Rain, wind end fishing trip early
I awoke Saturday morning to the drumming of rain on my roof and the braying of an obviously annoyed mule. At first I thought it was Wrong Willie and wife Jan having an argument in their own trailer, but when I looked out through the curtain of falling water, a large mule peered balefully at me over the fence.
Through the open door, I watched Willie and Jan slosh through the water to arrive at our fifth-wheel. "This might put a damper on the fishing this morning," Willie said, shaking like a dog once he was inside.
"We can just cast out toward the road," I said.
"What are we having for breakfast?" he said.
"Fried eggs, biscuits and gravy."
"I'll make the gravy," he offered.
The War Department threw herself in front of the stove. "No, you won't. We're having cream gravy."
"But I like red-eye," Willie pouted. "You never let me make gravy when we're all together."
"That's because your gravy is horrible, dear" Jan said, sliding into the dining booth. "You can pour me some coffee, though."
"I'll boil some up," Willie said, slightly mollified.
"Nope," I said. "We have a coffee maker. One doesn't boil coffee in a trailer."
"I want to do something," he said.
"Sit down and shut up," I told him.
The rain continued to fall, and the wind drove it sideways. The fishing was shot, so after breakfast the girls wanted to go shopping. Through a carefully crafted series of negotiations, we agreed to take them as long as we could drop by the Texas Freshwater Fisheries Center.
Surprisingly, they agreed. While the rain fell, the girls shopped, and Willie and I dozed in the truck. As the afternoon progressed, we moved to the second phase of the day's trip and wandered through the Fisheries Center, drooling over monstrous catfish, bass and crappie finning in huge aquariums.
We arrived there in the rain, and we left in the rain. Almost like patients waiting to see a doctor, we impatiently waited for the rain and wind to cease. It didn't. We returned to the RV park later that afternoon. Doc and his Spousal Unit arrived, and instead of catching fish, we went out to eat fried catfish.
Buffet style didn't help our gluttony, and by the time we left the restaurant, the entire group was quietly and desperately trying to stay awake. After everyone left later that night, the War Department and I went to sleep with the sound of a deluge pounding on the roof.
The next morning dawned sunny and windy.
How windy was it?
It was so windy, the two mules in the pasture behind the fifth-wheel took shelter in the lee of a barn to keep from blowing over.
When I opened the door, Willie was standing outside in the wind. His clothes flapped and snapped like a flag in a hurricane.
"I think it'll be too windy to take the boat out," he shouted through the gale.
"You're right. Come on in. She's making gravy."
"Bacon, too?"
"All right, but only two pounds, and then we're going to try fishing from the docks."
The bacon and gravy were good. The fishing wasn't. Dressed in windbreakers to cut the damp chill, we ventured onto the open dock with rod-and-reels in hand. The wind was so strong it immediately snatched the magnetic clip-on sunglasses from my head and skipped them across the waves like a rock over a pond.
"*$@)&%@)&#$!!!" I said.
"You say something?" the War Department asked.
"&*#@^%!!!!" I repeated, though the words were somewhat different.
"Why are you speaking in symbols?" Willie asked, mildly.
"$90 worth of sunglasses!!!" I finally managed.
"Blew them off your head?" Willie asked, amazed.
"Yes!"
"That kind of wind should give our crappie jigs a lot of action."
It did, though the action occurred in the air, because the wind blew so hard we couldn't keep the light jigs in the water.
"At least the lake is up," the War Department said, always looking at the positive side.
"It needs to be three feet higher to reach the lure," I said, watching the wind belly the line and yank the lure into the air. I gave up on the fishing trip. We returned to the campsite, packed the trailer and left for home.
The wind blew us like a paper cup down the highway.
Reavis Wortham's e-mail address is reaviswortham@att.net.
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