“Clyde” and Otha (at right) show off a catch of saltwater catfish. Their trip almost landed the pair in custody of the U.S. Coast Guard.

Outdoor lovers are prone, perhaps more than others, to find themselves in the midst of an adventure. It’s like bacon and eggs for most of us; Nature and adventure. Adventures make memorable differences in our lives and they are not always positive experiences. Sometimes adventure gets us into a tight. Likewise, some adventures are simply ridiculous, especially when looked back upon.

    Admitting some of my own ridiculous ventures tarnishes any image of a macho outdoorsman, I know. But my bumbles just might move you to look back on some of yours and laugh at yourself, which is said to lower blood pressure, diminish worries and increase your life span. What’s a little embarrassment to bring on these blessings?

    I will ease into these admissions by blaming at least one of my foolish scrapes partially on one particular friend who is so inclined. To protect the guilty we will call him Clyde.

In new waters

    Clyde and his wife, like my wife and me, are Mississippians and found ourselves in Texas early in our careers. He crowed that the fish were biting like mad near their home at LaMarque. We drove down. I should have foreseen trouble when his rig consisted of a 14 foot, pointed-bow skiff, minus two feet of its rear which had rotted out, thus having been sawn off and a new transom nailed into place to support an ancient McCullough outboard motor; you know, the chain saw people.

    I should have worried in earnest when we launched into the Galveston ship channel and began to fish right in the ship lanes. Figuring (wrongly) that Clyde knew his territory, I dropped my line and we began to catch “catfish,” the spittin’ image of the channel cats we caught on creeks in Mississippi.

    Clyde’s glee and my deep concerns were interrupted by a deafening horn. I looked around and saw, at its water line, the biggest Greek cargo ship in the ocean. I had to strain my neck to the breaking point to look high enough to see the rail and above that the wheelhouse which I knew contained a pilot, screaming Greek expletives as he cut back several giant diesel engines to attempt to save us from inundation and drowning from his eight foot wake.

    “Don’t worry, he’ll slow down,” said Clyde calmly in answer to my screams. “They always do.”

    “Do you have any idea how expensive it is to cut all those engines back to save our ignorant hides?” I yelled. He gave me a pumpkin-face grin as Clyde pulled up another “catfish” from 40 feet down. He wouldn’t budge.

Narrow escape

    The wake had calmed to just four feet when it hit the tiny wooden boat and we bounced so that my teeth nearly broke on Clyde’s seat-back and my head hit the big white motor behind me.

    Hoping he had drowned us, the ship’s pilot powered up after going past and later likely died early in life from high blood pressure. We escaped arrest by the Coast Guard, most certainly alerted by the Greek, by quickly catching all the “catfish” we wanted, motoring to the bank and trailering back to Clyde’s home. We are surely still on the Coast Guard Most Wanted list.

    Safe from capture and back at Clyde’s house, we photographed our catch, which we discarded because “they were not fit to eat,” rightly declared by Clyde. I think he believed the “channel cat” were ruined by the salt water rather than actually being an inedible species called “hardhead catfish,” despised by anglers in its range from Texas to Florida. I did not assail Clyde’s pride in the catch, however, by revealing this truth.

    Hopefully he did not send the photos to catfishing friends in Mississippi who would have laughed themselves into unconsciousness.