Tag: Restaurants

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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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New Orleans’ Guides

I’ve fished New Orleans once before, two days, post Katrina, maybe seven years ago. We stayed in the Roosevelt Hotel, home of the Sazerac Bar. The hotel had just reopened, but it was already a destination for wedding parties and conventioneers, and every time I’ve tried to get a room since it’s been full.  The Roosevelt was what a good old hotel should be, rococo and redolent of a time when people traveled by train and came to New Orleans for business at the Port of New Orleans and with Huey P. Long and for the wildness, but perfectly restored and well-managed.  We ate the best food I’ve ever eaten at Restaurant August, and didn’t feel bad about it because the chef, John Besch, hadn’t yet been called out for sexual harassment. We drank sazeracs in the Sazerac. We had the worst fishing guide ever.

I don’t remember the guide’s name, and wouldn’t tell it if I did. I’d asked a Houston shop for a recommendation. Their recommended guide was booked but he passed me on to this guy. Kris was there for a conference, and I fished the first day alone. It was March, maybe the worst time to fish Louisiana: windy and overcast. The guide picked me up at the hotel and drove to a place where I bought breakfast. It wasn’t anything special. His boat was in the shop–he had a Mitzi Skiff that seemed to be permanently in the shop and he was permanently and vocally unhappy with the boat and the company. He had borrowed a Hell’s Bay for the day. We got about a mile from the dock when he realized he had no gas and we had to turn around.  He speculated the gas had evaporated.

He was from Florida, the Panhandle, and guided in Louisiana in the winter. He was a Florida guy. He told me a story about how someone in Florida had just caught a record tarpon, maybe 190, on some impossibly light set up: a 4 lb tippet, a 4 weight rod, a 4 ounce brain. I don’t remember, but the angler seemed to have fought it for nine hours and it seemed cruel to the fish and stupid.  They could have hooked a rock with a 4 weight and had as much fun.  At least the rock would have already been dead.

The Florida guy re-rigged my redfish set-up, cutting off a nail knot on fly line because in Louisiana the fish were bigger.  I could have landed a tarpon on that nail knot. I did catch a redfish early the first day. It was the only fish we caught over two days. He wanted to take a picture and it took forever, me holding a dying fish while he changed camera lenses.

The second day when Kris went with us things got worse. He took the rod out of her hands to show her how to cast. There was a point where the forward gear on the boat wouldn’t work and the guide was banging on the motor with a wrench. I thought we’d spend the next five hours backing back to Venice. When he drove us back to the Roosevelt in his truck he drove and drank beer.

He was a young guy, and I hope he grew up smarter. What I remember the night we returned to Houston was Kris on the phone telling off the guide in New Orleans who’d made the recommendation. I’ve never seen Kris so mad, not even at me.

 

 

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Guadalupe River Triple Redux

I finally caught my trout today. Off and on I’d fished the Guadalupe since the Super Bowl was in Houston, a bit more than a year ago. I fished two days then and came up blanked. I started this year in December, and finally caught my fish today, March. It was nothing special, a 12-14″ rainbow that spit out the hook after it came into the net.  I’d hooked another earlier, and had a hit later, and foul hooked and landed a carp, a big carp, much later.  Because of their mouth carp always seem to foul hook.

I knew what I was doing though with the trout. I set up the rod with two droppers below an egg, with an indicator two feet up from the egg, no weight other than the weight of the brassies on the top dropper.  The fish stayed on the hook.  I didn’t take a picture. I wanted the fish back in the water, and I was worried about fumbling my phone.

Earlier, before the fish, I fell into the river, and tonight the muscle pull in my left calf hurts because of the fall. A half gallon or so of water came over the top of my waders, and when we left the river we stopped at Gruene Outfitters to buy dry clothes.  I bought a pair of Patagonia Guidewater pants, grey because even though I wanted tan Kris told me to get the grey.  They will be go-to’s for future travel, fishing and otherwise, but I’m sorry I had to buy. On future river trips I need to bring extra clothes.

On the way out of the store though I saw one of the great objects of men’s fashion, a Howler Brothers Gaucho Snapshirt, with embroidered alligators.  I’d first seen Howler Brothers shirts in Belize, where the younger guys at the bar compared their Howler Brothers shirt embroidery.  The embroidery then was great, the yellow rose and the shrimp and the blue crabs are works of art, but more important their shirts had pearl snap buttons, which for me is always the height of male fashion.  I came back to Houston and bought one sans embroidery, and you know what? When you roll up the sleeves of a a fishing shirt with pearl snap buttons they stay up. They don’t need those sewn-in goofy straps that seem like good design but aren’t. Pearl snap buttons have purpose.    There’s no sleeve creep when you roll up your sleeves.

So I caught my trout and got a great pair of pants and the work-of-art shirt I need to wear to Louisiana. I wish I had a photo of the trout.

It was windy today, and overcast, and the day on which daylight savings time started so we were already tired and late when we left Houston. I got water down my waders. On the way to the river we checked out donut shops in Seguin. Apparently like all donut shops in Central Texas they were Buddhist donut shops. The Donut Palace had a pretty good glazed, but no kolache, sausage rolls but no kolache. It was packed more or less. I wouldn’t recommend anything but the glazed, but I would recommend the glazed.

Top Donut had a good cat, but the donuts were only good efforts.

At three when we came off the river I wanted to go to Black’s in Lockhart for Barbecue, but it would have added two hours and Kris didn’t want to make the investment. We found a place in New Braunfels for German food, Uwe’s Bakery and Deli, that made its own bratwurst, and I suspect its own pickles and sauerkraut. It was outstanding. If I lived in New Braunfels, I’d go to Uwe’s every Tuesday for chicken and dumplings, and every Saturday for the goulash, and I’d be happy.