Randy(308) sent this article from the Caller Times written by David Sikes. It appeared in last Sunday's edition.

ARANSAS PASS — shuffling an afternoon path along the eastern bank of the Lydia Ann Channel, Gordon Taylor announced it was time to switch sides.

The tide was falling, the sun was setting and Taylor’s inner redfish alarm had sounded, signaling it was time to motor across the Lydia Ann toward the old lighthouse.

This has become a summer tradition for Taylor and me. This day Jay Gutierrez had joined us. And during all those years I’ve wondered who the heck was this Lydia Ann.

So this past week I knocked on the door of veteran columnist Murphy Givens, the purveyor of all things historic at the Caller-Times. Of course, he knew who she was off the top of his head.

Lydia Ann Wells was the wife of James Babbitt Wells, a prominent resident of a village called Aransas on St. Joseph’s Island, which is what this barrier island was called before its owners (either oilman Sid Richardson or the Bass family) convinced the Texas Legislature to change the name of their private getaway to San Jose.

James Babbitt Wells was a privateer or mercenary during the Texas Revolution and commanded the Texas Navy yards at Galveston. In Aransas village, Wells was a cattle rancher who owned a schooner.

Apparently his wife was a remarkably learned woman of stature and influence. She bore a son who became a powerful political boss in Brownsville during the late-1800s. That man would be Jim Wells for whom the county is named.

Perhaps more interesting than the scholarly Mrs. Wells is where my conversation with Givens led. The townsite of Aransas on St. Joseph’s Island originally was settled by pirate Jean Lafitte, who built a fort on the bay side of the island near the pass that divided St. Joe and Mustang islands.

Today that site would appear on maps about a mile from the jettied Aransas Pass at Port Aransas, nearly opposite the Lydia Ann lighthouse. According to Givens’ research, this is because the pass migrated southward at a rate of about 210 to 260 feet a year until workers stabilized it with the installation of jetties in the 1880s.

Apparently when the lighthouse was erected in 1856-57, it was in line with the elusive pass that separated the two islands. This allowed incoming ship captains to align with its beacon to locate the pass. The lighthouse today, along with the site of Aransas village, is well north of today’s pass.

Taylor pointed the bow of his boat somewhere north of the lighthouse and anchored on the outside of a bar that parallels the shore there. During a falling tide it’s important not to anchor your boat west of this sandbar, which actually is a mud bar topped with dense seagrass. Otherwise if the tide drops low enough while you’re fishing you might have trouble escaping into open water. And whatever you do, don’t anchor on top of the mud bar during a falling tide.

This advice might seem like so much common sense, but we watched a TowBOAT rescue some folks in a skiff that had been stranded by a falling tide on the opposite side of the channel. And later we spotted another boater struggling to cross the west-side bar because he had misjudged the tide.

The time was about 5:30 p.m. when Gutierrez, Taylor and I abandoned the boat and began a methodical northbound stroll. Taylor had been there the previous afternoon and discovered lower-slot redfish feeding on top of the bar.

From previous experiences my urge was to walk through a belly-deep gut toward the lighthouse shore, casting a soft plastic along the way.

But instead I fell in line and tossed a topwater plug along the bar’s western slope. I think Gutierrez, who was throwing a fire tiger soft plastic, enjoyed the first and nearly immediate hookup. Or maybe it was Taylor with his trademark Treuse Goose Bass Assassin paddletail. Anyway the point is my Spook Jr. was not receiving equal attention. I haven’t found a decent and consistent topwater bite this year.

Eventually I hooked a small redfish out of perseverance. By then, Gutierrez and Taylor had three nice redfish between them.

So I switched to a small paddletail and swapped sides of the bar with Gutierrez.

Taylor maintained his middle position and quickly each of them had caught another redfish. But then so did I.

We continued a slow wade up the bar, three abreast. Doubles were common. Small fish were not.

These were mid- to upper-slot reds with barely a foot of swimming space above the seagrass roots. Often we could see their bronze backs against the dark vegetation. We witnessed plenty of surface sloshing during the fights.

Eventually I succumbed to the lighthouse shoreline. And I continued to catch fish in the gut and along the shallows. After catching and releasing about a 21-inch redfish against the shore, Taylor beckoned.

“I’m surrounded by a school of big fish,” he yelled, straining against a powerful pull at the end of his line. Gutierrez, who was closer, joined him. I was at least 100 yards away and already had three fish on my stringer. I was playing catch-and-release at this point.

I took my time on the way back, watching the antics my fellow anglers in that soft evening glow. When I approached Gutierrez, he was bringing another fish to hand. Taylor had turned toward the boat.

It was about 7 p.m. and each of us had landed a half-dozen or more redfish in addition to the limits on our stringers.

They say the brilliant Lydia Ann was fluent in many languages. Today she spoke only redfish. But she spoke it prolifically and with remarkable authority.