Barry Solutions, Inc.

 Hi, my names Drake Barry I am the author of this page.  I love football, dogs, all the stuff most boys my age do, but my biggest interest is the outdoors.   I hope you enjoy my outdoor adventures. J 

Pier Adventures

Whoosh whoosh, “The tides are pretty high today Dad, I hope it doesn’t take our lines too much,” I asked, as we pulled up to pier 61 on Galveston Island.

“I think it’ll be fine, lets just get unpacked before it gets to dark,” my father replied. So that’s what we did.   We loaded are arms with tons of tackle boxes, poles, lanterns, and chairs. It was hard for me to get all my supplies to the pier, mostly because of all the things pinching into my fingers. But my Dad waited whenever I had to rearrange my supplies.  Eventually we made it though. We went half way down the pier and saw that people were catching some pretty decent sized fish. Mostly they were just catfish though. Our fellow fishermen started to clear out before 6:00 p.m.   That’s when we settled into the area we were going to fish that night.

Clink. Whoosh.  The lantern flicks on as darkness starts to close in for the night. So we started putting together our rigs that we’d be using that night. Which consisted of a two-ounce weight and a circle hook with dead shrimp we purchased at a local bait shop that day. Then I casted out. I hooked my finger around my line as the tide took my line rolling it on the bottom. With my finger hooked around my line I was able to feel the smallest twitch, just in case there where some small ones. There it is, fish on !  It felt like a pretty decent size with the current. But later, we found out it was so small we could just flip them out of the water on to the pier. But you had to be careful because those little fish could just fall into the cracks. Trust me, that happened once, it was not going to happen again. But don’t worry we saved the little fish,  but barely. For about the rest of the night we just caught small little cats.

Then I felt a large thump on the line.  Then another,  and I set the hook! I know,  before I mentioned that little guy felt like a good fish but this boy was different. Maybe this was the fish we came to Galveston Island for! It was a good fight.  When the fish started to get close to the pier my dad got his flashlight and the net.  We watched carefully trying to see a flash of the fish so we could net it.   That’s right.   There wasn’t going to be any flinging this fish up out of the water. There in the gaze of the flashlight we saw a flash and the flop of a tail. Seizing his chance, my dad lunged at the fish with his net, hauling it up onto a towel where we would unhook it.

“ Wow it’s a Black Drum,” my dad said. I had heard about these on ocean fishing boats.  They get pretty big, this one was a pretty good size too! It was like your normal big large mouth bass. This was a really exciting time for me. So, to capture this moment, we took lots of pictures with the fish and me.  We decided to end the night on a good note and packed up and headed home.

I love that my Dad takes me on all sorts of fishing adventures and teaches me all these things about they outdoors. Someday I hope to be able to teach my children what he has taught me.  ~Drake