Seven Days on the Road and We Made it Home Last Night...

This has been the season of the great spring break celebration. First we camped at Beaver's Bend with our grandchildren Warren and Coraline and the Zamora family and this week we completed a tour that included a flight to see the Tulloch family in Chicago and a flight to see the Wallace family in South Carolina. It was nice that everyone had different spring breaks because if it was all at once the grandkids would have ganged up and been busy with each other but here we were able to spend time with each family not to mention the cooler late winter climate of Chicago, the costal spring of Charleston where we met the Wallaces as well as a good dose of government shutdown TSA screening line delays in Houston.   

The Tullochs downtown in Maggie Daly Park. 

With the Wallace family in Charleston.

It was a seven day, three flight trip with lots of good eating. Since Katie and Peter live so close to Chinatown the Asian food is great. 

In Charleston the southern seafood cooking is top notch. They have a saying, "eat till you are tired and wake up hungry." I had shrimp and grits for breakfast three days in a row. 

Some people had a dip in the Atlantic Ocean.

Some people were busy babysitting a friend's big lizard. 

We all had fun and the TSA lines were much easier in Chicago and Charleston for what ever reason.  This vacation was so good I'm ready for another. We don't have a big camper trip scheduled till mid May but a campsite by the water somewhere is calling me. 

 

 

 

Used Shirts...

 I have about three shirts that my parents gave me for Christmas sometime in the late 70s. They are good shirts, durable and besides needing an occasional button or slight mending by my needle and thread capable wife they have served well and I still wear them often. Besides a few other shirt gifts I have received such as the big foot and tuba shirts that everyone feels are so appropriate I get my shirts at the thrift store. There's one particular snap button western shirt I own, bought used that lately I have seen two others like it. 

Someone asked me yesterday the question, "when did you have it done?" I couldn't exactly say so I said, "before COVID," and they understood and it immediately cleared up all confusion. So this western shirt I got before COVID. I was standing on a French Quarter street corner. It was morning of a bright spring day full of possibility and I spotted a guy coming down the street pushing a wheeled clothing rack stocked thick with shirts. I stopped him, you can do that in the great southern cities. Try it in the northern towns and that person might fight you off. 

The guy had taken thrift store snap button shirts and embroidered various designs on each shoulder. I was having modest success playing music and making cigar box guitars at the time so I was on the look out for stage costumes so this fit the bill. I bought one with crawfish on each shoulder. 

I used to like crawfish. On trips to Louisiana it was old cheap food that didn't fill you up too much so you could drink plenty of old cheap beer. The salty, spicy taste also made you want to drink more old cheap beer so it was really a hand and glove kind of thing. They go together. Now days I don't drink beer and for the price crawfish sell for I usually spring for the lobster. I'll just wear my embroidered shirt when I eat it.

I don't know how many shirts with crawfish that street vendor had that day. I have never seen another one. I was walking across the parking lot of a big box building material store and I spotted a shirt of the same pattern on a skinny wizened up little guy. It looked in good condition. These are after all quality shirts. I didn't mention to him I had one just like it or take a photo because my wife has coached me not to talk to other guys about what they are wearing. Not that there is anything wrong with that it's just something that might not sit in the moment right, which is a moment in the parking lot of a big box building materials store. 

The second shirt I saw like mine was in an online video released by New Orleans based folk singer Mark Rubin. I follow him on Facebook and he's a banjo/tuba/punk/bluegrass/Jewish dude. Pro tip: when you follow stuff like this on social media it wrecks the algorithm. When I saw his shirt I headed over to his band camp page and bought his latest release. I guess I should have left a comment, nice shirt. 

Here's the shirt in action.

Once I was at a little BBQ festival and saw a band play. I'd say they played about 75% of the songs a band I was in planned to play at a different festival he next day. I told the singer about this and he said by way of explanation, "Them are good songs." I guess you could say, "Them are good shirts."

That morning in the French Quarter I also bought another shirt but it will be another blog post.

        

         

Must Have Let the Magic Smoke Out of the Home Stereo...

 

Electronic things such as guitar amps, public address systems, cell phones, riding lawnmowers and home stereo units have magic smoke inside. Sometimes this smoke gets out and occasionally I have seen it escape it's container in very visible ways and when this happens said unit does not work anymore. This happened to my home stereo receiver this week. It was a 1990s Teac model that had served well powering turntable, cd player, cassette deck, two sets of speakers and a cobbled together bluetooth apparatus that could broadcast to outdoor speakers. 

