3/31/2023 0 Comments Shotbot minecraft![]() ![]() The river was low and the catfish weren’t biting, Valverde said. But the group decided to use them, threading pieces on their hooks. They didn’t catch any “perch.” Instead, Valverde landed four mullet, which was unusual since mullet are vegetarians and almost never can be caught on hook-and-line. Using a small “perch” hook with those worms, they tried to catch a few small sunfish, prime bait for the big flathead and blue catfish the group hoped to tempt. But they dug around in the moist soil of the river bottom and came up with a few earthworms. They could have called the whole thing off. ![]() On this trip, which occurred before either daughter was born, the group had forgotten to bring bait or a way to catch it. “We ate a lot of catfish from there,” Alice Tutt recalled, and Valverde Martinez remembered with a laugh that her job on family trips to the river was to catch minnows for bait. They aimed to catch catfish, a favorite of Bill Valverde’s. Valverde was friends with the priests and a caretaker who gave him keys to access the tract. It was on private land, part of the La Lomita Mission, a century-old mission owned and run by Oblate priests. They headed to a stretch of the border river they had fished many times. 2, 1951, Bill Valverde his father, Trinidad Valverde and Methodist minister Josue Gonzalez made a fishing trip to the Rio Grande. Except this one is true and filled with simple twists of fate that make it seem Valverde was predestined to have his name in fishing’s record books.įrom family lore shared by Valverde Martinez and sister Alice Valverde Tutt of Houston, an interview with Valverde recorded in 1995 by Jeanne and Steve Martinez, and Valverde’s recounting of the events chronicled in a 1972 article for Boys Life, the magazine of his beloved Boy Scouts of America, here’s that tale. The saga of the feat is a tale equal to some of the most strained fish stories ever manufactured from whole cloth by the most creative of prevaricating anglers. He also was a successful entrepreneur who built a thriving medical laboratory business, started the first Hispanic Boy Scout troop in the region, and was the first Hispanic elected to the city council in his hometown of Mission, where he and wife Margaret raised four children. Guillermo Valverde’s legacy includes accomplishments any Texan would be proud to claim.īorn in the Rio Grande Valley in 1924, one of nine children in a family whose history in that corner of Texas stretched back several generations, Bill Valverde - everyone called him “Bill” - was a World War II veteran of the Army Air Corps. photo courtesy of Valverde Family / photo courtesy of Valverde Family Show More Show Less The 7-foot, 9-inch gar is the heaviest freshwater fish documented taken on rod-and-reel in Texas, the longest-standing Texas freshwater fish record and holds the world record for rod-and-reel-caught alligator gar, the second largest freshwater fish in North America. courtesy of Valverde family / courtesy of Valverde Family Show More Show Less 2 of2īill Valverde, holding rod-and-reel, and his father Trinidad Valverde stand next to the 279-pound alligator gar Valverde caught from the Rio Grande in 1951. ![]() The Texas State Fish Record certificate issued to Bill Valverde in 1974, 23 years after the Mission resident set the still-standing Texas and World record for the largest alligator gar documented taken on rod-and-reel. ![]()
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