Category: Saltwater

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The Ten Best Summer Steelhead Flies!!!

Disclaimer: I wrote this as a joke, because I have no idea what the ten best steelhead flies might be, winter or summer, and I feel guilty every time somebody ends up here. It’s actually a long shaggy dog story about a fly I tied with an ostrich feather that a drag queen gave me at a pride day parade. I did, in fact, catch a summer steelhead on that fly, so if you want to know the very best steelhead fly, it’s one you tie with a feather given to you by a drag queen at a pride parade.

I’m sure someone knows what the ten best summer steelhead flies are, but I haven’t a clue. In September We  go to Oregon, but before, in less than a week, we go to Louisiana. The jumble has me thinking about redfish and steelhead flies at the same time, and I’m no good at multitasking.

I like simple flies. A few years ago the rage in redfish flies was redfish crack, the hardest part of which was using a magic marker.  Tie some EP fiber to the hook for a tail, wrap some EP brush for a head, use a sharpie to bar the tail, brush out the head, done. I greatly admire that fly.

My current favorite redfish fly is this unnamed thing, or at least unnamed to me. It’s my favorite because I made it up after fishing an Avalon for permit, and because the first fly I ever fished in saltwater, a rattler, had rattles. I later caught 50-odd crappie in a single day with a rattler, and later still caught a four-pound bass. I like flies that make noise. I would name the fly I made up, but I figure lots of people have made up the same fly, and one of these days I’ll stumble across its name.  Meantime it’s easy to tie and catches all sorts of stuff. Plus it’s kinda weedless, or as much as any fly is ever weedless.

Rattler. Ok, maybe it was only 30 crappie. CRAH-pee. Puh-CAHN.

Sac-au-lait.

Steelhead flies though are a different matter. It doesn’t seem like anybody ever thought about making them simple, and I don’t know why.  Are steelhead peculiarly complex? Do they never hit a Clouser? Steelhead flies look like somebody wanted to tie classic salmon flies, smoked a joint, and came up with Modern Steelhead Flies. That’s the book I bought to teach me all about steelhead flies, Modern Steelhead Flies.

It’s hard, by the way, not to make jokes about marijuana and Oregon.

Kris and I finally paraded with my firm in this year’s LGBT Pride Parade, and I learned that sometimes Texas parade routes smell like marijuana. Colleagues ask every year if I’ll march and I say sure but then something happens. I put off joining the parade for two years, and they finally shamed me into it. Personally I think it’s a better world when LGBT folk can do some shaming.

The Pride Parade in Houston is no small affair.  There are thousands of paraders, and tens of thousands of paradees. Our daughter dropped us off on Allen Parkway and we walked a bit to the staging point. I really dressed for the parade too: a pair of running shoes, khaki shorts, blue linen shirt, and the crowning glory, my straw fedora. I was a little worried I might stand out too much, but believe it or not, some participants were even less restrained than me. Really. Kris said there was a topless lady, but I didn’t see her. Ogling the topless lady would have probably been wrong anyway, but Kris thought she might be topless at a parade with some expectation of being ogled. Could be.

There were groups from churches and big oil. There was the mayor and the parents of transgender children. There were Democratic candidates, though I think I must have missed the Republican float. We were the only big law firm, but there were lots of banks, and some smaller firms.

So meantime I haven’t actually read much of Modern Steelhead Flies, but it’s got good pictures. Of course I had absolutely none of the fly tying materials for steelhead flies. This is always a given for any new fly, one never has the stuff. This though was particularly brutal. Hooks? Nope. Hot pinks and purples and blues? Nope? Ice dubbing? Not a bit of it. I didn’t own a single ostrich feather.  The first fly I tried, something called a Fifth Element because of all the blue feathers (none of which I owned), had 72 different layers of materials. I spent an hour ordering from FeatherCraft, and when they didn’t have everything I ordered some more from J. Stockard. None of my local shops were going to carry this stuff. I finally found blue Gamakatsu octopus hooks on Amazon. The Feather Thief got nothing on me.

Then I tied the fly, got to the end and realized I’d  forgotten to order the last five layers of stuff.  I tied in some black marabou and called it a day. It looked pretty good, too, as long as you didn’t pay attention to the big gaps on the back side where I didn’t get the materials all the way around the hook.

