Juan Martinez started fishing Amistad Reservoir as a boy while helping his father. He liked the work. It was better than the factories.

The downside is the accommodations can be a bit tiring.    

“I’ve lived 15 years in a cave and four days in my house,” Martinez joked in Spanish. 

We had been paddling into a cold headwind for two hours. Our strokes were getting a bit sloppy, the waves were getting bigger and we needed to take a break. When we saw Martinez’s cave, we swung over to say hello and get out of the wind and waves.  

Martinez and his fishing partners, all family members, are on the water Monday through Thursday all year. They use gill nets to pull everything from crappie to catfish out of the lake.  

While they are out at the fish camps, one boat makes daily trips to the dock so the fish can be sold fresh in Acuna. Everyone else camps out in caves that line the lakeshore so they can stay close to the prime fishing grounds.   

The camps are set up with an office chair for the record keeper to sit in while the daily catch is being weighed, a table for cleaning the fish and a freezer that is used as an ice chest. The caves do not come with electricity.   

Beds are foam mats and blankets on top of blue tarps. The kitchen is equipped with a grill above a bed of coals and a barrel of drinking water. The bathroom is outside the cave and accessible via a rope that hangs down the cliff.  

In their open skiffs with four-stroke 50 horsepower engines, the fishermen will go as far up the Rio Grande as lake levels allow to set their nets. Congealed cow blood is used to attract the fish.  

In a good week, a single fisherman can catch 500 kilos of fish, more than half a ton. But that is becoming harder to do, explained Juan Martinez’s father, who goes by the same name. He has been on the lake for 40 years. 

The mud brought in by the Rio Grande and Pecos is filling up all the narrow channels that used to be the best fishing holes. The mud also makes the lake narrower. 

The U.S. confiscates nets that drift across the border. As the head of the lake becomes narrower and shallower, it is now impossible to set a net without risking losing it in many places. The lake is simply not wide enough.   

But there are still enough fish to keep the Martinez family on the lake.   

They warned us the wind would push up steep waves that will knock water into even their high-bowed boats. They offered us a ride. They also offered us hot coffee, fresh fish and a spot by their fire. It was by far the most hospitable cave we have visited.   

We accepted the hot coffee and warmed up by the fire. We did not have a way to cook the fish.  

The wind had calmed down so we decided to head out on our own. If the wind was bad the next day, we would either stay put or flag them down.   

They nodded. Being on the lake is where they want to be, too. 

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