Calaveras Lake Catfish Bonanza
By: Jim Behnken
Saturday June 9th proved to be an exciting day for 39 children and from the San Antonio Dan Cook Youth Center. C.A.S.T., CPS Energy, the San Antonio River Authority, Fishing and Hunting Texas T.V. show and the Texas Parks and Wildlife Dept. hosted our 4th annual kid fishing event on Lake Calaveras. We did things a little different than many C.A.S.T. events. TPWD came out and netted off a ¼ acre cove on the lake and stocked it with 800 pounds of hungry channel catfish the day prior. Now 2 years ago we hosted this same group and found out we had a hole in the net and very few catfish were caught. We felt we owed these kids another shot to catch something besides the bluegill that ended up saving the day previously. Our wishes were granted as immediately upon corks hitting the water Saturday morning bobbers slipped under the surface and children were screaming with delight. Some children reported catching as many as 25 channel cats each in the 2 hours we fished. 35 of the 39 kids reported this was there first fishing experience. We definitely made at least some of them fishermen for life!
At 10 am we had the children who wanted to do so (some would not stop fishing!) line up for boat rides sponsored by J.D. Fontenot at Anchor Marine in San Antonio. This is when more than a little excitement occurred as the kids got to ride in Skeeter bass boats. As the first couple boats went out captained by Steven Charles of State Farm insurance and Frank Cyprian of Time Warner Cable, they came upon a capsized boat in the middle of the lake. It seems 2 teenagers had tipped their small aluminum boat over and had no lifejackets on and were struggling to stay afloat in 40 feet of water. Steven and Frank, with the boat ride children looking on, rescued these 2 anglers from what surely would have been drowning. One was so exhausted he could not climb the ladder on the back of Frank's boat to get in. Upon seeing this, one of our children said (and I quote) "I am never going out in a boat ever, without a life jacket" a lesson learned by all. TPWD and the S.A. River Authority were called to attempt to salvage the boat while our boaters resumed thrilling the kids with Skeeter boats rides.
We at Catch a Special Thrill want to especially thank Wade Middleton of Careco Multimedia for coming out and filming our event for a segment of one of his shows. Wade is a huge supporter of CAST and we certainly appreciate his involvement. Texas Parks and wildlife donated all the catfish for this event which helped make this our best event ever at Calaveras Lake. Special thanks to Patty Gonzales and Scott Smith of CPS Energy for their tireless work toward making this event happen.
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