 I purchased the Teac brand new and it's demise started when I noticed the digital display no longer indicated which accessory was inputting the sound. No problem, I'll just push buttons till I get sound. I listened to my new Hot 8 Brass Band cd, "Big Tuba" and a couple more. I did notice there was no display on the volume level which is semi important as I set it by the number that sounds best according to my location in the house or on the property somewhere. Next time I tried to play music there was no sound and it brought to mind a rhyme I bastardized from an old tune by bluesman Son House. 

I've had four stereo receivers in my life,

One bought by my mother,

One from my sister, 

One given by that good girl,

And one from my wife...     

Actually I have probably not owned that many and the sad fact is in this mad modern world of enshitification you can't go into a store and put your hands on a unit, maybe actually listen to it and buy what you want. I browsed on line all kind of info on home theater systems, bluetooth, karaoke inputs and more none of that are actually things I want. I did see a promising unit of an unfamiliar brand that seemed to do some attractive things such as play USB drives and record directly directly to them which would be handy to get the tunes on my old records into a format that would play in a late model automobile but besides being throwaway cheap junk it seemed you might need a pre amp for the turntable. That's not a good look to the budget manager on location to buy something and then immediately buy it a present.

So for a replacement I browsed online at used gear. The exact unit I am replacing is available which is tempting in terms of the learning curve but at $100+ the argument could be made for buying new as the level of quality I require in the digital world has become cheaper. Instead of this I turned to ebay and purchased a Panasonic made in Japan unit (used to be a good thing) that looks pretty simple for $40 plus $20 for shipping. 

Hopefully this will last till I forget how to hook all this up or how I want to listen to music is no longer valid in this world.     

  

More Catfishing...

 Cathy and I along with her brother Matt spent a Saturday afternoon fishing on Big Sam Rayburn. Water is still low and recent rain have the level creeping up with the boat dock at Hanks Creek just barely starting to float. That's evidence of improvement as a few weeks back the boat grounded a few feet short of the end of the dock making it a big step over for a fat guy like me.  

Fishing was slow as our usual spring pattern is catfish on slip corks around bushes but the water is still not anywhere near bushes along the shore. We managed to catch 9 catfish with Cathy again taking most fish and big fish honors on a box of stocky channel cats. I managed one fish so I did have a meager supper while she ate big piles of fillet meat.  

A couple of trips back this was all fat blue cats holding to the shore lines but I think a warmer than normal March has led them to finish up shallow water activity and they have been replaced but the later spawning channel cats. Even thought the weather was fine for shorts on the lake yesterday the sun seem to beat down and after cooking fish in the garage I felt a few mosquito bites so I am predicting a long hot summer. 

Hazy smoke on the lake off down in the direction of a recent 6000-7000 acre fire in the Angelina National Forest. I have not seen any news of a new fire and it seemed to disperse with the evening wind. 

There were several pairs of ospreys in the area, the first we have seen this spring. I thought they were year round inhabitants but they have been noticeably absent. They were engage in feeding, diving and nesting behaviors in shoreline trees but we did notice this nest along the long boat cut. The full pool of the lake is 164.4 feet and the level is 155 right now or 9 feet low. That means with a return to full this spot they chose will be at least 5 or 6 feet underwater. Cathy points out she will probably be disappointed in him for choosing this stump. The nest seemed to be under construction, thinly built with no chicks or eggs. It was a temptation to knock it in the water so they would maybe choose another spot but we decided to let nature take it's course. 

If it ain't fried it ain't food! 

   

  

Camping at Broken Bow, Ok...

We made a spring break trip to Beavers Bend State Park in Ok. It was our second trip to this area and we really covered some ground this time with camping, kid activities in town, hiking, cooking, a bit of fishing and more. It was a multi-family trip, really all one big family as we took grandkids Warren and Coraline, Great Grandma Geneva, the Zamora family and the Smith family. 

The Zamoras' and Smiths' had planned on tent camping but with rain in the forecast and thundershowers through the night ended up splitting a rental place (very nice) and we camped along the river.    

Geneva will soon be 86 and traveled to Broken Bow pulling her own camper. 

Our campers at the dam. This was where we saw the most fishermen and the only place I saw someone catch a trout. Last trip I caught one trout be this time I really saw few fishermen at the community holes when they have periodic stockings. This makes me think trout had not been stocked lately.  

 

The Smith Family. 

We had a couple of good hikes over steep rocky terrain. I report no chest pains and Mary checked my pulse once and it was only 120 so not too bad. 

