Category: Southwest

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Tailwaters

In two weeks we’re driving to Broken Bow, Oklahoma, 328 miles and 5 1/2 hours, to fish with Chris Schatte at Beavers Bend Fly Fishing Guide Service on the Lower Mountain Fork River.  I don’t know Chris, though my friend Mark Morgan says he’s from our home town. There are few enough people from my home town that it surprises me that I don’t know one who fly fishes, but there you are.  Maybe he was Church of Christ or Baptist. I’m pretty sure he wasn’t Methodist.

The Lower Mountain Fork River is a tailwater, which means it’s the waterway below a dam. There are all sorts of peculiarities about tailwaters. Flow can be dangerous or at least weird, particularly where electrical generation’s involved, and river temperatures below the dam can be substantially lower than above the dam. Our Guadalupe River changes from a nice warmwater fishery above the dam to a trout river below the dam, at least for a few miles. Water released from the bottom of a deep lake does that, and on rivers like the San Juan and the Green it turns an ignored high desert river supporting a population of catfish into a trout angler’s amusement park.

My father grew up Church of Christ, and they practice a rigorous kind of orthodoxy about the strangest things. They don’t allow, for instance, musical instruments as part of the service, just like the Greek Orthodox. While my Dad became an apostate Methodist and took his family along, I figure I inherited that orthodoxy gene, and it comes to the fore about tailwaters.  There’s just something about them that seems artificial.

Now mind, fishing 50 states is an excuse: visiting all 50 states is something I’ve wanted to do that I haven’t made time for yet, like playing Layla on the guitar and reading Ulysses. But when you reach my age, time isn’t a limitless commodity. If I’m going to see the country, I need to get a move on. We like to fish. We like to travel. Fishing gives the travel a purpose, an excuse, a prod, and not a gentle one either.

So this whole enterprise is a bit artificial. Even the geography of it is arbitrary. The difference between the Gulf Coast of Mississippi and the Gulf Coast of Alabama or between a trout stream in New Hampshire and a trout stream in Vermont is some miles, and not very many either. So why, since this whole business is a bit made up, do I resent the stocking of Southern and Southwestern tailwaters with trout? Why is it that tailwaters in particular bother me?

Because I’m a hypocrite of course, because all winter long I drive up to the Canyon Lake/Lower Guadalupe tailwater and fish for stocked trout. Am I dubious about stocked trout? Yeah. Do I fish for them? Yeah. And I’m happy as can be when I catch a tailwater fish.  From time to time I’ve gone out of my way to fish tailwaters: the White and the Little Red in Arkansas, the San Juan in New Mexico, the Gunpowder in Maryland.

Come to think of it, there’s only one natural lake in Texas (which I’ve never fished), and every time I drive out to Damon’s and spend a couple of hours catching bass I’m participating in the fly fishing equivalent of an amusement park, or at least a golf course. Nearly every time I fish, most places I fish, there’s some unnaturalness going on, some dam upstream or downstream, some introduced species not native to the place, some native population supplemented by stocking. I ought to recognize my scruples for what they are: my tendency for misplaced orthodoxy.

Meantime when we go to Broken Bow we’ll come back through Texarkana and have breakfast with my cousins. I haven’t seen them in years, and we were close when we were younger. The elder, six years older than me, seems bent in her FaceBook posts on forcing President Obama from office.  Can’t wait to see them.

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White Bass

The state fish of Oklahoma is the white bass, also known as sand bass or sandies (Morone chrysops). There’s wide distribution of white bass among states west of the Rockies, both native and introduced, so I assume it’s a fish most people are familiar with. It’s common in the Midwest and the ArkLaOklaTex.

It’s not a big fish. The IGFA world record, shared by Louisiana and Virginia, is 6 lbs, 13 oz. That’s probably about four pounds heavier than the largest white bass anyone should ever expect to see.  The Oklahoma record is 4 lbs, 9 oz. There’s not a record for white bass on the fly, either international or Oklahoman.

White bass are a freshwater fish, but their closest relative is the saltwater striped bass (Morone saxatilis). Striped bass have been introduced into midwestern and Southern lakes, and thrive if they’re restocked from year to year. The Oklahoma striper record is 47 pounds, 8 ounces, and Lake Texoma is supposed to be the very place for stripers. There’s at least one fly guide on Texoma guiding for stripers.

There is a white bass/striped bass hybrid that’s also stocked into lakes.  The common name for the hybrids, wipers, is unfortunate, at least as bad as pikeminnow, but it has the advantage of description once you figure it out. The Oklahoma record striped hybrid is 23 lbs, 4 ounces. That’s about 19 pounds heavier than the largest white bass anyone should ever expect to see.

White bass are probably the right color of fish for Oklahoma, but there’s a problem fishing for white bass. Eleven months of the year white bass are most reliably lake fish, which requires a boat and some local knowledge, and more uncertainty than I want in Oklahoma. They aren’t a typical fly target. They chase minnows, they eat worms, they eat crustaceans, they chase more minnows. They school, and a white bass frenzy is a sight to behold. When they pound minnows on the surface it’s easy to tell they’re striper kinfolk.

