Roll
on to
Rollover
By Jerry S. Wall
On
the Texas
Gulf
Coast twenty-five miles east of Galveston on highway
87, a two-hundred foot wide, one-eighth mile long channel joins the
Gulf
of Mexico and Galveston Bay. It is the locally famous Rollover Fish
Pass. As the name implies, it permits fish to swim from the gulf the
the bay and vice-versa with the changing tides.
The pass was constructed in 1956 for the purpose of improving fishing
in the bay, and thousands of local and visiting anglers have found it
highly successful.
Any
weekend
you may
find dozens of fishermen lined up
on both sides of the pass, pulling in fish. Twice a day, when the tide
comes in, the water rushes
frome the gulf to the bay as fast as you can run, bringing the big ones
in from the gulf. And this signals the best angling. During night
tides,
fishing continues by lantern light.
The
pass has
an
amazing variety of fish. An angler to
your left will pull in a croaker. Farther down, some lucky fisherman
has
hooked a flounder. Looking across the pass you see a rod bend double
and hear shouts of admiration, for the man has hooked a ten-pound
redfish. In the course of an hour you will see sand trout, speckled
trout, drum, sheepshead, salt water catfish, and Spanish mackrel pulled
from the water.
Come
down and
give
it a try!!
A bit of trivia:
The
pass is named for the practice of ship captains from the days of
Spanish rule through prohibition, who, to avoid the Galveston customs
station, rolled barrels of import or export merchandise over that part
of the peninsula. (Handbook
of Texas Online)
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