Last trip I saw some folks catching a mixed bag of fish on earth worms and I brought some but the coons ate them. 

One day I may look back on these hikes with the grandkids like I look back on that 2019 climb to the top of the Statue of Liberty. Glad I did it then cause isn't happening today. 

I took a bunch of scenery photos so ya'll will think I spent the whole summer camping. 

Did I mention the groceries? Thanks to Travis for all the cooking he did. 

We don't have another big trip planned till May but hopefully with the rains our lake comes up and we squeeze in a few local camping trips to fill our days. 

Fishing Report and First No Shirt Photo of the Year...

 In the weekend edition of the local paper they run a little two paragraph fishing report on each area lake. The one for Sam Rayburn Lake said "catfish excellent on windswept points. That's just where we have been finding them and on our trip yesterday we managed 15 fish in 3-4 hours of fishing. That's a little slow by our standards and the wind was not quite as favorable direction wise to put us on the same spot but slip corks, punch bait and some left over bait shrimp I had bought on the las beach trip and lept frozen got me, Cathy and her brother Matt a nice supper.     

Cathy took big fish and probably most fish. She has been in a bit of a slump so it was high time to catch her up on the fish count. She liked a new reel, a Kast King spin cast. We had a bit of trouble with the line originally on the reel with Ezra losing a fish due to a break off and then last trip I lost a fish same way. I think top rod eye was rough and after some sanding and a line replacement with my favorite Cajun line Cathy says she will be happy if I replace our aging equipment with these.  

Matt scores a fat one. When cleaning Matt checked stomach contents on one fish and it was the bait shrimp we used. 

Bent rods. Probably fish 3' deep or less. 

First photo of the year of fish and no shirt. This is some people's favorite part of the blog. 

If you note the folks on the four wheeler in this photo right behind them is a spot against the bushes, now dry where we have taken 10 pound fish. We could use some rain. Usually this is an island and I have not been around it since lake levels dropped so I am unsure how they got out here. This must not be an island anymore. 

Supper was a simple affair. Blackened fillets served over DJ's rice dressing. Today I made a toasted sandwich out of a left over fillet, raw spinach, tomato, onion and mayo. Delish.  

 

February Blue Cat Fishing Report...

 Recent rains have the lake up a bit. After she backed the boat off the trailer Cathy could pull up to the dock barely grounding the bow of the boat for me to step aboard after parking the trailer as opposed to the last time we launched and I had to jump to avoid wading aboard. I also expected the fresh inflow of water to muddy things a bit but the water was clear green and it was a beautiful feels like spring day on the lake in the middle of late winter. 

We set up on a windy point off the main lake long cut with the back of the boat tied off in 18' of water. Normally that spot would be at least 8' deeper and the stump we grabbed would be far underwater but this position allowed us to cast slip cork rigs to 4' of water so the distance of the rise from deep to the bank was probably about 50'. First couple of fish were nice fat channel cats and then blue cats the size of the one in the photo started hitting. I think I threw back one 12" channel as I did not want him to be scared occupying the livewell with the big girls. I had decided I would keep no more channel cats with the size the blues were but I never caught another channel. 

Since we were fishing right on the depth break all the fish we hooked in shallow water provided a challenging battle. When hooked the ran back toward the boat and under the boat to try and reach the sanctuary of deep water. One of the things my dad used to say when he was trying to judge the size of fish you had hooked was, "Is he trying to run under the boat with it?" We say that all the time also. 

Note the lay of the land here in the background. Normally at pool level the water is about 5' deep on the ridge behind Cathy with an old creel drain on the other side. That creek flows out to a big "S" curve in the submerged channel of the Angelina River. We've caught thousands of catfish in this area and I have probably fished it for at least 50 years. Once I found an arrowhead on the bank here and I often see people sifting for arrow heads when the lake is low. I would imagine a beautiful area with many indigenous people living here several hundred years ago.   

Final count was 10 cats in two hours fishing. We could always catch more but because Cathy's replaced shoulder makes skinning catfish harder for her and that makes me principle fish cleaner we quit when I decide I have all the work I need for the day. The Zamoras came over and we fried and blackened fillets using left over gumbo I cooked at the church Fat Tuesday party as a side dish. 

Once again we enjoyed being out in our refurbished boat and thanks go out to our children who put in the time to carpet, install seats and clean. When we talk to other fisherman on the lake and they get a look at us with all the rods and big net in the holders I can tell their impression is, "these people mean business."