Hard Hooded Truck

Adventure Location: Rockport, Texas
Estimated Rolling Date: Feb. 12, 2012

Noon came and went but shortly after that the Truck was delivered with the new water pump installed and tested to be correctly repaired.  The warranty is 12 months, 12000 miles.  The Truck was so happy to get out of the shop it grabbed the fuel peddle and steering wheel in its grill and took me to Whataburger to celebrate.

My thought was that it was time to go back to the Castle.  Not no but DANG IT NO was the Truck’s response.  His grill grabbed control again and when we stopped it was at the fishing pier.  The Truck said “the day is nice so get busy fool”.  OK orders are orders.

 My rod, which is always ready in the back seat, and the other stuff was assembled on my body and down the pier my feet hurried.  That Truck can sure get a POSITIVE attitude sometimes.

It wasn’t long before the first fish was on the deck.

 It was a nice fat model of speckled trout that had a lot of energy when it took the bait.  It was a good bit heavier than the last few that have been caught here.  As it turns out it measured a bit over 17” long and was quite a bit heavier than the models caught a week ago.  A nice fish all around, but ornery as you will learn in a minute.

The lure was a DOA in gold flake.

 My preference is to not handle the fish by its body so the natural slime is not messed up.  This fish was big enough that when my fish gripper was used to handle the fish, I could not get a good toss with the fish.  The first toss dropped the fish into the rocks.

Ratzzzz now a bit of rock scrambling is needed.  TheOFM does not waste natural resources if it can be avoided.  So down onto the rocks my feet went.  The fish was picked up with the fish gripper again.  Another failed fling and my feet had to take me lower on the rocks.

This time the poor fish was head down in a crack and the gripper could not reach its mouth.  So a grab on the fish with my left hand was tried.  Speckled trout have the slimiest coating in the world.  It is way slipperier than wet greased glass.  My hand just slipped off the tail area and I fell back against the barnacle and oyster covered rocks. A very nice Hispanic teenager saw me fall and hurried over to see if he needed to help me.  WOW that is nice to see there are still some good young folks in the world.

OK now try grabbing the tail with the pliers.  Yea, that worked and the fish was released into the shallow water.  It was stunned from all the handling and time out of the water.  The water was only a foot deep so if it was needed I could step in and do more to help the fish survive.  But it revived and suddenly hit the turbo chargers and cleared the area. It was a good sight to see.

The Team went back to fishing, for a short while.  My right forearm started to burn.  The sleeve of my jacket was pulled up to reveal some what looked like very minor scratches.  Another cast or three later it was obvious from the pain that something must have been on the rocks that is not good for my wound.

The gear was gathered, rinsed off, placed in the Truck and away we went.  The Truck seemed to figure out something was wrong and took the Team straight to the Castle with no argument.  When a good look at the painful area was taken, it still seemed to be a very minor scrape.  However the growing red area and burning pain did not agree on the minor-ness of it.

The first washing with soap and water in the kitchen sink did not seem to do much.  Next washing was with an old tooth brush and soap.  The scrubbing did not feel good but seemed appropriate since something must be in the wounds.  A final vigorous rinsing was done and the area patted dry.  The burning had lessened but was still there and the red area was still vibrant.  Some antibiotic crème was smeared liberally on the wounds.

In a few minutes the redness was going down.  The pain started to lessen and there was hope.  Now it is about two hours later and the area looks like a couple of piddley small so what scratches and the pain is gone.  What was on those rocks is not known.  It could be something left from the Red Tide, some tentacle left over from some jellyfish or who knows what else.  It did manage to catch my attention.

Now that the Truck is back in the Team area it will be a great assist in the goal of trying to have tooooo much fun. TheOFM.