Spring Slip Corking for Catfish...

This day in February is a wildcard day to be on the lake. Looking back on the fishing log a photo from 2013 shows us in coveralls for a frigid day on the lake. Yesterday I wore shorts, in the sun with no breeze was very warm, the water temp was 64 degrees and a west Texas dust storm blew in to make everything hazy as we looked down Lake Sam Rayburn past a tree full of water turkeys into the distance.  

The first spot we hit for shallow water slip corking, a spot that has been hot the past two springs produced no fish so we shifted across over to the opposite bank where the wind was into the bushes a bit better and found some fish at what we call the Thunderstorm Spot. We call it that because once when caught on the lake in a sudden blow we took shelter under an overhanding tree there and caught 50 catfish while waiting the weather out. 

Cathy swings one in the boat. They were good fat channels with some full of eggs ready to spawn. 

Here's a photo of me with a fish. I'm mounting an internet campaign to dispel the wide belief that Cathy catches all the fish. Somewhere there's some fake news going on but you need to use critical thinking skills and internet research to decide for yourself.  

There is still a pretty good flock of the white pelicans hanging around that have not made there way back to the north. I think their home grounds had snow this week. There are also quite a few loons to be watched diving for their dinner. 

I see some guys making a fishing report always tell about the gear. I used a 90s vintage Zebco 404 and a Rhino Rod. The bigger ones made the drag scream.  

We ended up fishing from 2pm to 5pm. Final count was 13 fat channel cats. We saved a couple for our dinner tonight but had the Zamoras over to eat the other 11, which sometimes it takes 20 catfish of average size to feed this clan so that gives you an idea of how nice these fish were.    

I imagine the slip cork bit will be solid at least till the end of April and maybe longer. We have a campsite at Hanks for spring break so expect us to bear down then.   

 

Neches River Fishing Trip...

 

Seems that I've noticed a groundswell of public opinion that Cathy catches all the fish. We don't really keep count even though one time she tucked a wooden child's toy abacus into the fishing pack which no matter how much longer the Arabs or the Chinese or who ever the next war is with has been doing math than we have it was nowhere near adequate to manage the numbers we're talking about. That made us pretty much abandon keeping a count but there have been occasional trips where one of us did not speak to the other one much. 

Whatever the score is I want ya'll to remember that I always pick the spot and yesterday I picked Chandler River Park to see if we could cash in on the famed Texas white bass run.  Actually the white bass were not very cooperative as the spawning run seems to be happening in waves, good one day, off the next but we did manage a nice string of yellow bass. There is no size limit or numbers restriction on the yellow bass and while they run smaller than the whites I find the meat less coarse and tasty like a panfish.    

Our favorite white bass location, River Ridge Campground on the Sabine River, is closing down this year due to the health of the owners. It has been good access but this spot is about the same distance away and there are no fees to fish. As with any public spot there can be others fishing the same area and I imagine a weekend could get crowded but everyone I met was polite and courteous more so than the average largemouth bass angler you encounter on Sam Rayburn.

Here's Cathy with the 16 yellow bass we caught. Now and then we would see someone bring in a larger white bass and people that had been further up than us had fair mixed strings but reported that waders or hip boots would be necessary to reach these areas.   

 

Good eating. I like white bass but they are a stronger flavored fish than I'm used to and there is no way I want to be thawing frozen white bass on the Fourth of July.  

Only thing was that the money I saved from the free fishing park and the fresh caught fish dinner will go toward payment of the speeding ticket I got in some podunk town that seemed to be named Cooney, Tx. The police headquarters was located in a rusty mobile home. 

About 9pm last night I noted a car speed down my little dead-end neighborhood road that's partially asphalt and road base at a high rate of speed. If you count the mailman there might be seven people drive on this road in a day so anything out of the ordinary is pretty noticeable. Right after this vehicle passed another car followed. This was more out of the ordinary so I checked out back and sure enough the last car was law enforcement with lights flashing. I stood on my back deck to see what was going down and suddenly there was laughing from the parties involved, the speeding car left and the police shortly followed.

