Fishing Yesterday's Gulf Coast (Gulf Coast Studies, No. 3) Hardcover - 2002

From the publisher

Renowned fishing guide Barney Farley worked the Texas coastal waters out of Port Aransas for more than half a century. In these stories and reflections, Farley imparts a lifetime of knowledge about fish -- silver trout, sand trout, speckled trout, redfish, ling, catfish, jack, kingfish, you name it -- and gives advice about how to fish, where to fish, and when to fish.

Perhaps no one could chronicle the changes in sport and commercial fishing along the Central Texas Coast more ably and more passionately than Farley. When he came to Texas in 1910, he reported that he could get in a rowboat and using only a push pole, make his way "to the fishing grounds and catch a hundred pounds or more of trout and redfish" in a few hours. A couple of years later, the shrimp trawlers arrived. As they plied the Gulf in increasing numbers, they depleted the shrimp populations in the bays, and Farley watched the fish move farther and farther offshore, following their ever more elusive food source.

This book is both an appealing reminiscence and a cautionary tale. Anyone who cares about fishing and the health of the Gulf's waters will find an authoritative and completely engaging voice in Barney Farley.