Tag: Trout

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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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Trout Fishing in America

I just re-read Trout Fishing in America by Richard Brautigan.  I read it last circa 1971, when I was 15 and it was all the rage.  I haven’t thought about it much since, but I started to name this site Trout Fishing in America, as though it were a child in a 60s commune, but thought better of it.  I’m not just fishing for trout.

There’s a surprising amount of internet traffic on Brautigan.  He committed suicide in 1984, apparently because along with the Summer of Love he had fallen out of favor.   His running buddy Thomas McGuane  said that ”when the 1960s ended, he was the baby thrown out with the bath water.”  But he must not be that much out of favor, because there sure is a lot written about him.

There’s a 2012 biography of Brautigan, Jubilee by William Hjortsberg.  I haven’t read the book, but the NY Times reviewed it.

I fly fish because as a kid I fished for crappie with minnows and catfish with blood bait and I read about fly fishing, which seemed altogether more serious. There was “Big Two-Hearted River,” there was an Orvis catalog I was sent because Field & Stream told me I could order it, and there was Trout Fishing in America.  The Hemingway I could fathom, the Orvis catalog was glamorous, and I don’t know what I thought about Brautigan.  I remember liking the cover photo, probably because Brautigan looked like Mark Twain and the girl looked like what the 60s were supposed to look like.

I think there’s a lot written about Trout Fishing in America because it’s a bit of an empty canvas.  If you look for grand themes, you can impose them, and maybe Brautigan’s themes were in fact grand.  I suspect though that it’s simpler than that.  It’s messy and episodic because Brautigan was messy and episodic.  It’s wry and amusing because Brautigan was wry and amusing.  It’s a bit plotless because Brautigan was plotless.  Brautigan writes about trout fishing because he liked trout fishing.  He writes about hanging out and drinking port wine with the street life in Washington Square because that’s what he did.  He writes about sex because he liked sex, and was apparently a pretty promiscuous guy–I learned from the internet that Brautigan suffered from rampant herpes and was into bondage.  At 15 it’s better I didn’t know that, and at 61 I’d rather I didn’t.  He is decidedly pre-feminist.  He is also a very clear writer, his chapters are short, and there’s enough whimsy to keep me surprised and engaged.

I like that Trout Fishing in America is each of the book, the book in the book, and the book’s other main character.  I doubt that I recognized that when I was 15.

Since I last read the book I’ve been to a lot of Brautigan’s places, San Francisco, the Big Wood River, the Redfish Lakes.  They’re real places to me now, not a mythical landscape, and I can recognize that Brautigan was talking about San Francisco and  a real trip to Idaho.  Maybe it’s just a book about trout fishing.

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Guadalupe River Divertimento

We took a side trip today, not on my official 50-fish plan, but it was cold so we drove from Houston to fish the Guadalupe River near New Braunfels, below Canyon Lake Dam.  Set your GPS for Sattler.  The Guadalupe is a tailwater, but not enough of a tailwater to keep a sizable resident population of fish through the Texas summer.  Texas Parks & Wildlife and Guadalupe River Trout Unlimited stock the river through the winter months, and everyone wants the fish to thrive, so it’s a put and put-back fishery.  Nobody remembers that Trout Fishing in America said that not even he could turn a staircase into a trout stream.

The Guadalupe is a pretty Texas Hill Country River, with clear green water lined by bald cypress.  It’s a three hour drive from Houston, more or less, and Naegelin’s Bakery, the oldest bakery in Texas,  is only a bit out of the way (though it was closed on Sunday).  Plus if you get off the river in time there’s great barbecue in Luling and Lockhart.

It was cold, 31°, when we got there. But it was sunny and a long weekend so there was a sizable hatch of anglers.

Other than basic courtesy, there are some things worth knowing about the river:

  • It’s all nymphing, all the time.  Every now and then you hear about somebody who catches fish with a dry, but don’t believe it.  I rigged with a 7.5′ 3X leader with 20 inches of 4X tippet tied to a black bunny leach, with something brown on the dropper.  More on the dropper later.
  • Use weight.  It’s deep nymphing.  Because of the slow current, I rigged with a size 4 shot, but most years it’s the biggest you’ve got and then some.  Everyone says  that if you’re not hanging on the rocks, you’re not fishing deep enough.  Maybe that’s just lazy, but mostly I believe what I’m told. To get deep, that means your indicator needs to be high on the leader, about a foot from the loop connection.
  • Use a wading staff.  There wasn’t much current today–at Sattler the flow was less than 100 CFS–but the bottom is a weird series of limestone wagon tracks and ledges, and where it’s mossy you need felt boots or studs or both.  I used to wade it without a wading staff, but I used to be stupid.  Stupider.  The picture below is usually underwater, and it’s what much of the rest of the riverbed looks like. Without a staff and a lot of care, at some point during the day you will slip, and fall, and get your phone and your keys and your billfold wet, and curse.  I know this from experience.

  • The fish are stupid.  The stockers buy fish by the pound, and the bigger the fish the more of its life it’s spent in a hatchery.  They hang in water that’s like what they came from, and the riffles aren’t it.  The best fly might be a Purina Trout Chow imitation.
  • Parking can be a pain.  In the summer, the river is taken over by the college-aged in inner tubes, so most landowners have spent a lot of time protecting access to the river and their property.  The GRTU lease program is great, but expensive for one-time use.  If you just want to try out the river, Action Angler currently charges $5 per angler for parking and access, and it’s a nice fly shop.  I’d guess Rio Raft would also let you park for a fee.  There’s a list of free Parks and Wildlife access points, but don’t go to Guadalupe Park.  It’s the meat market.

Of course I’m talking like an expert.  I’ve fished the Guadalupe off and on for 20-odd years, but I’ve never caught many fish.  Someday I should hire a guide and fish the river seriously, but it’s just hard for me to take it seriously.  I like it in the winter if the weather is cold.

Today I hooked one nice rainbow, maybe 20 inches or so, on the dropper.  I saw it follow my fly and take it, and then stocker or no it didn’t want to be caught.  I had it to the net when it broke the tippet.  Thing is, I have no idea what it took.  It was something brown that had been rattling around my nymph box.  I don’t know where it came from or when, and that’s what I tied on when I rigged.  I didn’t have another, and never will again.  I should give it a posthumous identity: a copper bead-head breakaway?