And they’re anadromous. Ok, I’m lying again. They never make it to salt water, but in the spring they run into the feeder rivers and streams to spawn. When water temperatures reach the high 50s, sometime between February and May in most of their range, it’s quite the thing to catch the run. The smaller males move out of the lakes first, and then the bigger females follow. It’s a bit of a meat market, both for the fish and anglers. Conventional anglers pull out fish to the limits, and the limits are high–none in Oklahoma. This isn’t catch and release fishing. It’s freezer stocking.

The white bass feed right up to the spawn, and will hit anything that looks like a minnow. I’ve only fly fished for them once on the spawn, and then the trick was to get the fly deep enough. The big females weren’t in the river yet, and I only caught a few small males.

So to catch Oklahoma white bass at the right time I’d have to try to hit the spawn in the right place in one of the the right rivers in a fairly short window of time.  That’s still more uncertainty than I want in Oklahoma. I’m guessing I’m not patient enough to wait until spring, and I’ll fish the Mountain Home tailwater sometime before Christmas.

Texas Parks & Wildlife
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Oklahoma

That novel about Oklahomans got it wrong. The Joads left their home near Sallisaw, Oklahoma, two-and-a-half hours east of Oklahoma City, to escape the Dust Bowl. It was the middle of the Great Depression, sure, but our last great ecological disaster was in the Panhandle of Oklahoma (and the Panhandle of Texas, and parts of Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, and New Mexico). The Dust Bowl wasn’t Sallisaw’s disaster, because Sallisaw is in the eastern part of the state. The coming great ecological disaster may be more widespread, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. It’ll get here on its own time

Rothstein, Arthur, 1915-1985, Son of farmer in dust bowl area. Cimarron County, Oklahoma, 1936, Farm Security Administration – Office of War Information Photograph Collection (Library of Congress)

Oklahoma geography is mostly some timber and hilly stuff then variations on plains. Moving from east to west, first come the Ozarks and the Ouachitas, then plains, including a lot of rolling prairie. Finally there are the High Plains in the Panhandle, the Dust Bowl land, the flat mostly treeless land that was once grassland, then wheat, then dust.

Oklahoma was first seen by Spanish explorers, then French traders, and was finally purchased by the United States as part of the Louisiana Purchase. It’s  an extractive industry state, oil and gas, gas and oil. There are some odd bits of small mountains in the state, the Ozarks, the Ouachitas,  the Arbuckles, and the Wichitas. Small accidental ranges pop up out of the prairie and the Cross Timbers.  Because of the granite in the bits of mountain it’s a great place to buy a tombstone.

Stereographic Card, Fancy “roping” at a cowboys’ camp, Oklahoma, C. 1905, Underwood & Underwood, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division

It’s beautiful but subject to tornadoes. The wind really does come roaring down the plains.

I grew up 19 miles south of the Red River, about as close as you can get to a place and not be there. I know Oklahoma as well as anywhere that’s not Texas. We shared tornadoes. I had some great grandparents and great-great grandparents who made it to Oklahoma, and my grandparents, Arthur and Eva, were married in Ryan, Oklahoma, in 1908, a year after statehood. They apparently got there after the Indian Territory opened to white settlement in 1898, so they weren’t Sooners, but pretty soons. When my grandparents married he was 22, she was 17. They returned to Texas to farm dry-land cotton in the west, just outside the territory covered by the Dust Bowl, just outside the area that would have made us Texas Joads.

National Photo Company, Quanah Parker, Comanche Indian Chief, 1909, Smithsonian Bureau of Ethnology, Library of Congress

If Oklahoma was late to white settlement, it had plenty of previous traffic. In addition to the Spanish explorers and French traders, there were indigenous people. After California, Oklahoma has the largest American Indian population of the states, 9.2 percent of the total population of 3.7 million. There are 39 different recognized tribal headquarters in the state. Some of the tribes, the Wichita, Kiowa, Osage, Caddo, and Comanche, are considered indigenous. Most tribes came from throughout the South and Midwest, displaced into Oklahoma. Oklahoma was the end-point of the  Trail of Tears. Tribal names are the place names of eastern and central Oklahoma.

Indians and cowboys, cowboys and Indians. A cousin in Oklahoma, my mother’s second cousin, was inducted into the Cowgirl Hall of Fame in Fort Worth for founding the American Paint Horse Association. My mother said she won the Nobel Prize for Animal Husbandry, and maybe she said it first as a joke but as she aged she thought it was true. When I was 10, I shook Roy Rogers’ hand at the American Indian Exposition in Anadarko. Then it was called the Oklahoma Indian Pow Wow.

