Catfish Report...

2020 is a hard year to be a blog writer. Everybody else got that election commentary, Covid 19, conspiracy theory and death of music icons news all staked out. I'll choose to die on the hill of catfish blogging. Hopefully that will keep me making the $39,000 this blog pays every month. We all know what the world needs now is one more picture of Cathy with a catfish.    

Cathy's brother Matt came up and fished with us. 

That's a $10 fish at HEB. Cats were about 26' deep on the edges of deeper water. 

Looking off to the 147 bridge about 3 or 4 miles away. 

Lake is almost 4' low so I took some photos of one of our spring spots we call the "horseshoe." There is a long finger of land running out that the taller cypress trees on the left are on. We tie the front of the boat to the cypress in the left center foreground and cast to the cypress on the right. Lots of fish to 10 pounds come of of this hole in March and April till the lily pads start to come. They are probably still around just hard to fish because of the pads which with be gone soon with the cold weather.   

Final count 45 fish. We fried a bunch and had the Zamora boys out. Matt took the rest home. All the catfish we have caught have ended up being eaten this year. I have traded some cats for vegetables and I have entertained the thought could I trade catfish for services. Would you wash my car for 4 pounds of catfish?  

 

Adding to the Catfish Count...

Bearing down with the end of the year in sight it is ever important we keep the catfish log up to date and this little bird is making sure there are no fishing lies told. He sits on a protruding stump, you can tell it has been slid across by a boat hull sometime in the past before dropping lake levels reveled it and made a bird perch. In the upper left of the photo you see a stump recently reveled and you can bet there are others not yet visible all around. Be careful out there. Water is low but fishing is good.  

Cats were 27 ft deep, taking the hook laying right on the bottom with a very soft touch and we fish less than two hours to boat 15 that were running a little bigger than on recent trips. 15 catfish will feed us and the Zamoras real good with just a bit left over when we cooked and ate last night. 

Different stump, different bird, he's looking for the same thing those cats are, shad. 

 

Picking Up the Thrift Store Game...

With Covid still a part of our lives I have longed for used record shops and thrift stores. On our visit to family in Lake Jackson where it seems the bigger the city the greater mask compliance is and the more available hand sanitizer is when you enter a business I got to show out a bit with this thrift store haul. On a day too rainy for the beach this is the loot I purchased covering stores from Lake Jackson to Alvin and on to Galveston. 

We will start with the records. Four records for the $6. 

Actually the Readers Digest Ragtime collection is 4 records. These RD compilations are good for the collector on a budget that just wants a wide variety of good music.  They are worth about $10 on the open market, they put out every thing from opera to disco sets and people that bought these kept them in good condition.  Most sets I own are swing music of the 20-40s. This ragtime set has tunes nearly 100 years old on it and a quick internet spot check reveled some of the music is on youtube but I saw very little info about the bands themselves. 

I picked up two polka records. One is by Frankie Yankovic who plays accordion in the Slovenian style. Say you haven't heard of Frankie? He sold 30 million records. You must not get out much. The other is Chubby Wise plays Polkas. Chubby is a fiddle played who joined Bill Monroe's bluegrass band in 1942. Miguel gave me a couple of Chubby's records a few years ago to jump start my collection. Chubby put out everything from blue grass to country to polka. Again, not valuable records but good music bought by people who kept their records clean. 

Last but not least Woody Herman and the Herd's Greatest Hits. This record is a bit dirty and while I scrubbed up one side very playable the other still needs work. I pick up Woody's records when I see them because once in high school the band attended Woody Herman Band Day in the Astrodome and five high school bands massed on the field accompanying Woody and the Herd on their tunes. I jammed with the guy, how could I not collect his records? 

Other prize finds were a suede spot coat for $10, a $7 Van Heusen dress shirt and a box of Sears and Roebuck old style large Christmas bulbs for $3. 

Last but not least is a $56 Bundy Student Model Trombone in very good condition. It's missing the mouthpiece but I have plenty of those. Last owned according to the name tag on the case by a Reid Nelson and used at Trinity Episcopal School located in Galveston, same as the shop where I bought the bone. Now when Reid googles his name he will find this blog.

Total spent for the day $76. 

On the way home I stopped in Corrigan Texas for gas. They looked at me like I had two heads as I was the only mask wearer. I was also the only cheaply well dressed trombone player listening to good music with the Christmas Spirit.   

      

 

Two For the Price of One Fishing Report...

