A dominant feature of the Texas bay system is the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW), a 3000-mile-long passage for commercial barge traffic than runs from Boston, Massachusetts to Brownsville, Texas. Construction of the ICW commenced in the 1920s, but the last section -- connecting Corpus Christi to Brownsville through the Upper and Lower Laguna Madre -- was only completed in the late 1940s. Today, the ICW effectively links otherwise isolated ports on the Atlantic and Gulf coastlines, creating a seamless exchange between supply and demand.
Few coastal anglers can remember what it was like before “the ditch” existed. For most of us who grew up on the Texas coast, the ICW has always been there, and it was a place that excited our childhood dreams. In the age before shallow water sight casting, we would stand side by side with friends and brothers aboard old boats distinguished only by service, and we would cast live shrimp on treble hooks into the deeper water and wait for the bobber -- which we properly called a “cork” regardless of its composition -- to disappear. We caught a lot of fish that way, but in time many of us began to wonder what mysteries lay beyond “the edge.”