The third fly in the book, which was also on the list of flies the Oregon outfitter sent, was Jeff Hickman’s fish taco.

Now Mr. Hickman’s fish taco really appealed to me. It was on the outfitter’s list. It was relatively simple compared to the other stuff, only 67 layers or so. Most of all I could look at the fly and think, that looks fishy. That’s the highest praise for any random fly sitting in a box: It looks fishy. Plus it was a taco. I might prefer an enchilada, or even a chalupa, but I’m a Texan and if what you can get is a taco you take a taco. I know and like people who’ve written admirable books about queso and salsa, and I’ll throw in a gratuitous plug for them here. I have also gone miles out of my way to get barbacoa and lengua tacos with just a brush of onion and cilantro, and this was a taco.

I was sitting in my office one day and got distracted and watched a video of Jeff Hickman tying Jeff Hickman’s fish taco. He seemed like a genuinely reasonable guy. He drank unpretentious beer. He took it in stride when he forgot to tie in the 33rd layer of rainbow black flashabou.  I figured this was a guy who wouldn’t mind if I had to use a hot pink hot spot instead of red because I only ordered hot pink ice dubbing.

I also had no ostrich feathers, and 90% of the fish taco is ostrich feathers.

So Kris and I are walking to the staging point for our LGBT Pride parade group and I’m dressed in my gaudy outfit and I feel a hand on my shoulder. A big hand.

Now I’m 6 feet, or I was 40 years ago, but I turn and look up, way up, into the face of either a transgender lady or a drag queen–the taxonomy confuses me some but you can be one without being the other, or vice versa–in a long black satin sheath gown and enough dyed black ostrich feathers to festoon, well, an ostrich. We were of a certain age together, but she’d spent a bit more time in tanning beds, and I was dressed more like a law firm partner taking his grandkids to the zoo. I had no ostrich feathers.

“Darlin’, we gotta spruce you up.” Ok, maybe that wasn’t precisely what she said, but that’s what it sounded like to me.  She plucked an ostrich feather and stuck it in my hat and declared me more festive. I now have a spirit animal for this trip to Oregon, but I haven’t decided whether it’s an ostrich or a 6-foot-4 drag queen in the LGBT Pride parade. I’m leaning towards the latter.

So meantimes.

Kris and I are driving from Galveston and talking about what we need to take to Oregon and she says she’s been looking at the email from Jeff Hickman and I say who? She says Jeff Hickman and I say the fish taco guy? She says what? Jeff Hickman it turns out is our outfitter. I guess I knew that, we’d exchanged emails and all, but it hadn’t registered that the guy I was watching on YouTube tying fish tacos was the guy I was e-mailing. I’m slow like that.

But I catch up sooner or later and this is all coming together. I might even catch a fish. I’ll tie up some hot pink redfish crack with lavender hot spots. If nothing else I’ll learn to tie a fish taco, and I’ll use ostrich herl scavenged from the wild.

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Oregon and the Color of Fish

In September, after Louisiana and a quick-trip again to try for Maryland stripers, we go to Oregon to fish for steelhead on the Deschutes. We have a bit more than a month between Louisiana and Oregon, and I’ve decided there are no two places in this country further apart, if not quite physically then in most other ways that matter. Even the Oregon names, Oregon, Portland, Deschutes, ring different than Louisiana names: Louisiana, Vieux Carre, Atchafalaya.

Eugene. Acadiana.

The Deschutes is a lovely river, I’ve seen it. But its name calls out for a gesundheit.  It’s not just the brutality of the names though that make Oregon different from  Louisiana. Oregon is liberal, eccentric, and whatever its history may be it seems to have no great effect on its present.  Louisiana is none of those things, except of course for eccentric. In Oregon you can legally smoke pot and legally commit suicide. In Oregon you drink pinot noir or pinot gris and craft beer, or maybe Pabst Blue Ribbon. In Louisiana you try to drink yourself to death with drive-through daiquiris and sticky sweet hurricanes in to-go cups from Pat O’Brien’s and complex mildly bitter Sazeracs. Interestingly, based on CDC data, Louisiana ranks only 17th among states for rates of heavy drinking among adults, Oregon unexpectedly ranks higher than Louisiana at 16th. I suspect all those tea-totalin’ Baptists in north Louisiana keep it from achieving its proper place as number one, and all those winery owners boost Oregon.

