Category: Texas

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Guadalupe River Divertimentwo

Today was our 34th wedding anniversary, so we went fishing, again to the Guadalupe. Because it was Sunday Naegelin’s bakery wouldn’t be open so we tried to find a substitute. I haven’t found a kolache shop between Houston and New Braunfels.  I guess that makes sense–it’s German, not Czech, so we stopped in Luling, home of Luling City Market (which is also closed Sundays), at Snowflake Donuts.

They had sausage rolls, which not withstanding common usage are klobansky, not kolache, and they were perfectly ok.  They also had what I’m guessing is the only commercial Buddhist shrine in Luling, a town better known for Catholics and Lutherans.

Vietnamese most likely, and a very nice young woman

We tried a second place in Sattler, Sweeties Donuts.  Again no kolache but again klobansky, and better donuts.

It didn’t have a shrine, but it did have a statue of Buddha.

We stopped in at Reel Fly Fishing Adventures and the youngling at the counter suggested we try someplace I hadn’t fished before, so we went back to Whitewater, which is all things to all people, but also a place to park.

 

Two tests of Texanhood are whether you’ve smoked dope with Willie and eaten at Snows Barbecue.  I’ve eaten at Snows.  The river above whitewater was pretty, and everybody was there.  I thought if I only walked up above the next bend there would be fewer people, but there were more.

 

I found a spot where I was not more than 30′ or 40′ from the nearest angler, and then got passed by two guide rafts, a canoe, and some kayaks.  I did see people catch fish.  I gave up and walked down river which was probably the better choice, but got worried about Kris and went back to the car.  She had lost her nymphs in a tree and was re-rigging, but then somehow she ended up with a prince nymph in her index finger.  She wouldn’t let me take a picture.

We went to target where she bought some razorblades and cut out the hook.  I’m a firm believer in always de-barbing my hooks, especially after watching Kris cut on her finger.  Then we went to Alpine Haus for schnitzel.  Happy anniversary dear.  Once more no fish, but we did get some schnitzel.

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Dynamic Nymphing

Bayou City Anglers had speakers Thursday on fishing the Guadalupe River from Go Outside Expeditions. It was a great presentation, and they touted Dynamic Nymphing by George Daniel.  BCA was out of the book, but it was available to download on Kindle–which is probably good anyway.  We are drowning in books.

It is the first fly fishing book I’ve bought in years. I guess mostly in these late years I fish some kind of streamer: saltwater, bass, even trout as often as not.  Streamers make sense to me.  You throw the fly out there and bring it home.

The introduction to Dynamic Nymphing was by Charles Jardine, which was interesting for two reasons.  The first was content.  He wrote something obvious, but nothing is ever obvious to me.  Jardine says that trout don’t know where he’s from, and wherever he fishes they don’t really know where they are.   They’re trout.  You fish trout essentially the same in Italy as in Argentina as on the Guadalupe River.  Productive techniques are good wherever they may be.

The second reason was because Jardine’s son, Alex, was guiding the one time I can remember getting angry, really angry, about fly fishing.  We had booked a trip with Aardvark McCleod on the Hampshire chalk streams, and Alex, who was charming and tried to explain cricket to me, made a suggestion about my casting. It was probably a great suggestion that I didn’t understand, and I ended up whacking the rod with the fly for the next hour trying to put it into practice.  Alex told me to stop, but I kept going until I finally screamed goddammit, which still embarrasses me, and almost certainly embarrassed him.  Then I went back to my old stupid cast.  The Hampshires, by the way, aren’t one of the 50 states.  They do look exactly like a Constable painting though.

As to Dynamic Nymphing, it is a how-to on both of the European styles of straight-line nymphing, and indicator nymphing.  The three things I’ve taken away so far are get rid of the split shot and use weighted nymphs, let the water move the fly most times, and stop hanging up on the rocks.  I like particularly getting rid of the split shot. I spend at least a half-hour every trip undoing the leader tangle around the split shot.  Good riddance.

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Bleak Midwinter

 

Yesterday afternoon we took the boat out on Galveston Bay.  When we left the Galveston channel around 2 the bay was smooth enough to open the throttle.  It must have been somewhere close to 60˚.  We polled around Greens Lake for a bit, but saw no fish.  Low tide was hours before, but it was still low midwinter water, about 8″ where it would normally be at least a foot.  By three the wind had picked up to about 15 and shifted to the northeast. The temperature was dropping and the ride home was a tooth-rattler.  Today in Houston there’s snow, and it’s 27˚.

Sun is shining, and we’re in the Intercoastal.

These were the only other flats skiffs we saw.

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Helios 3

We took two rods to the Guadalupe, the 5 weight Orvis Helios 3 I gave Kris for Christmas and my Winston 6 weight.  This was my year for buying rods, and I bought the 6 weight Winston in June before a trip to Arkansas, and put a Hardy Duchess reel on it.  You want aesthetics?  Match a Winston with a Hardy reel and it’s a thing of beauty.  I’ve fished with an older Winston 5 weight for a while now, and I like Winstons.  I like that green.  I like the nickel hardware and the burled wood reel seats.  They’re just pretty, and they feel right to me: they have substance.

Kris though has this thing for Orvis rods, and the lighter the better.  She wanted the 8 weight, but we have a lot of 8 weights ’round here, ranging from an old Orvis Rocky Mountain on which the 25-year warranty has expired through a Helios 2.  Eight weights are really the rod of choice on the Coastal Plain, and we’ve got Sages and a Thomas & Thomas and some Orvis.  They’ll catch most things we see in saltwater, and they’ll throw big bass flies.  They’re good in wind, and there’s always wind.  Anyone needs an 8 weight, I’ve got a store full.  Plus I’d just bought a new Loomis 7.

But at the Orvis store the 8 weight Helios 3 did cast great, and I was tempted.  After all, I’d get to fish it.  But I got her the 5 weight, even though when I cast it at the store I thought it felt whispy and rattly.  She doesn’t have a 5 weight, she would only be happy with the Helios 3D, and I thought it would be a great deal because I have lots of old 5 weight reels sitting around.  I went to Bayou Cithy Angler and got her the Amplitude 5 weight mpx line.  Christmas morning she was thrilled.  I also gave her a new Astros jersey.  She was thrilled with that too.

I put the line on a Ross Cimarron reel, circa 1995, and the day after Christmas we went to the Guadalupe.  The reel was unacceptable.  Too large.  Too bulky.  Not sufficiently . . . matched. Not that aesthetics matter to me.

The day after the day after Christmas we were back at Bayou City Anglers, and she picked the Ross Colorado Light reel, the one with nothing to it but a bit of click and pawl.  I told her that she could get a much friendlier drag system–of course I didn’t tell her that every trout reel I own is click and pawl.  But why would my opinion matter? I never catch fish anyway.  And it did make a beautiful combination with that rod.  Did you know that reel has heart cut-outs, just like a circa-1973 DeRosa?

So yesterday on the Guadalupe I tried out her rod for the second time.  I’m not a bad caster, but I’ve got a tendency to get tailing loops by overpowering my forward cast, and unless I think about it I get a bit of a wrist twirl that leaves my fly five feet to the left of the fly line.  But at a reasonable distance with enough concentration I can get within a yard or so of my target. All I can say is that the Orvis casts true.  You send the fly somewhere, and it goes there.  At the store I thought it whispy.  On the water I thought it telegraphic.  Or digital. Or something.

As for the aesthetics, it’s not as pretty as my Winston, but it’s a handsome rod, especially with that Ross reel.  And when you go to pick it out of a pile of rods, it’s the easiest thing in the world to spot.