The Hot 8 Brass Band at The Great Americian Brass Band Festival...

 We saw the Hot 8 Brass Band at the Great American Brass Band Festival in Danville, Ky. I think the last time I saw them was in New Orleans at a Frenchman Street club in 2018.  The tuba great Bennie Pete was still leading the band. Bennie passed away due to COVID in 2021 and their latest release is in his honor and remembrance and is called "Big Tuba." Naturally this release is my new favorite and I bought it as soon as it came out. The Hot 8 has always been one of my favorites and they do a great job of bringing all the elements of New Orleans culture that I love so much together in a rocking show. 

Of course I think the tuba player in this band (I couldn't find a list of band member names) is great but my favorite guy in the band is one of the trumpet players. He's the guy on the left in this photo. 

Last time we saw them in New Orleans he was stone cool onstage but he seems to have a more prominent role center stage singing, second line style dancing, sweating and soloing that really highlights the joys of New Orleans brass band street culture. It makes me feel happy watching him. 

That looks like a happy drum and tuba section right there.

Trumpet and trombone.

Big Tuba!

I guess if I would have headed over to the merch tent I could have met the guys and I'd had names and probably a new t shirt but the weather was iffy and the Hot 8 set was cut short by rain and lightening. Actually when lightening was reported the band said "they say lightening but we will play one more," but festival officials quickly said, "no you won't" and that was it. It was enough and I though a great set.

 Instead of heading to meet the band we headed for the parking lot in the rain and our car was the last one there.

In 2014 my family, or most of us as I remember (only two grand kids at the time) all went to New Orleans for some of the early season Mardi Gras. There were no big floats but mostly walking parades and low crowd numbers with many brass bands and tubas. I snapped this photo after a parade and I did not know who it was at the time but it's Mr. Big Tuba, Bennie Pete of the Hot 8 with family. I don't think we saw the Hot 8 as such that weekend but Bennie was just out sitting in on the parades and enjoying the community, culture and this photo shows what kind of guy he was. 

Join the family. Get some Hot 8 right now.

  

  

   

 

New Orleans Brass Bands...

I'm a horn player. When I started cutting my musical chops there were pop hits by groups like Chicago and Bill Chase that were inspirational to a kid trying to learn a horn. There are still good horn bands around. They may not be making towering hits on the pop charts but if you go down to New Orleans you can see brass bands building on a tradition that dates back to the 19th century.

War is hell they say. It chews up lives and takes a vast amount of resources and equipment. After it's over people try to take their lives back and there is usually a fantastic amount of surplus floating around. In New Orleans post Civil War some of the surplus was military band brass instruments. With New Orleans being a party town and a place to mix cultures folks picked up the left over military band brass instruments and fused European marches with African folk rhythms and a new style of music was born that continue to evolve with hip hop and funk elements added in a natural progression. You can find whatever you want in this type of music with your traditionalist bands and innovators all occupying the same time and space. 

We saw this pickup band on Frenchman Street.

One thing I have noted is that many of these bands seem to be born out a particular group of players that have been together since a high school or college band program. Some of these street corner guys had Southern University Band T shirts and hoodies. Maybe just up for the weekend making some tip money. 

This tuba guy had a hybrid horn with a fiber glass bottom and a metal bell. Could be a horn pieced together other parts or maybe something to cut the weight a little bity but still a metal bell for tone. We all have our little sound formulas.  

We were on our way to see the Hot 8 Brass Band. The t bone player in the red shirt was a Hot 8 member who sat in with the street band. 

The Hot 8 has been in existence for 20 years. They are the more "modern" stylist of the brass band music fusing the old style, funk, hip hot, R & B and local bounce into great music. I can hear some Mardi Gras Indian rhythm in there also. The tuba player Bennie Pete is the leader. 

I enjoyed this trumpet player. I don't know if he was super stoned or maybe just super cool but he was a real laid back cat who never missed his cue and always hit his mark. You could tell he was really feeling the music. 

There is some tragedy to the Hot 8 story. Three members have been lost to gun violence. Two were seeming random and one was a controversial police shooting. We all hear that all lives matter. Brass band lives matter too.  

Don't tell me there is no good music being made anymore. Guys are making it up as they go along everyday. 

     

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.     

  

Latest Retirement Engineering Project...

A few years ago we sat on Don Miguel and Alejandra's back patio under their new stand up propane heater. Things were so cozy on a cold night that we left a little early and on the way home went right by a big box store and bought ourselves one. 

Usually we put it on the back deck where the hot tube is but I guess since the deck is not enclosed it never quite heated the area up while we soaked on cold winter nights and we do have a fire pit in the other outside sitting area so our heater always seemed like a fifth wheel when it came to outside winter warming. In the summer we usually stored it under the barn overhang.   