Maybe I’m wrong and they’re not really different. Maybe we’ve all blended into the same thing. But can you imagine if Duck Dynasty had been made in Oregon? It would be Portlandia. And vice versa.

Evermann, Barton Warren  and Goldsborough, Edmund Lee, The Fishes of Alaska, , 1907, plate 38, Steelhead Trout

On driving trips we used to play a game naming the natural color of cars. The natural color of a car is the color of the wild car before its domestication.  The natural color of a 1980s Ford Crown Vic is brown. The natural color of a BMW five series is blue, a Honda Accord is silver, and a 1970s F-150 pickup is red.  It’s a fun game, because there are so many cars where the answer strikes everyone playing as obvious.

We picked the Deschutes for steelhead because it’s the natural color of Oregon fish. What else could we fish for? Where else could we fish? Some states don’t have a natural color of fish: Florida and Alaska have too many colors to pick just one.  Texas doesn’t really have a natural color of fish, unless it’s channel cat and they’re hard to get to take a fly. I’ve fished in Oregon before, for trout on the McKenzie out of a McKenzie boat, and even though we caught fish it was somehow unsatisfactory. I think it was unsatisfactory because we fished the wrong color of fish. In Maryland you gotta fish stripers in the Chesapeake. In Louisiana you gotta fish redfish in the coastal marsh. In Oregon you gotta fish for chromers–I think that’s what they call them –on the Deschutes. Everywhere else a chromer is a stocked trout. In Oregon it seems to be the wildest of trout.

I suspect in Oregon the natural color of fish is steelhead, not because there aren’t other perfectly good targets.  There are plenty of perfectly decent rivers in Oregon and miles of coastline, but I suspect it’s steelhead because in Oregon steelheading is at least in part about the style of the thing. Could you fox hunt without red jackets and stirrup cups? I reckon, but it ain’t quite the thing.  It ain’t quite the thing to fish for steelhead out of a drift boat with a 9 ft 7 wt and nymphs under a bobber, even though that apparently is the best way to actually catch steelhead. It’s just not done. You have to cast gaudy flies with a 13 foot spey rod that’s good for not much else. You have to use impossibly named incomprehensible line and leader combinations. It’s not just a thing to be done, it’s a thing to be done in the right way.

It seems to me that spey casting is popular in Oregon not because it’s the best way to catch fish but because it’s fun to do in and of itself, and even more fun to do in and of itself while mildly stoned. This is what happens to a perfectly good sport when you legalize marijuana.

There is certainly fly fishing in Louisiana, but talk to most of the Louisiana fly guides and you begin to suspect that there’s not much purity in the heartland of the spoon fly. “I was after a record fish, so I had five rods set up and I’d hook one fish and if it didn’t seem big enough I’d hand it off to  the guide and he’d bring it in while I took one of the other rods to cast again.”  I heard someone say that about fishing to a school of bull reds in the Louisiana marsh. In Oregon the discussion seems to be about how many days one casts from dawn to dusk before one actually catches a fish. They don’t actually wear red jackets though. At least I hope so.  I don’t own a red jacket.

Meanwhile we keep trying to fish Galveston. Kris caught a bit of redfish Saturday morning blind-casting in Green Lake mud.  I put down some tailing redfish.  I’d forgotten how skittish redfish could be on a flat on a still summer day.

That’s Kris’s fish. I only photobombed.

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More Louisiana

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Kris asked me if there was ever an end to stories about Louisiana, and I don’t think so. I haven’t written about the Louisiana Purchase, or the names in the Times-Picayune obituaries. There was the LSU chancellor who bet wrong on the market and secured his loans by printing up University bonds on the basement printing press. There is Ray Nagin’s baffling behavior during Katrina, his Chocolate City speech, and his ultimate corruption conviction. There’s Huey P. Long, Edwin Edwards and his corruption conviction, and Duck Dynasty’s fall from grace. There’s Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton, and Jerry Lee Lewis.  I worry with some states that I’ll have nothing to say, with Louisiana I worry if I’ll ever finish talking.