Thursday saw us pay a visit to Rose, Tim, Warren and Coraline in Lake Jackson with a quick trip to Surfside for some beach front fishing. Water was nice and clear but a little wind made it hard to hold a bait in place and there were no signs of mullet jumping which is usually a signal for big fish to be near and a bottom fished shrimp produced no bites. Fall is a good redfishing time and my facebook memories showed me a photo of Morgan with a big red from a couple of years ago.   

Lucky for some people that could care less if the fish were biting that there are other amusements. 

Beach front set up. I have spent a life time assembling a couple of surf rods I like and I have a nice chair so it goes good for me even if they don't bite. Maybe next time I'll try the Boliver pocket or if at this beach closer to San Luis Pass.  

With the norther that rolled in Friday the beach was rougher and the surf turned sandy. There might be some reds out there but certainly not a comfortable zone for fishermen. 

Today I spent a couple of hours on better known waters near home on Sam Rayburn. A solo fishing trip produced 15 cats and I'm giving them as a trade to my hot pepper supplier. 

Fall starting to show in the lakeside colors. I like the brown of the cypress trees. 

 

Space is the Place...

 I have been looking for a couple photos I took at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage festival in 1993. I can't find them and I have tossed the house looking at least five times since I retired and this Covid thing started. The photos, old 35mm prints are of the Sun Ra Arkestra in performance. Sun Ra himself was not with them as he was in poor health and passed away later on that month. With the state of the world I have been think about this music and his philosophy. 

A little biographical info taken from Wiki, Su Ra was born Herman Poole Blount in Birmingham, Al. in 1914. He started playing and touring by 1934 in the big bands of the day made up of highly disciplined, educated musicians who who toured the south and Midwest playing white society events. About 1936, there are some discrepancies when and where this happened, he reported a vision and abduction by aliens and he told the story with little change to the end of his life:

   "My whole body changed into something else. I could see through myself. And I went up... I wasn't in human form... I landed on a planet that I identified as Saturn... they teleported me and I was down on [a] stage with them. They wanted to talk with me. They had one little antenna on each ear. A little antenna over each eye. They talked to me. They told me to stop [attending college] because there was going to be great trouble in schools... the world was going into complete chaos... I would speak [through music], and the world would listen. That's what they told me."

Given the public interest and recent government admissions that they have evidence it's worth a note that Su Ra's experience is reported to happen 10 years before flying saucers entered the public imagination and 20 years before anyone reported being abducted by aliens. 

Su Ra went on to play with many jazz greats in the 40s and changed his name in 1952. He considered his old name a slave name from a family that was not his. If you look at the Su Ra documentary on Amazon Prime TV he talks about history, It's HIS STORY, not mine. Sun Ra's story was that he was on a mission to preach peace. 

Sun Ra's music evolved from big band swing to cosmic jazz and back again. It was often free form but touched on the standards of Count Basie, Fletcher Henderson and Jelly Roll Morton. Hundreds of musicians passed through his bands with some staying for decades and a legacy band that has toured as recently as 2019. 

I just missed seeing Su Ra. I wish I could find those photos and I will keep looking, just Like Sun Ra did with his music. He's a great and we need him now. 

   

  

A Walk in the National Forest...

I have not hunted in several years. I thought I might change that since I'm retired and if you tasted Cathy's fried duck breast you would hunt also and bring ducks you bagged over here to be cooked. Since duck season is not quite open yet I was on the look out for squirrel this morning. Only thing was I only saw one but the woods were still and made for a nice place for a retired guy to sit around this morning. 

Forest floor fungus. Is it good to eat? 

This is a message board by the bridge on the 4 C Hiking Trail. No messages, at least from official sources but judging from a Blue Bell carton, a splattering of what looked like #8 shot and two larger caliber bullet holes which I guess we could title this little art piece "Letter From Texas." 

Stuck on the bridge rail was the price tag from a brand new Mossberg shot gun which I guess someone bought and took straight to the woods. I looked up this shotgun. It shoots 3.5 inch shells and is quite the beast compared to the shotgun that I was carrying which I got for Christmas when I was about 16 or 17 years old and was a good all purpose sporting gun back in those days. So much stuff for hunting and fishing I know nothing about these days. I talked to some hog hunters today and they had radio collars on the hog dogs. The hunter looked at a tracking device and told me he had a dog 2.3 miles over that way.  

Something you see everywhere, masks. 

