Passport to Texas

Passport to Texas Outdoor Stories from Texas Parks and Wildlife

Austin resident, Bill Harwell’s, paternal grandmother and his great aunt Edna loved to fish… and often invited Bill and his cousin to share the adventure. This is his story:

One night I got the exciting news that my great aunt had come into possession of – what we called – a pontoon boat. But the even better part of it was we were going to go night fishing, which we had never done before. Her living in Atlanta, the best place to put in was a big lake, just southwest of Texarkana called Wright Patman Lake.

And so my cousin and I – we were probably about eight…nine…ten years old at the time…this is around 1960 -61 something like that — get all of our gear aboard (the two of us and these two ladies).

They tell us they’d been told that the best thing to attract fish, above and beyond the worms and the minnows, is to hang a couple of lanterns off the side of the pontoon boat…. maybe that is the best way to do it… but my main recollection was just this incredible plague-like swarm of June bugs, mosquitoes…getting bugs of all sorts and shapes in our soft drinks….up our noses…. We did do some good fishing, but the overwhelming remaining impression of night fishing for me is lots and lots of bugs.

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That’s our show for today… For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti

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