We fish Louisiana somewhere near New Orleans August 4-5 with Captain Bailey Short. Captain Short is an Orvis-endorsed guide, so he should be a pretty safe bet. August 4-5 is less so. It’s hot in Louisiana in August, and while there may or may not be redfish, the fish won’t be the big 30+ pound bulls. Those start in October and stay through the winter.**

People from Houston love New Orleans in August.  The heat and humidity’s no worse than Houston, and there are no tourists. You can get hotel reservations. You can get restaurant reservations.  I guess we’re tourists too, but the ties are so close between the cities, like Houston and Dallas or Houston and San Antonio, that it doesn’t feel that way.

We’d originally tried to schedule Captain Short in November of last year: November is prime for the big reds. In Texas we also have bull reds, but not in the marsh. Our marsh is on the mainland side of the barrier islands. Because in Louisiana barrier islands don’t stand between the Gulf and the mainland, the bulls come in. Our bull reds stay on the surf side where I don’t trust our skiff. Maybe I should, but I don’t. Old age.

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In November it stormed or at least threatened so we delayed. We fished in Galveston in clear water on a cold day and I caught a nice red on a nice sight cast with a fly I’d made up. Sometimes things work, even in salt water. We re-booked for April, the advantage to which is that it’s not March. March is the worst month on the Gulf Coast. There’s hard wind, dirty water, and no fish. April is a smidgen better, or maybe by April I’m just used to hard wind, dirty water, and no fish. We didn’t get to go with Captain Bailey in April either. Storms.

I’ve gone fly fishing but not caught fish, a lot of different kinds of fish, a lot of times. I’ve now not caught tarpon in Belize and Florida. I’ve hooked but not landed trout all winter on the Guadalupe, and I’ve hooked and not landed two permit. More than any other fish I’ve fished for and not caught I’ve not caught redfish. I’ve caught some, but I’ve fished a lot more. In Galveston I’ve fished and failed to see redfish for days on end, so I’ve not caught a whole lot of redfish. The only other fish that might be close is sheepshead.

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Notwithstanding conventional wisdom I think redfish are hard. Maybe I’m wrong, but bonefish are a payload easier for me than redfish. Get on a good Belizean flat and sooner or later you will catch bonefish: you just have to remember not to pull the fly out of the fish’s mouth. Get on a grassy flat in Galveston Bay and sooner or later you’ll see some mullet jump 100 feet away. The sun’s not shining. The water’s off-color. The wind’s too high.  There are no fish.  Most days you won’t see redfish.

Galveston visibility is bad, and my experience in Louisiana is the same. Often you see reds just as they see you and are heading the other direction. When everything is working for me I can cast pretty well, but you know the hardest cast in fly fishing? It’s a nine-foot cast to the redfish that you just spotted as your skiff’s about to run it over.

Most weekends when we’re home we’ll take the skiff out on Saturday because we can’t resist, and we keep thinking this will be it. This will be the weekend when it all comes together. It never is. Most weekends when were home I’m likely to go bass fishing on Sunday so I’ll remember what it’s like to catch fish.

I’ve caught one more tilapia this year than I’ve caught redfish.

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**Postscript. This is one of those times I was just flat wrong, even if I was certain. There are plenty of really big reds in August, and big black drum as well. I had no clue what I was talking about.

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Fifty Shades of Fish

I’m not a horrible fly fisherman, I’m really not. My casts could be better, sure, my hook sets may not be quite the thing, and when I actually hook a fish I may not land it, but I’m not always incompetent. Some days the sun shines. Natheless I’m skunked again in Margeritaville. I’m worn out with Florida, and last weekend I failed to catch any fish.

It wasn’t my fault exactly, and it certainly wasn’t Captain Court Douthit’s (pronounce Dow-thit’s) fault. Court clearly loves Florida and the fish and the sport and he’s investing a big part of his life in it. That’s why people like me need guides: I want to learn something, I need a boat, I don’t know the water or the fish . . . That’s why you pay good guides: they make the investment to know what you don’t and have the stuff that you need that you don’t have. Our first day out what Court had was a plan, and given the weather it was a good plan, but fishing is a sadomasochistic sport, and fly fishing even more so. Some days one’s not the sado. This weekend we weren’t the sado.

We fished the Gulf side out of Dunedin (pronounced Done Eatin’, which in Gaelic means cute shops), not in Tampa Bay. Dunedin is protected by narrow barrier islands, and the other side of the barrier islands, what Court called the beach side, was where the tarpon usually cruised. We weren’t going out there though. We couldn’t have seen whales cruising and the waves were downright scary. Instead we looked for tarpon on the leeward side of the islands. All we found were crusty old guys in boats (“That’s Old Bag of Rocks. He had his driver’s license taken away because he’s blind. He carries a bag of rocks to chunk at jet skiers.”)

