By Capt. Mike Williams
A lot of days, when it’s cold, wet and raining like today, these events take place a lot, in Galveston’s cafe’s, coffee shops, and bait camps…a group of mostly older men sit around and tell tall tales of past fishing adventures that have taken place over many years of fishing the Galveston Bay complex or the Gulf of Mexico. Some of the stories can be hard to believe unless the person telling the story has some really good pictures or even better, a video, or at least some type of documentation. Well, my best tall tale started one morning in the fall of 2002. I left the Galveston Yatch Basin in my B-25 Whaler on a 4 man tarpon trip, and was on my way up the Bolivar beachfront heading for the Mc Faddin Wildlife Refuge. When we neared Crystal Beach, the wind and waves had already started to pick up, and I already figured it was going to be a long rough ride to the refuge. The water was in good shape, but the seas had started to build and were running about three feet.
Just above Rollover, the wind really started picking up out of the south and I’m thinking it’s going to be a very rough ride on the return trip to Galveston. After about another mile, I got a whiff of the unmistakable smell of fish. I slowed the Whaler and turned left, back into the wind. One of the men asked, “Captain, do you see some fish?” and my reply was, “no, but I smell ‘um.” “Do you think they are tarpon?” As I looked back, I saw about 50 slicks and mud boiling up everywhere. My reply was, “no, bullreds.” Now, figuring in the wind and the distance to the Refuge, I asked the men, “y’all want to catch some bullreds?” All 4 men answered at once, “sure!” I baited up and slowly eased the boat upwind of the slicks, turned the sideways and stared the first drift at 8:30 am. I repeated that procedure over and over, and at 1pm we were out of bait. I was not fishing, just baiting hooks and taking off fish. In that time span, the 4 men caught and released 114 bullreds. I think the preveous bullred record on my boat was 75. When we got back to the Galveston Yatch Basin, I went to the office and found Raymond Berry, a long time employee. He was a witness as the fishermen all confirmed the 114 bullred catch in writing. Raymond and I signed the document.
One of the men was from Dallas and worked for Taylor Publishing Company. A “blow-by-blow” book was written of that 114 bullredfish day, and I still have a copy of the book.
That’s just about the best tall tale I have…as far as bullreds…
(This article published 1/26/2015)
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in feb of 03 i witnessed about a 30/35 lb tarpon caught and released on the bay side of the pass- just 2 yrs ago anglers witnessed another angler hook up to a big tarpon on the bay side of the pass guesstimated to weigh about 100 lbs– this is unwitnessed by me unfortunately but the way they told of the tailwalk and gill rattling leads me to believe their story- the angler lost the big fish when it went under the bridge- i would’ve luved to have gotten pictures of THAT fish– i lived in league city in the early 80s and fished the warm water discharge of the baycliff spillway- in october of 82/83 we caught baby tarpon at the spillway running about 12-18 lbs- every now and then a 100 lb plus tarpon would come in chasing mullet- it was a heck of a sight- no one ever hooked up to these big gals though- i lived in florida for cpl yrs and really enjoyed the tarpon fishery there- i just hope that tx revives its silver king fishery- i also did a tarpon tagging deal back in the mid 90s off of galveston where we jumpded around 5 tarpon- landing, tagging, and releasing one 150 lb silver king-
TWO PROS TALK ABOUT BABY TARPON ————IF a person asked me this question ,who knows the most about the fish and fishing RollOVER PASS a scientist or ED SNYDER….. MY REPLY ,would be ED SNYDER ,because the man lives there and has seen with his own eyes what happerns in that pass over many many years .EXAMPLE ,who saw the tarpon larvae ,the scientist or ED SNYDER ….HOWEVER ,WE all know there is a place for our scientist ,but I also know for a fact , a lot of the things they know ,they learned from people like us …NOW , my guides and I have caught small tarpon as small as 3 pounds in the winter time .One time IN GALVESTON WATERS I caught 27 tarpon and one trout and the trout about 7 pounds was larger than any of the baby tarpon…IN the winter and the KILLING FREEZE OF 1983 ,I waded THE SHORELINES of EAST GALVESTON BAY a lot field testing Mirrolures .One day afterthat freeze I was wading the south shoreline of East Bay down near Yates Bayou….That whole shore line looked like rail road ties laying on the shoreline ,but the ties were dead gar ,big ones ,that froze to death in the freeze ..Also in the mix of dead fish were baby tarpon from 3 pounds to about 18 pounds ..NOW ,this was very late 83 very early 84 .. ,I already knew at that time that we have small RESIDENT TARPON ,that event just comfirmed it …In late fall for many years i have bouught live mullet for flounder ,sometimes i have found very very small tarpon in the live mullet..I have seen and found these small tarpon in my live mullet as late as mid December which tell me ,we do have very small tarpon in our waters — NOW ,I did not see the larvae in Rollover Pass recently ,however in my opinion ,IF ED SNYDER said they looked like baby tarpon ,well,those little fish were probably TINY BABY TARPON …
fishing rollover a week ago we spotted thousands of fish larvae swimming along the bulkhead- i men the water was black with them– my fishin bud snagged one on his mirrolure and we looked at it– about an inch long, clear minnow- i then looked it up im google search and it looked just like tarpon larvae– is it possible-?- i know that Bios think tarpon are spawning up along the Louisiana/Texas coastal border- any answers on this-?-