Month: March 2018

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Guadalupe River Triple Redux

I finally caught my trout today. Off and on I’d fished the Guadalupe since the Super Bowl was in Houston, a bit more than a year ago. I fished two days then and came up blanked. I started this year in December, and finally caught my fish today, March. It was nothing special, a 12-14″ rainbow that spit out the hook after it came into the net.  I’d hooked another earlier, and had a hit later, and foul hooked and landed a carp, a big carp, much later.  Because of their mouth carp always seem to foul hook.

I knew what I was doing though with the trout. I set up the rod with two droppers below an egg, with an indicator two feet up from the egg, no weight other than the weight of the brassies on the top dropper.  The fish stayed on the hook.  I didn’t take a picture. I wanted the fish back in the water, and I was worried about fumbling my phone.

Earlier, before the fish, I fell into the river, and tonight the muscle pull in my left calf hurts because of the fall. A half gallon or so of water came over the top of my waders, and when we left the river we stopped at Gruene Outfitters to buy dry clothes.  I bought a pair of Patagonia Guidewater pants, grey because even though I wanted tan Kris told me to get the grey.  They will be go-to’s for future travel, fishing and otherwise, but I’m sorry I had to buy. On future river trips I need to bring extra clothes.

On the way out of the store though I saw one of the great objects of men’s fashion, a Howler Brothers Gaucho Snapshirt, with embroidered alligators.  I’d first seen Howler Brothers shirts in Belize, where the younger guys at the bar compared their Howler Brothers shirt embroidery.  The embroidery then was great, the yellow rose and the shrimp and the blue crabs are works of art, but more important their shirts had pearl snap buttons, which for me is always the height of male fashion.  I came back to Houston and bought one sans embroidery, and you know what? When you roll up the sleeves of a a fishing shirt with pearl snap buttons they stay up. They don’t need those sewn-in goofy straps that seem like good design but aren’t. Pearl snap buttons have purpose.    There’s no sleeve creep when you roll up your sleeves.

So I caught my trout and got a great pair of pants and the work-of-art shirt I need to wear to Louisiana. I wish I had a photo of the trout.

It was windy today, and overcast, and the day on which daylight savings time started so we were already tired and late when we left Houston. I got water down my waders. On the way to the river we checked out donut shops in Seguin. Apparently like all donut shops in Central Texas they were Buddhist donut shops. The Donut Palace had a pretty good glazed, but no kolache, sausage rolls but no kolache. It was packed more or less. I wouldn’t recommend anything but the glazed, but I would recommend the glazed.

Top Donut had a good cat, but the donuts were only good efforts.

At three when we came off the river I wanted to go to Black’s in Lockhart for Barbecue, but it would have added two hours and Kris didn’t want to make the investment. We found a place in New Braunfels for German food, Uwe’s Bakery and Deli, that made its own bratwurst, and I suspect its own pickles and sauerkraut. It was outstanding. If I lived in New Braunfels, I’d go to Uwe’s every Tuesday for chicken and dumplings, and every Saturday for the goulash, and I’d be happy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Louisiana

We fish out of New Orleans in late April. We fly in early on the day April 21, and fly out late in the day on April 22.  Quick trip, but we had booked the guide in November for the big redfish moving into the marsh to feed, but had to postpone because of weather. We had our best weekend ever fishing in Galveston.

It’s cheap to fly from Houston to New Orleans because Houston and New Orleans are physically close, it’s only a six-hour drive, and they’re close in other ways too, like siblings who love each other but are a little astonished at the craziness their sister’s up to. If Houston is the great melting pot, the place where whites and blacks and Asians and hispanics are jumbled into the little engine that’s not little that thinks it can, New Orleans is the pot that never exactly melted, and where the most foreign folk of all may be the local white people.

What we share: The energy industry. the Gulf. Food. What we don’t share: Ambition (for Houston), history (for Louisiana).

I used to think there were two kinds of Texans, Texans who went to Santa Fe and Texans who went to New Orleans. For me growing up in West Texas New Mexico was only a long car ride away, as was everything else, and I know it and love it. What I first remember from New Orleans was walking past the strip bars on Bourbon Street, eating Beignet and drinking chicory coffee heavy with cream at the Cafe du Monde, and tasting crawfish etoufee. I think I was 14.  I thought at the time the etoufee was bland. I’ve never quite figured Louisiana out.

