Ascension Athletics for Aug. 10, 2017 – The Advocate

A long time ago....

Theres a pretty popular thing on Facebook called Throw Back Thursday that Ive participated in a time or two. The premise is to post a picture from the past that most folks might not be able to identify. Its pretty neat, and I like it a lot. What follows is my throwback Thursday, only its about the outdoors and a great friendship.

I grew up fresh water fishing. My dad, Jerry Lyle, was a world-class bass angler and brought all eight of us kids fishing with him at one time or another. Both of my grandfathers fished, and fly fishing was their passion, especially paw paw Marchand. He loved to catch bream on a fly rod, and he was good at it. So my fishing education was well rounded, to say the least.

I met my wife-to-be, Deborah Guice, in my early 20s and as we dated, I developed a friendship with her brother, James Goosie Guice. He had what we could call a university-style education from his father, Sonny, so we hit it off quite nicely. Goosie was an experienced fresh water angler but had salt water experience, something Id never done before.

Ill never forget my first trip down, I mean way down, the road south to Venice. It might as well have been Venice, Italy, as far as it seemed but it was below Belle Chase, as far as the road goes.

Our plan for the day was to get some bait shrimp and fish with a shad rig hoping to catch some croaker. But Goosie assured me that we would catch something for sure as Venice was a fish haven. I was pretty excited but a little tentative because Id never been that far before.

We launched the boat in a small marina that is no longer open and idled out of the canal in Goosies Louisiana Traveler bateau, and I entered the land of the giants. To our left was the Mississippi River, full of crew boats, shrimp boats, tugboats and ships. To our right was Grand Pass that included all of the above less the ships.

It took a while to get settled in for me but soon I was pretty comfortable among all those big boats and concentrated on our fishing. Our day was not too productive for quite a while, and I dont think we actually caught any croakers, despite our best efforts.

The day was drawing to a close but our enthusiasm hadnt dropped a bit. We anchored the boat at the mouth of a canal that had some camps on it and began to cast those double-hooked shad rigs for the umpteenth time. We had a few bites, and Goosie finally caught a bass that weighed about 2 pounds, which surprised us all but got our adrenaline pumping. Then one of us made a cast out toward the middle of Grand Pass but that pair of shrimp never made it to the bottom before a 3- or 4-pound blue cat swallowed up the bait and it was on.

For the next 30 or 40 minutes, one big catfish after another hit the boat and into the ice chest they went. We caught them until we ran out of daylight as one of us would say, Its getting dark, but the other two answered, One more cast. We finally left but not before we filled our ice chests with catfish.

That was the beginning of something that lasted the test of time. Goosie, his dad, Sonny, and Thompson Brown obtained a duck hunting lease across the river from Venice on Batiste Collette that I was blessed to take part in for a long time.

Back then, Venice was pretty quiet except on opening weekends of duck season. We could spend the weekend back in the marsh and not see another boat. A pretty normal weekend would consist of six people staying at the camp to hunt and fish. We would return with 80 to 100 ducks (never exceeding the legal limit), a couple of ice chests of fish that would consist of speckled trout, redfish, flounder and those catfish.

But the icing on the cake would be the fresh oysters we picked by hand on wild reefs near the camp until they disappeared. We shucked them, ate some and usually brought back a gallon or two to enjoy at home. Our favorite way of eating those fresh oysters was grilled on a homemade pit topped with butter, Worcestershire sauce and pepper jack cheese.

A fire would always be going at night, and we sat around it for hours with Goosie, me or Dale Jackson Babin playing box guitars, singing country music. Thompson Brown was our percussionist usually playing drums on a variety of pots with spoons for drum sticks with the occasional harmonica thrown in for good measure.

Other regular visitors were Dave Leggett and Kenny Kuhlman. There are about a book full of stories that could be told about the adventures with this group of misfits and many great memories. Thompson Brown and Dave Leggett arent with us anymore but their memories will never fade.

Well, so how did the meeting of the girl that would eventually be my wife and my introduction to salt water fishing pay off in the long run? Pretty good for me, Id say. Forty years later, three kids and six grandchildren, Deborah and I will be celebrating our 40th wedding anniversary on Aug. 18. Goosie and I are brothers-in-law and have remained very close friends. We co-host a local TV show together.

In the time its taken me to put this Throwback Thursday together, looking through a photo scrapbook, Ive relived a lot of great memories. Life is short, so grab all the gusto you can because one day theyll be gone. And no matter how old you might be, its never too late to start making new memories with friends and family.

The rest is here:

Ascension Athletics for Aug. 10, 2017 - The Advocate