Tag: Barbecue

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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.

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More Guadalupe River

There was a point on the Guadalupe yesterday when for a moment the sun shone and I thought we’d be able to see fish. We hadn’t caught anything, and I’d fished hard.  I’d fished up from Gypsy Camp about a quarter mile. When the sun shone we’d already moved further north to Rocky Beach, where I’d hooked the nice trout a few weeks before.

But the sun didn’t stay out.  The wind shifted to the north, and 15 minutes later the sky clouded again, and the temperature dropped 10 degrees into the low 50s. We weren’t dressed for it, but that sort of summed up the day.  I’d fished two nymphs, a pheasant tail and a copper john, and I’d added and then deleted both a  girdle bug and a wiggly worm as an attractor.  I’d added weight, I’d taken off weight.  I’d tangled. When the guide in the boat passed me I was fishing an Air-Lock strike indicator over a Feather-Craft Czech Nymphing indicator that I’d several times greased with gink over a tippet ring over the nymphs. I hadn’t fished that much hardware since 40-odd years before when I’d stopped fishing bait. The guide said they’d had their luck with eggs, so  I dug through my vest and found a single bright orange egg, my one and only egg, and threw it into the mix.  I still didn’t catch anything.

Earlier, driving down River Road to Gypsy Camp, we had passed a younger group of anglers–which for us includes anyone younger than 50. There was a tall young woman, maybe 5’8″, very trim, who looked like a Vogue wader model. She really could have worn waders on a runway. It was the most remarkable thing, so we remarked on it, and laughed at her good fortune and our more human fortune. When Kris took off her waders late in the day they had sprung a leak, which is probably a death knell for the waders. I hope that girl not only looks good in waders, but that her waders never spring a leak.

A tall and trim Kris bird fishing.

We stopped at Reel Fly Fishing Adventures in Sattler and there was a pair of Reddington women’s waders on sale. I asked Kris if that was what the young woman was wearing, and Kris said they would almost certainly make her, Kris,  taller and thinner.  They sold us some Trout Beads and some Trout Bead Peggz and some Trout Bead hooks–like I need hooks–and a box to put them in.  Next time I will catch fish on Trout Beads, but unless we go back for those waders Kris will be no taller. The store clerk did make me feel better.  He said no one was catching anything.  I didn’t tell him we never catch anything.

I’ve heard that eggs work well in the Guadalupe because the fish are brought from Missouri to Texas in the Winter, and when they get to Texas the rainbows think it must be spring and start to spawn.  It doesn’t work, but I’ve seen a pair of rainbows wrestling down the river, and I guess that’s what I’m seeing. They drop a lot of unsuccessful eggs. That may not be why the eggs work, but it’s a good story.

Good news? We stopped at Luling City Market on the way in and got early barbecue.

Along with the Capitol rotunda and the inside of the Astrodome, the pit room at Luling City Market is one of the best-known rooms in Texas.  I had a rib for second breakfast, and then later on the river had fatty brisket and banana pudding for lunch. Healthy choices.

Being Saturday morning, Naegelin’s Bakery in New Braunfels was also open. The young man touching up the mural told me that Ferdinand Lindheimer had gotten in trouble with the locals for accusing them of being too interested in bars and too indifferent to hard work. I guess others have accused a group of German farmers of being insufficiently industrious, but I wouldn’t guess it was common.

Naegelin’s has been around since 1868, and I thought the woman at the counter needed to hear my story about how my parents had brought me there from West Texas when I was 10 or thereabouts and how it was the first time I remembered seeing bread that wasn’t white.  She said they heard stories like that all the time, which was either deflating or validating.

We also had a discussion about Naegelin’s kolaches, which I didn’t remember and which were more like a biscuit with a topping.  It was good to see a kolache which was different, but I guess I wasn’t surprised that a great German bakery would make a peculiar Czech pastry.

Third breakfast.

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Damon’s 7 Lakes

Crappie spawn when the water hits a bit below 60, but pre-spawn they go onto the flats in a feeding frenzy.  I’ve hit the frenzy twice, years ago, once at Lake Raven in Huntsville State Park and once on a farm pond, and it’s unforgettable.  After the hard freezes last week the Houston temperature has climbed back into the high 60s, and I thought I might catch the frenzy.  I didn’t, There were no crappie in the shallows so I fished for bass.

Damon’s 7 Lakes is a cluster of private lakes in Brazoria County about an hour from our house. Brazoria County was part of the original William B. Travis land grant, and pre-Civil War it was the richest county in Texas.  It’s wealth was slave based, producing sugar and cotton off slave plantations.  A  great-great grandfather and grandmother, William Hamilton Todd and Martha Ann Mangrum Todd, are buried nearby in the Confederate Cemetery in Alvin. I don’t know why he ended up in Alvin (since he didn’t get there until 1880 or so), and his son, my grandmother’s father, left for the Oklahoma land rush after the 1900 Galveston flood.  At least I think that’s when he left.

The community of Damon sports the highest point in the county, rising 144 feet above sea level. There’s no significant temperature change because of the higher elevation, so there are no trout streams.

We’ve been going to Damon for five or six years now, and I think Kris is a little bored.  She spent the day birding.  I like it though.  I like to cast and there’s no good reason not to when bass fishing.  Cast and cast and cast.  Cast 20 feet, cast 60 feet, boom one out there or not.  As long as there’s structure you’ve got as much chance at a fish on one cast as any other.

Even better though is that on the way to Damon’s, only a few miles out of the way, is Pena’s Donut Heaven.

I know that Mr. Pena is a retired Houston firefighter, and I know that he is a donut genius.  I had the red cake donut with the cream, the maple and bacon, and the blueberry with sprinkles.

On the way home, only a half-hour out of the way, is Killen’s Barbeque.  Mr. Killen is a meat genius. I had never seen Killen’s without a line down the street, but it was close to 3 when we got there.  Kris ordered the fried chicken, which seemed like apostasy, but it was pretty good.

And my brisket sandwich was certainly good.

I fished my 7 weight, a Loomis Asquith (presumably named after something, but I can’t figure out what) with a Tibor Back Country reel.  I had a winter redfish line on, because that’s my usual saltwater rod, and I was fishing an olive meat wagon.  Caught three bass, two small and one ok.  We fished about an hour.

Probably not my last Texas fish in this project, but it’s my first state, Texas.