Thursday, July 12, 2001

Area loses two respected outdoorsmen

I thought you all would be interested to know that two protectors of our saltwater resources died last week.
   I learned of the sportsmen's deaths just as I was compiling last Sunday's column, lamenting the late Dr. Bud Priddy, fly-fisher extraordinaire. Please don't be put off by my coincidental attention to death.
   Posthumously recognizing these men not only gives them their due but provides perspective for our lives.
   Rudy Grigar was the first to go. He was 86. Grigar's memoirs, Plugger: Wade Fishing the Gulf Coast, chronicles the fishing exploits of a lure-chucking purist. If this volume is not on your bookshelf, I suggest you buy a copy.
   As one reviewer wrote, Plugger is a "how-to" book by someone who clearly "has done." It also reads as well as a study on coastal fishing culture.
   Grigar not only spawned generations of pluggers, he was a pioneer of the practice of catch and release and an outspoken conservationist.
   Houston scribe, Joe Doggett, who attempted to keep pace with Grigar during several dozen fishing trips, said he never once saw the plugger use natural bait. In fact, the Plugger denounced the practice. When it came to reds and trout, he preferred hard plastic lures and spoons, specifically a Johnson Sprite.
   "He took fishing to the highest level at the time," said Doggett, who believes Grigar influenced if not developed this Texas-original style of wade fishing. "That certainly is a big part of his legacy."
   Grigar was an innovator. He was among the first to remove the eyelets from the tops of his 52M MirrOLures and replace them into the nose so the lure would track straight and run shallow. Eventually, this shallow-water hybrid resulted in the popular 51MR MirrOLure, in part, due to Grigar's phenomenal success, which has been highlighted through dozens of outdoor tales in magazines and newspapers.
   He was instrumental in forming the Gulf Coast Conservation Association (now Coastal Conservation Association), to which the family requests donations in his honor be sent.
   Grigar spent nearly 60 years wading the bayshores of Texas and Louisiana, but concentrated his efforts mainly in the waters of West Galveston Bay, Port O'Connor and the Chandeleur Islands. He claims to have caught a million pounds of fish.
   Show some respect and don't do the math.
   This next fellow was lower key than Grigar, but no less staunch in his convictions to protect our coastal resources.
   Leslie Kelly was a writer/editor for Saltwater Texas, a fishing newspaper out of Rockport. And he was a friend. He was 51.
   Kelly, through his volunteer work and writings, championed the preservation of Coastal Bend seagrass meadows and fought hard against abuses within the shrimping industry.
   By attending countless seagrass meetings and debating solutions with principal players, Kelly became a player himself. He often stepped outside the role of journalist, at times becoming an advocate or even consultant to Texas Parks and Wildlife resource protection officials.
   He knew well the waters and people of the Coastal Bend, and betrayed neither.
   "Leslie had a real truth to him, which came across in his writing," said Bill Harvey, aquatic policy coordinator with the Resource Protection division TPW. "He had a way of saying what we all wanted to say but couldn't for one reason or another.
   "We've lost a strong advocate for the resource and, on top of that, a really good man."
   Kelly understood that things are changing along the coast and that now is not the time for regret or apathy. He didn't like what he saw coming in the way of fishing pressure and boat traffic. But instead of complaining he embraced reasonable solutions that he believed would protect the resource and preserve our way of life. He was a levelheaded pragmatist who never shunned controversy.
   To him, it was all about the resource.
   Outdoors writer David Sikes' column appears Thursdays and Sundays. Contact him at 886-3616 or sikesd@caller.com
  
  
  

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