Houston’s got the ambition, New Orleans the history. Oil and the Gulf may be self explanatory, maybe, but Etoufee is no longer anything extraordinary. There is a Brennan’s in Houston, and it was here long before me.  I can get good red beans and rice or etoufee by walking from my office across the sky bridge and standing in line at Treebeards.  Every seafood place in Houston sells a pretty decent gumbo.

It’s easy to look at Louisiana and feel self-satisfied. Our education system, sorry as it may be, is better. Our politicians may be crazy but they’re not corrupt or as incompetent. Our history, incredibly blemished as it is, is not the slave block or the quadroon ball or Storyville. On the other hand we weren’t the birthplace of jazz.

A young friend of mine is a lovely young woman, Princeton for undergrad and Harvard for law school, a Houston city council member. Someday she will be in at least Congress, and she is one of our city’s stars. We went to lunch a few months ago, before Hurricane Harvey I’m certain because the restaurant, Reef, hasn’t yet reopened.  She shook what I swear was a half bottle of Tabasco–she said she preferred Louisiana but they didn’t have it–into her gumbo.  “You know my family’s from Louisiana?” It surely would have perked up that Etoufee. I think us Texans just never quite get it.

 

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Carp Diem

Note: For the last year I’ve looked at this blog post and debated whether I should correct it. The fish probably weren’t carp (notwithstanding what folk on the Guadalupe call them), but some form of cold water sucker. Basically, my sucker identification skills suck.

Fried carp and carp stew are a traditional Czech Christmas eve dinner. Carp eggs are eaten as caviar here in the states. Carp are popular sport fish in Europe. Carp are native to Asia and Europe, but have spread everywhere. I’ve fished for carp before, grass carp, in Buffalo Bayou.

I grew up thinking carp were trash fish and a nuisance. I’m not over it.

Yesterday we found carp in the cold tailwater of the Guadalupe River. Kris talked to a guy in a kayak who said he’d caught carp and striper coming down the river.  Kris saw them at the tail end of a large pool about a quarter mile upriver from Texas Highway 46. I was trying to fish below her, but she was yelling that there were fish and lots of fish and that the fish were nuts and just sitting there and get over there right now.  They were nuts, and they were just sitting there.  Move toward them they moved away but they didn’t leave, and they were in the shallow end of the pool where you could watch them easily in a foot or so of water. There must have been 20 of them, hanging in pods of four or five fish, all of them about two pounds. I came up and hooked two but they came off the hook and I said these trout surely are peculiar.  I’m quick that way.

I had hooked a trout earlier, but again my leader broke, above the tippet ring. I’ve got to figure out my leaders. That’s twice I’ve broken off trout in the Guadalupe.

Kris hooked a carp on a black streamer and kept it on the hook. I knew it wasn’t a trout once the dorsal fin flared. It wanted whatever was about to have it for lunch to regret those first few bites.

We could watch the carp roll on the surface and move to eat under the surface.  I fished up the river looking for trout but then hooked a carp on a pheasant tail nymph below a prince nymph below a bead egg.

We left mid-afternoon as it started to rain.  What Reims is to sparkling wine, Lockhart is to barbecue, so we headed to Lockhart. Lockhart is on the way to nowhere, but it was enough on our way home to make it worth the trip. There are four barbecue places of note in Lockhart: Smitty’s, Black’s, Kreuz Market, and Chisholm Trial. Kreuz Market and Smitty’s are connected in a family drama.

I’ve never been to Chisholm Trail, but of the other three the quality of the barbecue is inverse to the atmosphere. Smitty’s is my favorite, located in a charming storefront with a pressed tin roof and clean white walls. Black’s is still in an ancient meat market a couple of blocks from the courthouse. Kreuz is a barn of a place, decorated with randomly placed butcher tools. There’s nothing appealing about the place and there is a long line, but it is great barbecue.

I ordered three pork chops because I wanted to try them, and it was two too many. Other than that I’ve got my barbecue order for the two of us down to an art: one pound fatty brisket, one sausage, four ribs. My half of the sausage goes into a slice of white bread for a sandwich, with pickles and onion and sauce. The rest is finger food.

At Kreuz your get free Blue Bell ice cream at the end. At least theoretically you get free Blue Bell ice cream at the end. I don’t know how those people in the Blue Bell line had room.