Secret Spots

In all the days I've spent on my poling platform guiding customers to within fly casting range of redfish, I cannot think of a single day that I have not reminisced about the days of old. Days when I launched my boat, knowing that I would be the only one there. Back in the days when there was such a thing as a secret fishing hole.

Growing up as a kid on the Texas Gulf Coast was a fantastic thing. My father turned me loose as often as he could to fish the local bays. And, by the time I was a freshman in high school, between summer vacation, weekends, and skipping school, my friends and I were spending a 100-150 days a year on the water. It wasn't long before we knew the bays from Galveston to Port O'Connor as well, if not better than most of the old timers fishing there. As we all grew older and wiser, we learned keeping our mouths shut was one of the secrets to our success.

I still remember, way back in my high-school days, asking two good friends, Craig Williams and John Thomas Dusek, where they had landed a spectacular stringer of trout and reds and, almost as if rehearsed, they both replied with mischief in their voices, "At Gross Cut." John Thomas quickly added, "It was so dirty." This was my first introduction to a method of communicating that would conceal and hide any fishing or duck shooting hole of our choosing. The method, which might be considered a backwoods type of pig latin, consisted of a few key words and phrases and a very random method of choosing an undecipherable name for a new area, one that might even already have a name.

The name of the game was to do whatever it took to misguide any individual, friend or otherwise, from the area that we were catching fish, even if it meant passing up proven spots because we were afraid someone might see us there, however unlikely the spot might seem to the average fisherman. Hell, we even kept secrets from each other from time to time. Each spot that we guarded took a certain combination of friends to unlock.
For example, Gross Cut was only known to about four or five of us. Before someone new was allowed to visit the spot it damned near required a Constitutional amendment.

Although we were quite proud of our ability to keep secrets and have certain 'spots' to ourselves, we were not the only ones to deny information. Many old timers did the same but they did in a much different way. They just told you 'no' and laughed at you. I remember one crusty old salt down in Matagorda laughing at me when I asked where he caught a nice stringer of fish. I remember the words vividly, "Now why would I go and do something as stupid as to tell you or anyone else where I'm catching fish?" I felt like a whipped puppy as I listened to him laugh, but as I grew older I now understand his reasoning. He was protecting a good thing- something that was easy to do back then. Oh my, how things have changed.

Now days, in the age of information, with cell phones and the internet, hot bites and big schools of fish cannot be kept secret for long. Word spreads like a wild-fire across a salt grass prairie and before you know it, the boat ramps are packed and people are fighting for spots to fish. The sad part is that the only way to break the chain of information is to stop it before it starts. And, any angler wanting to keep a secret, better keep his mouth shut from the start. Yeah, right. One buddy tells another and so on....

Throughout the daily grind I routinely hear people reveal information in the form of, "A friend hooked me up with some good info this past weekend and we got on some really solid fish. I'll tell you where they are if you promise not to tell anyone else. I would hate for him to find out that I told you." And, so starts the chain of events that either pushes fish out of an area or gets them all strung up and tossed into the grease.

The sad thing is that I know of very few reefs, guts, marsh ponds or lakes that are not marked on a chart with the GPS coordinates giving their precise locations. And, with all the little spots being known and the Good Lord not making any more it makes it harder and harder to keep a secret, so what are we to do? Well the next time you find a good bite and your buddies ask you where you caught 'em- just smile and tell them Gross Cut. That ought to confuse them plenty.

Best of tides....