Now I admit guilt in my traffic stop but it is a bit galling that whatever this situation it was all fun and games to the people involved while I pay a big ticket.       

Go fishing, drive slow, cook what you catch. Have a laugh with the cops and write your own blog post.  

The Glenn Miller Orchestra at the Pines Theater...

Yesterday the Angelina Arts Alliance offered another fine show with two performances by the Glenn Miller Orchestra. Glenn was not with the group. During WW2 when he was enlisted with the Army Air Corps the flight transporting him across the Channel from England to France for a series of performances meant to raise wartime morale disappeared with all hands never to be found. This group did great service to the music with wonderful performances of the many hits the Orchestra had during it's short heyday from 1939-1944.  

Miller had more top 10 hits than the The Beatles and Elvis in his short span as a band leader. There were some critics who declared the music too commercial, too many novelty tunes and too rehearsed but it was much loved, I like it and it is so familiar it invokes sentimental and emotional reactions in those who hear it. Isn't that what music is supposed to do?     

There were good solo section work outs as is common with big band music, plenty of individual solos and good singing. With baseball season and warm weather approaching one of our favorite things is to sit on the porch, Cathy tracks the Astros on the MLB app on her phone and I play old swing records with music like this. Just seems to go together. 

Many of Miller's arrangers went on to work with other great groups and singers so there was a general covering of the great American songbook. 

If you are browsing thrift and antique stores I recommend keeping an eye out for the Readers Digest Box sets of swing music. For $5 or $10 you get a 5 or 10 record set of good music. 

If you get a chance catch this group. Great musicians and I bet there's health insurance, 401Ks and vacation time. It's a first rate show. 

I think they may have had the original charts used in the clip.

 

Another Instrument Story, This Time Drums...

We were at the Old Town Brass Band gig yesterday at the Fredonia Brewery. My son Morgan was on drums and my brother Glenn asked how long he had had those drums and I replied that he probably got them when he was in high school. Cathy jogged my memory with a couple of details and as I love to tell a musical instrument story and all instruments need a story to make them have a soul. These drums have a good story.  

Morgan was finishing high school and had been saving some money to replace the old black Olympic set of drums we bought him when he was 11 years old. Those drums are stacked in the music room and have quite a history of service themselves, still sound good (pro tip, tune your toms so you can play here comes the bride) and see enough use I can't part with them. Morgan was playing well and ready for a set up in gear quality. 

We drove down to Houston, I don't recall where we shopped, probably Guitar Center and Morgan purchased this set of Tama drums. I think he saved more money and bought cymbals and stands at a later date but this is where Cathy jogged my memory. The Super Bowl was in Houston that year. It was 2004 and the Panthers played the Patriots. We did not care much about the game but the City of Houston threw a big downtown street party and one of the bands to play for free was Los Lonely Boys. We took in this concert and as the Boys had not quite broken big yet with Grammy wins and such they were awe struck by the big city reception and the small town group of brothers put on a great show.  

Turns out the game was good though YMMV as the Pats won. Janet Jackson was the half time show and she outraged the world with a costume malfunction that reveled her nipple (every woman has two) for exactly 1/2 of a second. We made it all the way back to Lufkin with a set of drums that's now pushing about 17 years old. 

Morgan does not have to save his money up to buy gear piece by piece anymore. He pays the bills with a good day job but the pocket cash from the brass band goes into custom drum heads with the group logo, stuff like a special slash cymbal or here you see the bass drum and the marching snare he bought at the Hicks Antiques Instrument sale where I bought a new horn myself this past weekend. 

Buy an instrument. Use it. Give it a soul. Make it have a story. 

 

 

It Must Be Deep Gras or How I Bought a New Tuba...

 You may not have heard the phrase "Deep Gras" before because it's pretty new. It was first used by New Orleans song writer and personality Dominique Lejeune in 2020 and it refers to the period of Wednesday to Fat Tuesday or the last week of Mardi Gras. It means that every action you take is influenced by Mardi Gras.  