The weather was all wrong. For all I know there’s never any sunshine in Tampa, it’s always overcast except when it storms, and the wind always blows hard. Sunshine and calm waters in Tampa may be like hatches: a practical joke to play on unsuspecting Texans. The night before we’d gone to bed during lashings o’ rain and lightning. We figured the next morning on the water it could get bad. It got bad. Before it got really bad Court polled us across a flat looking for snook. I got some casts which landed somewhere near a snook, so of course it turned and moseyed off in the other direction. Mostly we saw a lot of mullet stacked up on the sand.

It never rained but I still got soaked. Coming back through the slop to the marina the waves were fast and high, and we had buckets of saltwater spray us with each wave. It wasn’t cold, and as spa treatments go it was fine. It would have been better though if Court had fixed us a nice cup of herbal tea to go with the salt rub.

It was obvious Captain Court felt bad, but there was no reason for it. He’d taken a risk to get us out on the water and we appreciated it. He said the forecast was the same the next day (pronounced it’s going to be crap again tomorrow and there’s no reason to try the same thing), but that if it wasn’t lightning we should try something else the next night.

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Dunedin is a pretty little town with a pretty little marina that looks like somebody set Georgetown down on the Florida coast. It was charming. At the little marina diner we ate fresh tuna and avocado carpaccio with ginger and lime, called in South Florida tuna poke. Most marina diners would have had grilled cheese or burgers with soggy fries, and the raw fresh tuna was a big improvement. So were the fresh grouper tacos. They also had local beers, and after lunch I took a nap in the car while Kris checked out the shops. Success.

Our day wasn’t done, and except for the diner and the nap it didn’t get better.  Not only did we get skunked and drenched, the Astros lost to the Rays. The Rays are a fine young team, and the Astros’ offense was dead, their defense was sloppy, and Gerrit Cole pitched subpar.  The stadium also lived down to its reputation. The crowd (pronounced the stadium was mostly empty) was friendly and the food and beer was surprisingly good. There were a lot of Astros fans, and also some Rays fans, but it was sparsely populated. I found a Tampa friend from my favorite Astros fan site just by looking. He was pretty much sitting next to us. I had prime seats that I’d bought as soon as tickets went on sale. He’d bought his tickets that morning. Not much demand.

Saturday morning there was lightning and rain. We went to the St. Petersburg fine arts museum, which was small but nice enough and which had some fine Asian pieces, and the St. Petersburg history museum which houses the world’s largest collection of autographed baseballs. By game time the weather had cleared enough to fish the underwater dock lights for snook and baby tarpon, 20 to 40 pounds. We’d have some visibility to spot fish against the underwater lights. Kris was all for it, and I’m all for Kris.

* * *

Kris asked me where we were going to eat in Tampa, and I told her Hooters. Actually, I told her that there was a famous national restaurant chain founded in Tampa and that we should go there. She asked which one and I said I can’t remember the name.

“What’s it famous for?”

“Breasts.”

“Chicken?” I hadn’t considered chicken.

“No, lady breasts.”

“Twin Peaks?” No. “Hooters?” That was the one. “I guess it’s because of all the owls in Tampa,” she said.

I know Hooters was founded in Tampa because six years ago my friend Patrick was a delegate to the Republican National Convention in Tampa. Patrick has his peculiarities.

The first day he left the convention for food, but every civic volunteer suggested Hooters. It was founded in Tampa. What good Republican wouldn’t want to go to Hooters? Patrick wouldn’t want to go to Hooters. After the third or fifteenth Hooters suggestion someone suggested a Thai restaurant.

Now I’m stealing Patrick’s story, and it is one of the best stories ever. Ever. Patrick, if for some odd reason you ever see this forgive me, but I can’t resist. It’s the best story ever.

When Patrick got back to Austin from Tampa he called me. “You won’t believe who I met in Tampa! Mark Naimus!” “Who?” “Mark Naimus!” “Who is Mark Naimus?” “What are you talking about! You know Martin Amis!”

