Tag: Guides

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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.

 

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Eastern Grand Slam. May 16, 2018

Somebody somewhere serendipitously caught three different fish in a day and called it a grand slam, probably over beers that very evening.  Grand slam, of course, is a baseball term, meaning that one is spectacularly off the schneid.  It’s usually a tarpon, a bonefish, and a permit caught on the same day, but there aren’t a lot of places north of the Florida Keys to catch a tarpon, a bonefish, and a permit, so in Texas saltwater it’s a flounder, a redfish, and a speckled trout. For Western trout it’s a cutthroat, rainbow, brown, and brookie. For Eastern trout it’s the same sans cutthroat. It’s all nonsense, but it’s gratifying nonsense.

I caught a rainbow, brown, and brookie on the same Wednesday in West Virginia.  I caught the rainbow and the brown in less than 30 minutes after breakfast before we met Randall the guide.

Earlier at breakfast we sat on the porch at the restaurant and watched this guy on the far side of the river catch and release at least six fish.

Meantimes while he was fishing I had the blueberry pancakes. I suspect that both of us, the guy fishing and me, were satisfied.

The people we talked to in the restaurant were all from West Virginia and Pennsylvania. When we said we were from Texas it was like saying we were from France. Elk Springs seems to be a local draw. It shouldn’t be. It’s a good place, and the blueberry pancakes are outstanding.

I hadn’t taken my camera, so I took no pictures of the first two-thirds of my slam. I was startled by the brown, and kept looking at it in the net for confirmation, but there it was. I wish I had a photo just to prove that I wasn’t lying to myself. It was a brown though, and I’d already caught the rainbow.

I caught the two of ‘em on squirmy worms. Not very orthodox, but fine with me.

Kris and Randall conspired again and took  me away from the Elk River to Kumbrabow State Forest. It’s a beautiful place, deserted on a Wednesday in May except for the three of us, and a group of state highway workers who got lost looking for a highway. We fished a bit of stream and I came to a pool, a tiny pool, a pocket pool, maybe four feet deep and blue as a Caribbean sea. I put on a weighted nymph to get the fly down and hooked my grand slam brookie.  Randall and Kris were standing there watching so I yelled “fish on” and they laughed.

But it was as lovely a fish as ever I caught. I won’t say though that even on a three weight there was much of a battle.

Tiny. Perfect.

We moved to a waterfall where I promptly fell down in the pool below the falls.  Kris and Randall were chattering away and paid me no mind.  Did I say Randall was terse? Kris was chattering and Randall was talking almost as fast–ok, nobody can chatter like Kris in high gear. And she loves a story, both to tell and to hear. Randall and his family and his fishing were to Kris a good story.

And Kris also caught her Appalachian brookie. Who wouldn’t be thrilled?

*  *  *

We piled our rods in the car and left the mountain at three. The lodge had been great, the fishing was great, the staff had been accommodating, friendly, and knowledgeable, the food had been lovely, thoughtful, and well-prepared, and I caught my West Virginia fish. Plus there was a washer-drier. Only 47 more states to go.

The brook trout, by the way, is the the state fish of West Virginia.

One oddity about the Elk Springs Lodge. It is in the National Radio Quiet Zone, where radios, mobile telephones, and wireless internet nterfere with the National Radio Observatory.  There is limited and sporadic cell telephone service. Internet is weak connections at the restaurant. If you buy a signal booster the federales will come to your door and make you remove it.

*  *  *

2015 median household income data shows West Virginia as third lowest, ahead of Arkansas (49) and Mississippi (50).  It marches almost lockstep with life-expectancy data. The poorer you are, the shorter your life.

In West Virginia, we passed through nice towns, hamlets really, with nice houses, where I’d think I could live.  The natural spaces between the towns were as often as not extraordinary, but there was also rural squalor dotted in and among the towns and countryside.  I’ve seen rural squalor off and on all my life, and there’s plenty of hard-living in Houston, but in West Virginia it’s on Main Street, nestled up against the highway, not hidden down some side road. Heaven only knows what’s down the side roads.

In Paul Theroux’s Deep South he rails at the Clintons for abandoning the Southern poor. His anger startled me when I read the book, but it rings true. He suggests that the Clintons expect the devotion of the American poor without any skin in the game. Hillary didn’t get that devotion in West Virginia. Trump took West Virginia 69% to 26%.

During the 2016 campaign and its aftermath there was so much written about Hillary and West Virginia and Hillary and the white poor, but bottom line it came down to her disdain versus Trump’s bluster: I doubt if many people believed Trump would bring back coal or otherwise help West Virginia, but at least there was no talk of baskets of deplorables. Hillary, and maybe the Democratic Party, bring nada to America’s rural poor. Trump didn’t either. Maybe no one can.

Trump also carried Mississippi and Arkansas, 58% to 40% and 60% to 34%. Those are landslides where I come from.

*  *  *

One last story about West Virginia. It’s a condescending, stupid story that could have happened anywhere but there you are. It happened in West Virginia, and I can’t resist.

On our way back to Virginia from Elk Springs we stopped at a gas station and I broke down the fly rods in the parking lot while Kris bought bean dip and Fritos in the store. A woman, maybe older than me but I suspect a good bit younger–you couldn’t tell by looking–got out of a beat up truck and said “you’re not going to catch any fish in this parking lot.”  It was that dry, slightly aggressive humor that I grew up with in Texas, so I said something like I won’t know until I try and she grinned and laughed.

