#24 - Everything's Bigger in Texas, Except the Guadalupe Bass

We drove through Oklahoma heading towards Boerne, Texas, which is outside of San Antonio to the west. It was a super long drive, and we stopped for dinner that night in Waco to see a high school friend of ours at Baylor University. The next day we fished in the Guadalupe River, where I caught a Guadalupe bass, the Texas state fish. These are a very cool species of bass, similar looking to the spotted bass, but with some pattern differences and they are typically very small. But we didn't catch anything else besides four snapping turtles, which certainly spiced things up.

That night we headed to Boerne to stay with our friends, the Mclean family. The next day, Thanksgiving, we left early to try and get some fishing in before Thanksgiving dinner, but our car had other ideas. We had been dealing with battery problems for a few weeks, and today was the day our battery finally bit the dust.

The battery died when we stopped for gas. We tried to jumpstart it with several very large (remember, it's Texas) pickup trucks, but nothing worked. We got roadside assistance to bring a nifty little jumpstart machine and that got us going. We went straight to the nearest auto parts store to buy a new battery. We then fished for only a few hours in the closest section to us of the Guadalupe River, which was below a dam so unfortunately the water level was very low, making fishing difficult.

Our day was more than redeemed when we had a great Thanksgiving dinner with the McLean family. The next day we fished at the Guadalupe State Park, where Dan caught his Guadalupe Bass. We caught some other little bluegill, which were really cool looking with pretty coloration. We also ran into an armadillo, which was a new and very strange experience for both of us at the time. Strangely it was almost yellow.

We then headed towards Mississippi, stopping at the Buccy’s in San Antonio, the largest gas station in the world. Well worth the visit. Ran into awful traffic that night, and had a long drive, so we didn’t make it as far as we hoped, and spent the night right across the Texas border.