I guess I warmed up that path by taking the kids to Mardi Gras parades in Shreveport last weekend because what with preparations for a Fat Tuesday dinner at church, the making of a Mardi Gras mix tape, playing nothing but Mardi Gras songs on tenor banjo and tuba, plans for the Old Town Brass Band gig today, I also then bought a new tuba. I'd say that's under the influence of deep Gras.

The tuba I bought is a King (like my old horn) 1135. It's a 3/4 size student model horn previously owned by the Lufkin School District. They culled out their horns, I guess with the building of new facilities at the middle school and carted them down to Hicks Antiques in downtown Lufkin last summer. My friend, Susan alerted me of this and I headed down there to check them out. In addition to tubas there were bari saxes, trombones, baritones, and a ton of drums. I was ready to buy that day but Hicks was not ready to sell so things rocked on till this week (Deep Gras) they offered up a sale which I took advantage of to purchase this horn for $100. The sale continues today.   

The serial number dates the horn as made from 1975-80. This makes it quite a bit newer than my old King 1240 recording bell tuba which was made in 1936. The guys in the Lufkin Brass came down and listened to me try out the 7 tubas on hand, gave their sound input and everyone around the house thinks it has great tone but I do feel a little bit sad because of my old horn sitting lonely in the corner on it's stand. One reason I was interested in this 3/4 size horn was as I age it might be a bit easier to carry around than the big horn and it does have a case. 

The upright bell should come in handy and might keep me from getting fired out of smaller groups that don't require a straight out focused recording bell sound. There might be an alto sax player that usually sits in front of me at civic band that is glad I now have an upright bell but I have also heard the statement, "that old horn is so you" so we will see what applications we find. 

I never thought I would own two tubas and I now have exactly $175 tied up in tuba. I think that's a pretty good investment. Matt also bought a bari sax and today I go with Morgan to look at the drums a bit closer.

I am itching for a gig. How are you spending your Deep Gras?    

A Banjo Story...

 I have been in museums and seen Louie Armstrong's cornet, Jimi Hendrix's Stratocaster and even William Bell's double euphonium/tuba horn which though I know there's a blog post but I can't find it right now. . They were all behind glass, on exhibit for history and it makes me a bit sad to think that they are not played. 

I recall when I was a teen and I went over to a friend's home and as we sat in his bedroom and talked music and listened to records he pulled a case from under the bed containing his brother's electric guitar which had been left there when he departed for college. I don't recall the make or model but with the strum of a G chord which was all I could manage at he time I sagely noted it was in tune. Sometimes as I drive through town I pass that house, it's probably brought up several families since then and I imagine that guitar possibly still under the bed forgotten and unnoticed.     

This past weekend when we made it up to Shreveport, Louisiana for a Mardi Gras parade we also got in touch with Cathy's nephew, Chase, who is her dad Bill's grandson. He's a guitar player and owns nice instruments. One thing that has been a process since Bill whose main instrument was the tenor banjo, passed in 2020 was to get his instruments to homes where they would be played or cherished. 

A few years before his passing Bill gave away a couple of his main instruments, a banjo and a tenor guitar to the young people he wanted to have them. That left us to later pass out to those interested dulcimers, ukes, clarinets and old pawnshop guitars and such that were part of his life's collection. 

There was one banjo left that Bill had bought and used a few years before his death when he felt his #1 had got too heavy for him. We gave that banjo to Chase. It's a Deering Tenor  and very nice. In fact I saw one for a good price once in a Chicago pawn shop and almost had a weak moment where I bought it but then remembered that I was flying and really needed another banjo like a hole in the head. 

I know Chase will make good use of this instrument but I neglected to tell him that his main fan base was going to be older women and his band mates were going to be tuba players and accordions

Or maybe cigar box guitar players. 

One day all my instruments will be looking for new homes. I hope they end up in good hands instead of behind glass or under beds. . 

. 

 

Mardi Gras Parade Shreveport...

