Tag: Trout

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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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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.