen to hook a shark, well I was doing that bit for the kids. It helps you through the day to get the ethics straight.

Anyway, the first shrimper produced a couple of bites but no hook-ups. It was called the Lady Jennifer and Jennifer being my ex-wife’s name it seemed appropriate that we go find another boat. Superstition is a powerful thing at sea. Bill, for example, uses small balloons on the line as strike indicators and when he buys a new bag of them, he throws all the blue ones away before going on the water. He also has a friend who will not tolerate bananas on board his boat and goes through everyone’s lunch packs and chucks them out at the jetty. Interesting.

Capt Andy

We found another shrimper called Capt Andy next and had a hook-up immediately the baits went in the water. All I saw was a big silver coloured flash and splash as the fish shot out of the water. “Is it a tarpon?” I asked Bill “I don’t rightly know yet” he replied “But it sure jumped didn’t it”.

Boy was it strong. Line ripped off the multiplier and I dug the rod into the belly belt and just hung on. Stand up fishing is great fun, but brutal on the back and arms without a harness and it wasn’t long before I could feel the strain. This was one tough fish.

When we got him to the boat, we saw why. The large circle hook had caught in the shark’s fin. I couldn’t get his head up to tire him and although Bill leadered him several times, he couldn’t hold him and we got soaked with his tail ripping up the water. The shark got so mad at us that it charged the boat and we all clearly heard its teeth crunching on the hull. But eventually we prevailed and got him aboard for some photos and a quick snip of the leader to get him unhooked.

Gingerly, we put our hands down the hull and there, just under the waterline, were the score marks of the shark’s teeth. “Never seen one do that” drawled Bill.

My first shark. Not a big one, just a small 60lb or so spinner shark. But it was enough to change my opinion on shark fishing. This was exciting stuff; jumping, acrobatic fish with real power and attitude plus a frisson of danger from the business end of the beast. I could get to like this.

We played tag with Capt. Andy all the rest of the afternoon and did pretty good; three sharks into the boat and another 5 lost either by breaking us or by simply chomping through the nylon leader. One of the break-offs was a pretty big fish and it too charged the boat, the line hissing through the water as it came at us. It went under the boat, then quickly turned on itself and wrapped the line around the prop breaking it off. Did it do this deliberately? Hard to tell. I don’t ascribe to the theory of smart fish. But I guess that simple self-preservation takes hold and they try whatever they can to get away and use everything they can in their environment to aid them.

The biggest shark we got to the boat went over 100 lbs and was a real brute to land as it was also fin hooked. These circle hooks were excellent for this kind of operation as they avoided the deep hooking which is potentially fatal when dead-baiting. Even the fin hooked fish didn’t bleed and were easily unhooked. I liked this much better than my Venezuelan trip where using traditional hooks we were releasing badly bleeding fish back to an uncertain future.

Suze and I with the big shark

Spinners are one of the few sharks that jump on hook-up, apparently, and they are also very similar to black-tips except for the positioning of the fins and the teeth. Black-tip’s dentistry is not as prominent nor as fearsome as the spinners. They had a primal beauty I suppose, but nothing like the elegance or majesty of a sailfish or marlin.

 All day we’d had the radio tuned to the newscasts and they made black listening. Bill and Suzanne’s mobiles rang continuously too and I guess that if we’d had peace to fish that day we’d have caught loads more. It was difficult to concentrate, for understandable reasons. One time, Bill went to set the drag on a reel whilst holding his mobile to his ear. A rough wave rocked the boat just at that moment and suddenly he was within a whisker of going overboard. I was behind him and grabbed his belt, pulling him back aboard. And they say mobiles aren’t dangerous?

4.00pm and time to go. It was over an hours run back but it wasn’t nearly so bumpy now, especially inside the island area. All the way back, the enormities of the events in New York were sinking in.

The last time I’d visited the US was in November 2000 and then I also met up with Suze. We had drinks in the Windows On The World bar, on top of one of the Trade Towers. It was an incredible experience, holding a cold beer and looking down on light aircraft and choppers buzzing below. We’d also spent ages going through the shopping malls and restaurants on the lower floors. These buildings were incredible structures, small communities in themselves with tens of thousands of people in them all the time. To think that they were now completely demolished was terrifying. And to think that people somewhere planned this meticulously and are most probably very pleased with the outcomes is simply too monstrous to deal with.

I didn’t like sharks because I thought that they were cold blooded, menacing and frightening.  But there is a world of difference between their menace and the menace of the cold-blooded murderers that committed this atrocity in the name of Allah.

In this world, there’s too much religion and not enough god.

Footnote.

Because I was effectively stranded here due to the disaster, I took another days fishing. Bill was busy that day so he sent me out with another guy called Capt. Jim Leavelle (he of the “no bananas” rule).

 It was a perfect, textbook day with very light winds, clear skies and clear water. The sea was like a millpond and I had never been on the sea when it was as calm as this. There were butterflies, martins and even little hummingbirds flitting about more than 5 miles offshore. Baitfish were everywhere on the surface.

Despite this, we did not get one single bite and never even saw a fish larger than a minnow. Jim said that in 14 years he had “never, ever gone all the way out there and not had a bite.” He was exactly what I had always thought a Texan would be like, was Jim.

 “Unbileevubull” was all he could say by the end of the day. He’d tried hard too, couldn’t fault the man. We chased all around the Galveston area; covered more than 100 miles and burnt an incredible $135 in fuel (and at US prices, that’s an awful lot of fuel). But not a thing bit the baits. We’d gone out with a whole box of shad deadbait and came back in with the whole box apart from two baits on the hooks. Didn’t lose a single bait, not even to a catfish (unprecedented in my experience) and a totally blank day.

Well, tell a lie: I did manage to hook a 250 ton shrimp boat, but since I had foul-hooked it in the nets rather than hooked it cleanly in the bow, I don’t think that we could have claimed the all tackle record if we had managed to land it…

Chic McSherry September 11th 2001

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