I've been to Mardi Gras in a few places besides New Orleans and this was my first time for a parade in Shreveport and it was a fine one. Here's the Captain of the Krewe of Centaur, Byron who happens to be the husband of a high school classmate of mine, Bobbie. You can spot Bobbie on the passenger side of the float with the sliver dot of the spotlight shining in her face. We had a great place to stand and after seeing everyone set up with BBQ, grilling and boiling pots we might be back with our full equipment next year.  

I think our last Mardi Gras parade might have been in Galveston just as COVID was (not that it's ramped down, probably know 20-30 people who had it the last couple of weeks) ramping up. Cullen, who caught on to bead catching quick was not even born. Mine and Cathy's second date was Mardi Gras in New Orleans and she caught on to bead catching quick also. 

Note the campers in the background. Maybe we will bring ours next year as I asked a sheriff what the rules were for campers along the parade route and he said anything not blocking the road or hurting anyone is ok. I mean it is Louisiana after all.   

Parker has seen a couple of Mardi Gras and knows what to do. 

Plenty of good throws to be had. The parade reported a million strands of beads and 200,000 go cups to toss from floats. Actually we were on a mission as we plan on using the beads we collected to decorate for the St. Patrick's Catholic Church Mardi Gras Party. I'll be cooking the chicken and sausage creole for that event.  

Ezra loads the wagon. 

Mary and Matt catching beads and running down errant children. 

Speaking of children, left to right Ezra, Cullen, Luca and Parker, the real Zulu Kings. 

 

Catfish Report...

Well I might have been premature in my announcement that catfish were there to be slip corked in the shallows and that spring had sprung because even though blog history showed that we had caught fish on slip corks on this date with the wind chill hovering at 33 degrees and our best two fish yesterday came on slip corks we filled out a stringer of 12 fish from the spot we call old reliable. Old reliable was about 24 feet deep on our last fishing trip back on Jan 7th and today with recent rains was showing 29 feet deep. Water temps were 56 degrees so give me about 5 more degrees and it will be on like a chicken bone with the slip corking.  

Cathy shows off the average size yesterday. We have pretty much been operating on the principle of catching a supper so we have not stocked up a bunch of fish. People ask all the time about the next big fish fry and I have had an offer by a friend to host and cook, he's a chef and all I have to do is catch fish and play tuba and guitar but since I know of a party where at least 20 people contracted Covid a few weekends ago I'll be cautious for now.     

Sitting in the shallows I could see at least 100 of the migratory white pelicans feeding. I don't know if these guys scoop up catfish there's some bait in the water for sure. Wiki reports that these birds need 1-2 bounds of fish a day so there's a possible 200 pounds of omega 3's that will not fortify your brain right there. 

Matt caught one bigger than his hat. 

Thanks to my friends Suzi and Charlie who in a fit of downsizing and decluttering as they move I have dedicated the rest of my life to fishing the antique gear they gave me, well at least 70s, 80s and 90s Zebco fishing gear. I seem to remember once as a child losing a big bass and my dad upgrading me to stouter tackle so this will phase will probably last till I loose a 10 pounder but since Cathy's big fish record is greater than mine it probably won't matter. 

The Zamora's joined us for supper. One thing about them Zamora boys is if they have eaten a supper and fired catfish is served, they will eat second supper and with another brother on the way we may have to throw a couple more in the livewell.  

 

Hiking, Making Photos, Thinking...

Photographs are on my mind.

 I went with friends to a presentation at the Museum of East Texas by photographer Richard Orton, "The Upshaws of County Line: an American Family which was his chronicle of the people living in what had originally been a freedom colony in Nacogdoches County. Orton spent about 25 years talking to the people living there and taking photos of the lives. It was a impressive project. 

It got me to thinking about the photos of tuba players I've made over the years. Decades of documentation that I really bore down on when one day I recognized that I had lots of tuba player photos. I have thought that maybe there's a book there but Orton did say during his presentation when he referred to his own book that "people don't make money off books like these."  He said maybe $100 a year. 

