When I was just a little kid, my dad used to take me with him when he would go fishing for bass in the Rio Grande Valley canals. One of my first memories of those times was the day I fell off an irrigation gate into the canal; and the image of the way the water looked as I went down to the bottom and back up. My dad caught me as I surfaced; and pulled me out, so everything turned out ok. However, I never again swung on one of those gate wheels!
Later, he would take the whole family down to the Arroyo Colorado at Paso Real to fish; and I would get a piece of old line with a mullet head on it and spend the time fishing for crabs. That ended the day that a huge redfish came right up to the bank and took my crab line away from me. The next day, I had my own fishing rod.
Sometimes, we would go down to the Brownsville Ship Channel, to a place where a friend of my dad's ran a bait stand. He had a nice dock and a couple of boats; and loved kids. My folks would set up camp nearby; and I'd spend hours fishing off the back of one of the boats. There were all kinds of fish in that channel. I would catch piggy perch, hardheads, and angelfish 'til the world looked level; and my folks would fish from the bank for some of the monster trout, reds, and drum that frequented the channel there. By the way, that's still a great place for tackle busters...