Fishing in the Rio Grande Banks

After my daughter arrived from school today, my husband gave me the news that we were going to go fishing....again!

We've been going fishing like fishing hogs for the past couple of weeks since we obtained our fishing licenses.  The fishing on the river is pretty good, but we're amateurs, so we kinda suck at fishing.

I really like fishing, especially because I was never allowed to fish when I was a little girl.

As an adult, now I get to fish when ever I want and I have my own fishing pole and bait my own line, etc.

But if I sound like I was annoyed about fishing today, well, I was.

It's not that I didn't want to go.  I did, but when you have a 3 year old child that doesn't understand the words "danger" and "no", well, you already know that what is supposed to be a relaxing experience will be more like panic attacks and stressing out.

Not putting too much hope in it, I called mom to see if she was willing to watch Junior for a few hours while we went fishing.

She rarely wants to, so I was not surprised when she said no, but I believed her when she said it was because she had to go to work early.  It was, after all, pretty late in the day, and she usually goes in to work by 6pm.  It was already 5.

Oh well, we took him anyways.

But the problem this time wasn't Junior.

No, oh no.  Junior behaved pretty well.

The problem this time is that my husband and his friends decided to take some left over rotted bait that stank to high hell! 

The stench was horrible!

"The fish aren't biting," my husband says.

I stuck my hands under his nose and asked, "Would you eat something that smells like this?"

"I have in the past," he says mischieviously.

Oooh, that man is incorrigible!

I do not, nor have I ever smelled like rotting shrimp!

Not that bad at least, lol.

Overall, it was still a nice experience.  It was cool out and we stayed there until it got very dark.  Junior built a fire, with our help of course, and Leyley (my daughter) was making sand castles.

Fish wise, we only caught about 6 fish.  Pretty bad, but I don't blame them for not wanting to bite into that bait.

I couldn't wait to get home and take a shower!

This was one of those moments where I wish I had taken my video camera, just to capture the night life on the Texas/Mexico river, and I will share some video from this year. 

I'll post it up tomorrow.

Experiences like these are what I want to share with the world, that the dangers here are not like what they make them sound.

But it's hard.

It's hard to put into words the experience of life on the border.

Not too far from where we were standing you could hear motor bikes running back and forth.  More than likely drug runners. 

That's the part that is hard to explain.

You see, our little fishing expedition is dangerous.

It is as dangerous as walking into the forest at night, or walking down an alley at midnight.

If you are from a big city, you run a big risk of getting mugged, hurt, and in many cases, even killed.

The only difference between a big city and the Texas/Mexico border is that you have a big river in between and if you see someone on the other side, more than likely nothing will happen.  They'll wave.  You wave, and it's a friendly interchange.

However, the phrase that is most common around here is, "Wrong place.  Wrong time".

It happens less often than not to regular civilians.

To be honest, I can't recall a moment where a regular civilian has been hurt or murdered by Mexicans for just being on the opposite side of the river.

What I have heard is of American's being by the river at the exact place where they are going to run drugs, and the worst that happened was that the drug runners shot warning shots into the air to scare away the American's from the area.

When it comes to people crossing over, they usually just rush by without a word and continue running.  One guy reported that once while he was fishing this guy crossed the river and then came to stand by his side and struck up a friendly conversation with him like they were old pals!

The border patrol, however, experience "wrong place wrong time" more often than not, and mainly because that's what they are looking for.  They are looking for what might be the wrong place at the wrong time, because more than likely there is where they will find what they are trying to stop - drug runners, undocumented immigrants, etc.  If you ask them, they'll tell you the border is a war zone, but to people like me who live here, that equates to the same as asking a cop if his/her job is dangerous and they'll say "Yes, I bump into killers, rapists, thieves, child molestors, etc. all the time!"

So naturally it is more dangerous for them.

So for me, on this night, I really wasn't scared.  Neither was my 8 year old or my 3 year old.

What I was scared of was wild animals, so after a while, I told my husband we were taking off.

Besides, I couldn't take the smell of that rotting shrimp anymore, and apparently neither could he because he said he was taking off too.

It took about 10 minutes to get back home, but guess what the first thing I did was?

You guessed it.  I took a bath and believe it or not, I went and had to take another one and another one.

For some reason, I just couldn't get that rotting shrimp smell off of me!

Finally, I just sprayed some perfume on me and rubbed my hands with alcohol.

My brother came over and asked me if I had seen the movie "Spartacus: Gods of the Arena".

I hadn't, so he brought the movie over and that's what I'm about to do now.

I do hope it's a good movie because I don't have anything else to do, and I'll be damned if I'm going to clean the house.

Until next time...