So those thoughts lead me to my latest project which is entering photos in the Texas State Parks Photo Contest honoring it's 100 year anniversary. There are a number of prizes such as HEB gift cards and park passes. I probably don't go to state parks as much as I go to HEB which would be a pretty interesting place for a picture study in and of itself. 

I bought a yearly park pass last year which gets you and everyone in the car in for free as well as half price camping. I think I've got my money out of it visiting some of the closest parks such as Martin Dies Jr., Mission Tejas and Galveston Island as well as taking one of the free ranger guided canoe paddles. I also have upcoming camping reservations at McKinney Falls and then it will be tine to renew the pass.        

Today me and Luca hiked the island trail at Martin Dies Jr. I'll probably enter some of the photos in the contest. I've scrolled through the gallery and I think mine are as good as any but then maybe it's because I think my grandkids are the best.

I like the setting of this photo but my old digital camera has started that thing they all do after lots of catfish trips, canoe trips, live rock concerts and just generally being hauled around. The automatic lens cover does not shut well and you get a scratched, foggy lens that shows up in some light. Next camera is going to be the cheapest one I can find. I'm just going to mess it up anyway and with the amount of photos I make the law of averages is that some will be good enough.      

It's not like extreme hiking I did today. The trip was well under two miles but can you imagine how many steps he might have taken? 

When it comes to art I have some kind of life's work done I just need to get it in a form someone might appreciate or learn something from.  

 

An Old Cassette Tape and the Memories...

 

We've been decluttering. I know everyone does that and you thought I was way cooler than to worry about the krap the kids find in my drawers, cabinet drawers that is, and way too cool to do something everyone else is doing so I'll talk about lost treasure found.

In a pen holder, office desk krap holder, you know what I mean on the kitchen counter near the old phone jack when you had a phone on the counter and needed something like this to take down a note instead of just consulting the information from the text you received Cathy found an old homemade cassette tape labeled Harlem Jazz. I still have a cassette deck as a part of my home stereo and the tape plays well to be probably alomst 40 years old.  

I remember this tape well. It was made from a friend's album and back in the days when I cruised around in the Rockett 88 it was in heavy rotation. There is no track listing so I can only guess at the artist but I'll go out on the limb and say maybe the 40s because it swings, there's no bebop and I've listened to some cuts from an album on youtube called Harlem Jazz 1930 and it's a later style than this. 

If you recall an old blog post I did visit the National Jazz Museum in Harlem on a New York City trip in 2019 so I have been to the source.

  I don't have photos on this cassette so it was possibly made from a collection of albums. I don't recall all these years later but I would say these are all African American singers and players. 

I have written many blog posts on my collecting of thrift store records. One particular category that is easily and cheaply collected with the records being in good shape is the Readers Digest Box Sets. I look for the 20s, 30s, 40s, swing and polka sets but there is something in the collection for everyone. Well most everyone. Seems if you were to like, let's say Harlem Jazz, in my collecting ventures I've found none as part of this series.  

Now I know Readers Digest is not know for a particularly edgier style of journalism so we should expect nothing different from the records but where are the records by the black jazz musicians? Sure there might be a Duke Ellington or a Billie Holiday or an Ella Fitzgerald  here and there on a 9 record set but certainly nothing like this:

Or this:

From record collecting I can tell when a family member has died. The bins at the thrift will be full of all the records made by the country singer they like the most and the family brought them by the box to the drop off. . Or when someone's mom decided it was time to clean out Jr's room and tossed all his Grand Funk records. I would imagine there is some who easily fill out incomplete collections like this but maybe some people don't discard the old records. They stay in the family collection. Hopefully that's where the Harlem Zazz records are but I would not mind finding at least one old compilation disc.  

Those were fine days driving in the Rockett 88 or listening on the big home unit with a state of an art tape deck. Today Sirus Radio called and I did not pick up because I use the USB drive in my cars and I made a new drive today. It has 4500 songs on it. If you bring a zip drive over I'll make you one also. We call it Carl and Cathy Radio.  

Don't worry I'm not tossing the records. Someday someone at the thrift store will wonder what kind of guy had all this?