Tag: Texas

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TroutFest!

Friday night we went to the Johnson Reagan Richards dinner for the Harris County Democratic Party.  I hadn’t been in a few years. I’ve also been to the Lincoln Reagan Dinner for the Harris County Republican Party.  At the Lincoln Reagan dinner the speakers stand on the stage and toss red meat to the ravenous.  At the Johnson Rayburn Richards dinner, the speakers mostly  talk about how the winds of change are a’comin’ to Texas. They’ve been saying the same thing for years. Nancy Pelosi was the keynote speaker.  I don’t know what kind of a Speaker she’ll make if she again gets the chance, but she’s a remarkably boring and rambling dinner speaker. Kris said she looked good though.

Saturday we drove to New Braunfels. Guadalupe River Trout Unlimited was holding its (our? I’m not a very good joiner, but I am a member) annual troutfest. There were casting instructors but I don’t know where they were instructing.   There were celebrity speakers, but I didn’t see any of them. Nancy Pelosi wasn’t one of them, which was just as well.  Mostly there were a lot of pick-ups parked in a field, some small tents, and a big tent.

We walked about for a bit.  I tried to buy a sweater from Bayou City Angler because it was cold and Kris had appropriated mine.  It might have  been too ironic to drive three hours  to the Guadalupe to buy something from Bayou City Angler,  because they lost their computer link and couldn’t sell anything. I realized later that I could have come by the shop in a day or two and paid, but none of us were thinking that way.

 

I have been to some other trade shows, not a lot but some.  They are all a bit alike I guess. I don’t want to randomly stop and pick stuff up. I did once.  I went through and collected a bunch of Koozies for the boat, but Kris thought it was a joke and threw them away. Yesterday Kris bought a line at the Tenkara USA booth.  I picked up fliers from guide services: Wisconsin, Alaska, New Mexico, Montana. We watched other people, men mostly, mill about.

There were lots of men with beards. Then we went fishing.  We were in a hurry because we had to be back for another dinner last night, but we fished for a couple of hours. I was using a bead egg with a dropper, and hooked a nice fish, but it came off the hook. This was not the fish:

It was only a fish in a tank at TroutFest. I still haven’t caught a Guadalupe trout.

Today we went late to Galveston to take out the boat.  Galveston looked like this:

The photo is a bit hazy, but that’s because everything was a bit hazy.  That’s looking across the street at fog obscuring the Gulf of Mexico. The. Gulf. Is. Gone. We only fish on the bay side of the Island, not the Gulf side, so we hung out at Benno’s eating shrimp po’boys until it cleared enough for us to take out the boat.  I wade fished behind Pelican Island, then we ran down into West Galveston Bay and I poled Kris through what might or might not have been Starvation Cove. The wind was at least 15 knots, and there wasn’t enough water in the bay to get into places, but the water was reasonably clear and it was the first time in a month we’d been able to run the boat.  This winter has been nothing but rain and wind and cold.

 

 

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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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Guadalupe River Fever

Yesterday we drove to the Guadalupe and I lay in cypress roots by the side of the river and thought I was going to die.  I’d been nauseous driving, and then at some point over the three hour drive it struck me:  “hey! I’m sick!” I’m quick that way.

I was going to sleep in the car while Kris fished but no, I’m a manly man and thought I needed to at least try the river.  Last week I’d rigged nymph rigs, but being sick and stupid I’d left them at home. I rigged from scratch which took forever, and then  my line was threaded wrong through my reel.  How did that happen?  How did I do that?  I always thought the feminine name was the worst part of a Hardy Duchess. Can reels be girly?  But the worst part of the Duchess reel is that the line is supposed to thread through a closed window.  Unlike every other reel I’ve ever owned, you can’t fix line problem by removing the spool, re-routing the line, then putting the spool back in.  You have to start all over.

I still like the reel though.  It’s a lovely thing. I’m sure it appeals to my feminine side. And I guess really good fly fisherfolk never screw up their rigging.

We were parked at a steep bank below a high bluff.  There were stairs down and then a path along the river.  I made it maybe 100 feet downriver, enough to get away from Kris and the other guy fishing.  Then my dropper rig got tangled before my first cast.  Do you know how to keep dropper rigs from tangling? Fish with streamers.

It took awhile, but I worked out the tangle, then cast four or five or ten times, then got tangled again, then cut off my flies and lay down in the cypress roots. I have always loved cypress, and the roots going down into the river look like something made up by Tolkien.  When I was laying in the roots and deciding whether to throw up I wondered, do I barf in the earthy space between the roots,  or go for the river?  Either was ready to hand, with my feet in the water and my back on the knobby roots.  I decided on the earthy space, but lay back down and the nausea went away.  Still thinking about it, just in case, I decided the ground was the right choice.  Barf floating downriver doesn’t sound pleasant.  Chum?  Maybe carp? I had no upchuck emergers.

So I lay in the roots and looked up through the tree limbs and wondered if this was how it felt to be a wounded soldier on the field of battle. I get dramatic when I’m sick. Honestly though, to get out of there I had to climb up the bank through the tangle of roots and then up the stairs to the car and I just didn’t think I would make it.  If there had been anyone to haul me out I’d have agreed. I did it though, sooner or later, and I didn’t even break my rod.  We drove home and I slept on the drive then slept through to this morning.

On the upside, we did find kolaches, at the recommendation of my friend John Geddie, at The Original Kountry Bakery in Schulenberg.  I hadn’t realized I was sick yet, so I ate two, a cherry and a poppy seed.  They were perfectly acceptable, though I thought the sugar glaze was gilding the lily.

And oh yeah, Kris pointed out that all those nymph rigs were in a box in the car, right where I’d have seen them if I’d just looked.

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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.