Tire in a tree. I know some people that explain unusual things in the woods by invoking the name bigfoot. 

 

What Do They Tell Their Children?...

They kind of look like something you might see at Christmas. Brightly colored, a something you might point out to a child and say look, look. They are all around the woods, neon energy drink cans you would think that with the promises some of these drinks make of increased pep and cognition that people would think to dispose of them properly. They don't and that aint all that's out there. I would hate to explain to a child why I was dumping in the woods. 

So what does a person who dumps in the woods tell their children? What do they tell them about anything? What do the tell them about God, relationships, family, nature, education and so on? I would think that somewhere in the discussion of these topics which are pillars of our world as we know it that the topic of throwing stuff in the woods would eventually come up.  

I know from my own experience that sooner or later on a family picnic a child throws a trash item on the ground because at that time they do not know what to do with it. That's your time to work on all those items listed in the last paragraph. Take your pick. You should be able to work them all in. 

Here's a nice spread, a bird bath base and a coffee maker laid in the dappled sunlight. Now I have trash pick up even though I'm outside the city there are services are available for a fee. Recycle can be hauled to the city of Lufkin or about 4 miles down the road from me my garbage service has recycle available. Five bucks lets you dump a pick up truck load at the city dump. I will admit some things are a bit hard to get rid of such as non working appliances so you need to ask yourself before you dump, "am I trying hard enough?" 

Hi-Fi Stereo? Isn't that an oxymoron? Is there such a thing? Are your ears educated enough to tell the difference? I'm afraid what a future generation will even think about us when they find this.    

Ok and the grand finale. The king's throne. Makes you wonder where he is holding court these days. I can imagine a child asking, "daddy, what did you do with the toilet?" Got your explanation ready? 

When cool fall and spring days come I walk for exercise on a sand road near my house. It's where I saw all these items. It's private land and I have no idea who the owners are.  

I must add a disclaimer. After a fishing trip, when I have cleaned the catch I dump the carcasses in this area. For any amount under 50 carcasses it takes the East Texas Hygiene Committee, a loose federation of racoons, possums, foxes, skunks, coyotes, buzzards, fire ants and possibility a Sasquatch or two about 24 hours to make sure I have left no trace. If it's over 50 it might take about 36 hours. I know because I go and check the federation is holding up it's end of the deal. If they don't I'll think of something else.. 

Maybe someone will take a child and say "let's se if that toilet has decomposed yet."      

 

Blue Cats, Reptiles, the Mark of the Beast and Other Lake Adventures...

For the fishing log cats were deep and we caught 23 keepers. Here is Cathy with big fish of the day. It's a blue cat and in addition to this I don't know how many little blue cats about 6 inches long we caught. Looks like a good spawn this year and if the big blues don't eat them this winter there should be some good ones to be caught in future years. 

Speaking of future fishing I have suspected that someone was fishing my place this summer. Fish have been a bit smaller and there was a funny kind of hang up that often snagged us where if you bounced around your weight it seemed to slide back and forth and then would come loose. This trip we puled up two five gallon buckets filled with chum. Apparently we were hanging on the bucket handles. We relocated these buckets where we would not hand on them.    

On the way out we cruised through one of our shallow water spots to check how they might be if we fished on a cloudy day and saw this 6 to 7 foot gator. King of the Jungle he was not hardly afraid of us. Some years I have waded this area duck hunting. 

This was a new feature at the boat ramp and by all reports is becoming common around the lake. It's a cashless automatic pay station. I buy my permit by the year, a U.S. Forest Service permit that is good at Forest Service Parks like Ratcliff and Boykin Springs as well as any Corps of Engineers Parks and I get my money's worth out of it. If you are paying by the day you better be in the system  or have the mark of a credit card or no permit.  

 

New Party House...

If you missed the news Morgan took a local job in Nacogdoches making his exit from the oil and gas industry while the getting is good and he, Ali, Parker and Cullen have bought a new home. It's the fourth house they have bought since Morgan graduated college. Hopefully the last because it's good to have them back in the area. 

This house is a few miles out of town, it has six acres, plenty of bedrooms, a fenced back yard, an outbuilding and they have plans for future improvements. It's a nice quiet area with all lots no less than three acres and restrictions that will keep all homes secluded from each other.   

A furious round of painting has begun before the movers show up with their stuff. 

Here's what Cathy and Geneva did during the painting.   

Here's to many happy days spent in the calm, peaceful East Texas woods.