Even where I grew up on the correct side of the border there were names that came from the tribes: Wichita Falls, Wichita County, Quanah, Nocona, Comanche . . . My high school yearbook was the Yamparika, named after a a band of the Comanche. Nocona’s wife (and Quanah’s mother), Cynthia Anne Parker, was recaptured 40 miles west of my home at the Battle of Pease River. His father, Peta Nocona, was killed there, or was probably killed there anyway. The manager of Tri-State Lumber was known as Quanah Parker Jr. and was rumored to be one of Quanah Sr’s descendants. Quanah Sr., handsome, charismatic, and the last Comanche war chief, was a bit of a polygamist, with numerous wives, children, and grandchildren, so maybe the descendant part was true.

Meanwhile Oklahoma voted for Trump in the 2016 election. It is a deeply conservative state, religious, middle class, tied to oil and gas, but not as white-alone as one would think: in the 2010 census the white-alone population (which excludes Hispanics) was only about 67 percent of the total. Hispanics are the next largest population group, with 10.6 percent, more than double the 5.2 percent Hispanic population counted in the 2000 census. Trump carried the state by 65 percent. Oklahoma is reddest in the Dust Bowl counties, but also the least populated. It’s pinkest–no place is blue–in the Tulsa and Oklahoma City/Norman areas. I don’t know how Trump fared with Native Americans, though I could see how Make America Great Again would have a certain appeal. I doubt it would mean the same thing though.

Lee, Russell, 1903-1986, Roughnecks leaning on the wrench to tighten the joint in the pipe, oil well, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, 1939, Farm Security Administration – Office of War Information Photograph Collection, Library of Congress.
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Transgender Redfish Romance

Stevenson, Charles Hugh, Report on the Coast Fisheries of Texas, Report of the Commissioner (United States Commission of Fish and Fisheries), 1889-1891. From Wikimedia Commons.

The fishiest class warfare in Texas was fought in the 80s over redfish. Redfish had gone from trash fish to prom queen, and wild redfish were depleted. The war was fought in the Texas Legislature, which has since moved on to crucial issues like transgender bathroom use. Unlike, say, global warming or education or medicaid expansion, transgender bathroom use in Texas is a big problem.  We’ll fix it though. After the legislature gets done those transgender folk will just have to cross their legs and wiggle. No more peeing for them.

The Redfish Bill was H.B. 1000, and proponents of a commercial fishing ban were portrayed as wealthy sport fishers, which in fact they kinda were. The opponents were portrayed as working class commercial fishermen who were losing their livelihood, which if that includes seafood distributers and restaurant owners they also probably were. Texas passed the Redfish Bill and banned commercial harvesting of redfish and speckled trout.  There were other reasons for the redfish decline in Texas and around the Coast:  no size and take limits, loss of habitat, and damage to water quality certainly had as much or more to do with stock declines as inshore commercial fishers. Really, what happened on the Gulf Coast in the 70s was pretty much what happened to stripers in the Chesapeake in the 70s.

Notwithstanding predictions, after passage of the Redfish Bill redfish didn’t disappear from restaurants.  Farming has boosted supply, and if anything table redfish are more popular now than ever.  My favorite way to cook redfish is on the half shell. Filet the fish but leave the scales so the skin and scales hold the filet together. Season and then throw the filets on a medium grill for 12 minutes or so.  The scales aren’t much fun if you accidentally eat one, but at their best it’s like eating the ocean, better even than oysters.

The Commerce Department finally imposed a gill net ban in federal Gulf waters in 1986 after the annual redfish harvest had risen 800% in five years. States in addition to Texas imposed reasonable size and take limits on sport fishers. Water quality and habitat also improved. It’s now a healthy fish population, and in 2015 redfish were rated of least concern on the IUCN Red List.

Redfish live inshore and near-shore, in both brackish and saltwater, and range in largish numbers south from the Chesapeake, around Florida, through the Gulf, and south into Mexico. Redfish get romantic when the water temperature hits about 65°. They spawn in deeper water, 50 to 100 feet, on incoming tides, and it’s the bulls, at least +30-inches, that move offshore to spawn. They spawn off and on for months, with a female dropping millions of eggs in a season.

Good guides won’t target spawning redfish. Bringing the fish up from deep water causes problems, they’re shallow water fish, and for meat fishers the big reds are poor quality.

Bulls, as in Bull Reds, is a generic term that covers any redfish, male or female, that’s reached 30+ inches. Apparently the lady redfish are also bulls, so I guess that makes them transgender, so the Texas Legislature should take note. After release, fertilized eggs hatch in a day or so and like tarpon the larvae are carried inshore, The fry feed first on plankton, then move on to crab and shrimp and baitfish.  Their first year they reach 14 inches.  By year four or five they’re mature. They can live longer than 30 years, and reach 70 pounds and 50 inches.

I can think of few things lovelier than a slot-sized juvenile red sitting in seagrass in clear bay water.  I must think they’re pretty because I spend so much time looking for them. I also think their elders are kinda ugly, but that’s also a problem for me as I age.

The most important thing I was ever told about redfish, other than strip-set, was don’t grab them in the mouth like bass. Reds eat crabs. Fish that eat crabs crush fingers. It’s probably wise not to stick fingers in their mouths.