She had no front teeth.

West Virginia. You gotta go.

 

 

 

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Rainbow Trout and Brookies. West Virginia, May 15, 2018

If I owned a Lamborghini, or maybe just a Miata, I’d move to Luray, Virginia, and make the drive to Elk Springs Resort and Fly Shop every day.  I’ve never seen a prettier road. We were in a rental Mitsubishi SUV and it was still fun, in a brittle,  “I hope we don’t scream at each other at the next switchback,” sort-of-way.

That map app is lying about the 3 h 33 min.  It was nearly five hours through the mountains. Of course it was raining hard on the Virginia side, but we left the Shenandoah around 4 and didn’t make it to the lodge until almost 9. That was with only one stop for gas and a bathroom, and another for a bathroom and diet Coke. Fortunately Kris had called ahead and the lodge had a pizza ready, because there aren’t many other restaurants nearby, and the nearest grocery was 40 miles away.

Food desert. A rural food desert.

Man it was a pretty road. Man I’m glad the phone didn’t die before we got there, because we would never have made it. Man I’m glad we had a paper map. Man that pizza was good.

We told our guide in Virginia we were going to the Elk River and he said it was known for its hatches. Now I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a hatch, so I was kind of excited in an abstract way. I like the notion of a hatch, though I’m not certain I’d know what to do with one. When we got there though we were told that because of the late April freeze the hatches were thrown off. There had yet to be hatches this spring.

“This time of night you should be walking through bugs,” we were told. There were no bugs. I’m pretty certain that hatches are a lot like snipe hunts.

Even without bugs the lodge was great. There was pizza, and we’d bought some West Virginia beer at the last stop. The rooms all had themes, and ours was NASCAR. I was kind of hoping for Hippy, but you can’t beat NASCAR.  Next door to NASCAR was Harley-Davidson.

Actually, this was the most elegant lodge I’d ever stayed in. Our room had its own washer-drier. Do you know how terrific that is after a few days fishing? It’s beyond terrific. It’s elegant.

After breakfast the next morning—biscuits and sausage gravy for me, and it was good—we met our guide, Randall Burns, in the fly shop. It’s a fine fly shop, with enough stuff to keep any fly fisher happy exploring. We fished the morning on the Elk. Kris caught the first fish then disappeared. I caught four nice trout, all rainbows, on squirmy worms. Randall said the bottom of his net was 20 inches.  Ok, maybe he said 12 inches, but 20 is my story and I’m sticking to it. These were nice trout, some stocked, some wild.  I think Randall said it had been a few months since they’d last stocked.

So far Randall has had two occupations: he’s guided for trout in Virginia and West Virginia, and he’s been a Navy Seal.  Randall looks like a Navy Seal. He served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Randall is a pretty terse, reserved kind of guy, so mostly I fished and he watched. He switched flies, he taught patience (which is a lesson I badly need), and he told me what to look for.

Meantime Kris disappeared and it worried us. We kept looking for her to return to fish, but here’s what you have to know about Kris: She’s not a great caster, she has never quite figured out what all that tippet stuff means, and I’m not sure she knows the difference between a trout fly and a bass fly, but she ain’t into easy, and the Elk is kind of an easy river.  I was having fun. I was hooking fish and after the first fish threw the hook I asked Randall if I was trying to play  the fish too fast. He said yes, I slowed down, and  I didn’t lose another.  I got to practice landing fish in a river. The Elk River at Elk Springs Resort is a great place to catch fish, maybe as good as it gets, and if there had been hatches–if hatches aren’t some Yankee prank played on gullible Texans–I never would have strayed. If someone asked me “where should I go to learn to catch trout,” or just “where should I go to catch some trout,” I’d say the Elk is a mighty fine choice.  It is a prolific bit of river. But Kris was done after her first fish. She was the same way, by the way, on the San Juan in New Mexico. I dread our trip to the Green in Utah, or back to the San Juan, or for heaven’s sake Alaska. The Elk is a place you are certain to catch big rainbows, some stocked and some wild, and you will catch plenty o’ fish. Nice fish.

But Kris and Randall were conspiring.

At lunch Kris and Randall announced we were going that afternoon to the lodge’s Point Mountain Wilderness property to fish for brook trout. Wild Appalachian brook trout.

If you look at that photo carefully, there’s a seam of coal in the ledge above the water, black in the rock. The property is the site of a shuttered and reclaimed underground coal mine: not surface mining mind, but tunnel. It’s a beautiful property. We caught nothing in the pond but I would have loved a float tube.

From the pool we watched a small black bear, maybe 200 pounds and a quarter of a mile away, rooting for food at the edge of the trees. Randall said that there was a problem keeping poachers off the property because black bear gall bladder sells in Asia for as much as $5,000.

We left the pond and drove up and around and down the mountain where we fished in a tiny stream with stimulators for brook trout.  I caught two, the largest bright and colorful and maybe 6 inches, ok 5, but I utterly failed with photos of the fish. Kris, who caught no brookies, was happy as she could be. I was happy. I think Randall was happy.

On the way back from the stream we stopped to watch a flock of wild turkey. There can’t be places prettier than West Virginia.