Father’s Day Weekend, 1974

Happy Father’s Day

It is dawn out on the Gulf of Mexico. The throttle is hard down on the 22-foot open Wellcraft as the first waves check our smooth progress, sharply marking the passage from inside South Louisiana’s protective Mermentau River jetties to open water. With an hour till full sunrise, the air is still cool and we have 10 miles to go before the inner line of oil rigs. I eat a mustard and liverwurst sandwich, sitting on the bow, legs dangling over the side, as we begin to plane out over the crest of the waves.

The fog is lifting when we pass the first rigs, and we both see and hear them, each with its own distinctive horn. The skies are clear, the winds calm, so we head farther into to gulf to the rigs 20 miles offshore in search of red snapper.

Once we’re beyond the first belt of rigs, we drop the trolling lines, looking to get some king mackerel. We find instead that the Spanish mackerel have started their runs in the northern gulf. We quickly begin to get some strikes. Before long we have a dozen seven-pounders in the ice chests, thumping around in the well running down the center of the boat.

By 10 a.m. we are pulling up to the next grouping of rigs. Dad slows the boat and circles the platform so we can tie up and fish. Standing on the bow with the rig hook, a 10-foot-long aluminum shaft with an over-large shepherd’s crook on one end, I wait. The rig hook has a rope attached with a rubber tensioner tied in the middle, and each oil rig is composed of two-foot-diameter pipes. My job is to reach out and hook the rig, then secure the rope.

Modest three-to-four-foot swells are coming in under the bow, and with the boat nosed under the platform, the up and down motion is significant. Balancing, waiting for the boat to rise, I reach out and make the hook. Dad throttles back to about 30 feet from the rig, and I tie us off. My brother Keith and I break out the tackle, bait our hooks with pogies, and drop our lines. The depth at 20 miles off the Cameron Parish coastline is only 20-30 feet.

We stay put for a couple of hours, adding more sheepshead than red snapper to the cooler. The waves start to shift direction, so we move on. We troll for another hour without much success. Keith gets one sensational strike from what is probably a ling, but the large fish throws the lure in an acrobatic leap out of the water.

Thunderstorms are beginning to build to the east and west, so Dad turns our boat northward and begins a fast run to the jetties. Other than a few waterspouts at 10 miles distance, the return trip is uneventful. The water is smooth on the Mermentau, and we head the final four miles to the dock at Grand Chenier. With our boat safely trailered, we stop by the Tarpon Freezo for a malt in the one-blinking-light town of Creole. We’re delayed at the drawbridge by heavy barge traffic on the intercoastal, but we’re finally back home around 5.

Having cleaned the boat and hosed the salt from the tackle, the three of us stand in the backyard cleaning and gutting for the next couple of hours. I dump the heads and guts to the waiting turtles in our five-acre pond. The fish are packed in Guth milk cartons and stacked in the freezer. Exhausted but satisfied, we polish our shoes for church in the morning and call it a day.

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Reading this weekend: some light summertime fare. Hope Road, by John Barlow. A Taste For Vengeance, by Martin Walker

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