The Lighthouse Keeper
On a cold winter night in 1981, a lone figure in a 15-foot flat-bottomed skiff cut across Aransas Bay in total darkness headed towards the Aransas Pass Light Station, aka the Lydia Ann Lighthouse. The lighthouse had been taken out of service some 30 years prior, but the man in the boat intended to use it for service of a different sort.
He arrived at the dock, tied up the boat, and made his way to the 65-foot tower. He climbed the spiral staircase until he reached the lightless lantern. From behind the glass, he watched and waited.
What a view – he could see all the water around Port Aransas and Aransas Pass and clear back to Rockport, where his voyage had begun. A cold front was on the way. Things were looking good.
It wasn’t the kind of night that most people would want to be on the water, but commercial fishermen are a tough lot. It’s their business to know how to handle themselves in all types of weather, day or night. It’s a tough way to make a living, but it got a lot tougher with the passage in House Bill 1000 in May of 1981. The bill made the sale of redfish and trout illegal and thus eliminated two revenue streams fishermen counted on.
When Game Warden Doug Parker was first stationed in Rockport, there were only 3 wardens in Aransas County. There were none in Port Aransas. Doug had a lot of territory to cover to try to keep things in line, so he spent many nights sitting alone in the lantern room of the lighthouse, watching and waiting.
Back then, flounder tended to pile up in the Lydia Ann Channel when a norther blew in. An enterprising commercial fisherman, who didn’t care for any law aimed at making his way of life obsolete, could make up for a lot of lost revenue by stringing some illegal net along the edges of the channel. Yep, a guy like that could fill up a boat full of flounder in no time. To make things even more enticing, there weren’t that many game wardens stationed along the coast, and the ones that were around probably wouldn’t want to come out on a cold night when the wind was blowing 30 mph out of the north.
Whenever the wind picked up, Doug didn’t need night vision, or even binoculars. He could see a boat splashing through the rolling waves no matter how dark it was. Whenever a boat stopped along the channel in those conditions, he knew what was fixing to happen. He would give things a little time, and then he’d descend the staircase, make his way to the dock, and untie his boat.
Game wardens don’t catch violators by turning on lights and making noise, so Doug would pick up his push-pole and start about the arduous task of poling his boat to the unsuspecting netter. Sometimes, he was able to pull up close enough to grab on to one side of the net while the fisherman was holding on to the other. Other times, the chase would be on. Some got away, but most didn’t.
In the early to mideighties, Doug found himself smack-dab in the middle of a period in Gulf Coast history that has become known as “the redfish wars”. The redfish wars got in full swing when HB 1000 went into law and then slowed considerably when Texas Parks and Wildlife put enough game wardens on the coast to put a stop to most of the netting problem. Eventually, Doug’s trips up to the lantern room became more about the view and less about catching netters. Yep - all good things come to an end, and that was certainly true for the lighthouse keeper. But for a while, oh what a time he had!
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