Each Texas delegate had a straw Stetson, blue jeans, and a Lone Star Flag pearl-snap shirt. It was a handsome ensemble. Then-governor Rick Perry autographed Patrick’s Stetson on the font brim, and future-governor Greg Abbott autographed it on the back.  When he went into the Thai restaurant in full regalia Patrick spotted Martin Amis at the bar. Now think about that for a second: it wasn’t somebody you or I would recognize. It wasn’t John Wayne or Elvis Presley or Paul McCartney. It wasn’t even Stephen King. It was Martin Amis. Patrick, who’d just finished Lionel Asbo, recognized Amis and introduced himself.

Amis was covering the convention for Newsweek and The Daily Beast. Patrick told Amis that he’d just read Lionel Asbo, and then they talked about Laurent Binet’s HHhH, a French novel that had won the Prix Goncourt du Premier Roman and which they both admired. It’s a very good novel which of course I hadn’t heard of. Martin Amis autographed the crown of Patrick’s hat, and I’m pretty certain it is now the only cowboy hat anywhere autographed by Rick Perry, Greg Abbott, and Martin Amis.

The next day Patrick was on the floor of the convention and a runner tracked him down. Mr. Amis was making a film of the convention for the Daily Beast. Mr. Amis was wondering if Patrick and other members of the Texas delegation would agree to an interview. Mr. Amis would come to their motel to film the interview.

So when Patrick called me bubbling about meeting Martin Amis I said Patrick, you know what’s going to happen. Martin Amis, sardonic, liberal, witty, is going to shred you. No no Patrick insisted. We talked by the pool about books for an hour!

“It was great!’ Ok, Patrick may not have said it was great, but you could tell he surely thought so.

So the video was posted by the Daily Beast, and sure enough, Martin Amis shredded the Republican Party and the convention and in the middle of the film, wearing his Stetson, is Patrick, and Amis treats a delegate to the Republican National Convention with the greatest delicacy, the greatest kindness. And who wouldn’t?

And of course there’s that hat.

* * *

The Astros lost Saturday’s game as well, with some bad luck and some sub-par pitching by Justin Verlander and more dead bats. At 9 that night we met Court in a St. Petersburg neighborhood park to fish the boat slips for snook and baby tarpon. We fished until 4 the next morning.

If you don’t fish saltwater you may not know about fish lights. Bait is attracted to light. Game fish are attracted to bait.  Any light works, but spooky underwater green lights work best of all. I figure that the bait thinks it’s natural plankton luminescence, and being planktivorish it shows up to gorge. It’s not a very good theory, and as far as I know planktivorish isn’t a word, but it’s something. Bait could just be dumb. Or maybe it just likes green.

Did we see fish? You betcha. Looking into those weird nighttime pools of green we saw snook and baby tarpon enough to make any sight fisher happy. Over the seven hours we fished, moving from dock to dock, I must have made 300 casts to fish, at least some of which were in the vicinity of fish. Kris must have made another 100 casts–She didn’t want to come back to Florida so she let me cast more than was my due. Court put us on fish and we tried every fly, small light, small dark, large light, large dark, gurglers, purple things that looked like Cookie Monster, green things, tan things, and back to small white, small dark  . . . Nothing worked until . . . Skip that. Nothing worked.

I had three hits, three, all of which I pulled out of the fish’s mouth with a trout set–don’t tell Captain Court, but I swear I have an excuse.  Nine o’clock is my bedtime. It’s not when I start fishing.

By the next morning we were punch drunk and exhausted and had caught nada, but we’d seen baby tarpon roll by the dozens, flashing up through the green glow and hitting the surface like big salmon taking a fly. Just not my fly. At least we didn’t get a sunburn. Not that the sun ever shines in Tampa.

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When you’ve got two days in a strange place to catch fish there are no guarantees that either the fish or the weather will cooperate, and there are never any guarantees fishing for saltwater fish. If we’d had longer the weather would have cooperated and sooner or later we would have landed a fish, but we ran out of sooner with no later at all. I would fish with Captain Court again in a heart beat. I just hope next time its a bit luckier day. Or a bit luckier night.

* * *

We didn’t eat at Hooters. Mostly we ate at the ballpark except for the marina diner and the first night at Columbia in Ybor City with Kris’s 34-year-ago maid-of-honor and her husband.  I bought some cigars in a random cigar roller’s shop.  I didn’t miss Hooters, and no one suggested Thai.  We didn’t see Martin Amis.