On checking it out for use this year, just in case it does get cold I could not get it lit. My first thought was it is a few years old and basically a cheaply made imported item with a planned lifespan. So I did what any retired guy worth his salt would do and I took it all apart. The discovery was that some how the hose was defective and would not deliver propane to the burner. Down in the barn was a hose, a part from a long burnt out fish cooker that had been saved by my packrat self.  Only problem it's too short.   

So I remove a section of the pipe that makes the thing about 8 feet tall, drill a few homes to line up screws and now we have a 6 foot tall heater which should put it a little closer to hot tub bathers and deck sitters but still be out of grandchild reach. If you are 6 feet tall and visit my house let me just set expectations that you practice good fire safety around my heater. It does have feet that can be screwed to a base of some sort which would raise it a bit more so I'll be on the look out for something like that.

Cost of adaptation and repair $0. I did throw the old hose away. Could not quite figure out why gas would not pass through other than perhaps corrosion in the regulator.

Another plus is I have this pipe left over. It will be it's own project some day.  

 

Summer Fishing Report...

Cathy and I made it to the lake yesterday for a fishing trip. We've had some lake trips this summer and as per our summer water activity the past few years we have not been too mad at the catfish but instead spent our time tubing and swimming in relief of the hot weather. We swan yesterday but decided we did not want to get out of practice cooking fried fish. 

Though we headed out in the late afternoon fishing was slow for fillet sized fish was slow and we caught a bucket of these miniature blue cats. The Sam Rayburn Lake record for blue cat is 83 pounds. The biggest one we have personally caught was 32 pounds. These have some growing to do. I think I have found small catfish up to about 8" in the bellies of larger catfish. 

Seems our old favorite place that's usually a go to spot from August through January has dried up the past could of years. I think maybe other fishermen have discovered it because last trip one of the grandkids snagged some kind of bait bucket fish attractor and pulled it up. We let it back down but generally extra fishing pressure means small fish are the only ones left. 

We checked around the area to discover a new spot and nearby we clocked 52' depths which means with the lake being 8' low it's normally 60' deep in this spot and and fished the edges which were 25'deep finally producing enough fillet size fish for a fish dinner for two.  When the water comes up the tie ups to old stumps we used will be under water. 

Here's the what the world needs now is another picture of Cathy with a catfish picture. 

With a swim, a nice breeze and an Astros game on the bluetooth speaker it was a nice afternoon on the lake. Supper was even better with Fried catfish and farmers market okra and collard greens. 

 

Let's Go Ahead and Start the Summer...

We made a catfish trip on Friday. First time out with the boat in a few weeks as we have been busy with a new grandchild, older grandkids and lots of rain in this area that has caused our favorite bat ramps to close. We launched at Cassels Boykin for this excursion. 

Cathy tried out a new fishing hat and gives it an A+. She caught 6 catfish to my two keepers. Bout time my streak ran out. I have had a hot hand lately. We also had a lot of small throw backs. The spot where we had good luck last time which was about a month ago at 8' deep was 15' deep this trip. There was some 8' water way back up in the woods and we tried to fish there but with a lot of hang-ups due to the flooded timber made a good bait presentation difficult. If you can't get the bait to him, he's not going to bite it. That's fishing in a nutshell. 

We tried a deep spot but we could not find our favorite stump to tie to. It must be submerged and where we tied was 47'. There were fish there suspended about 15 reel cranks off the bottom but this was where all the throw backs came from. 

Cathy took a dive in the lake. Water temps showed to be 83 degrees and we are both confirmed warm water swimmers so I was surprised she went for this. She was back in the boat so quick I don't think her hair got wet.  

We had lately taken a swim in the pool of a sun baked courtyard of a local mid century hotel and the pool water was nice and warm. This afternoon we have a Ratcliff canoe trip planned with a host of grandkids. Should be warm. 

 

Maybe I Need to Walk There Again...

My doc asked me if I slept well. I said after sleeping several hours I wake up and use the bathroom but get back to sleep easily but then in a couple of more hours I wake for another bathroom break but them I sometimes don't get to sleep as easily and I have to get up and read a book for 30 minutes and then I sleep on till dawn or sometimes after. When you do the math that adds up to 7 or 8 hours sleep which the journals tell us is about enough. 

What I didn't tell him is that second wake up is usually after a very vivid dream that leaves my mind awake and busy. I also didn't tell him because a family doctor seeing a basically well patient that he can get rid of in less than 15 minutes or anyone else for that matter other than a blog reader does not give a flip about what you dreamed.  

A couple of nights ago I woke from a dream like this and carefully sat up on the side of the bed. I kept very quiet so as to not wake Cathy but I wanted to think it over and have good recall since there were many themes at work.

I dreamed I was walking through the French Quarter in New Orleans with someone I knew but it was like the person was a composite of every person I had ever walked through the French Quarter with and also every person I knew that had told me a story about walking through the Quarter. Soon we were out of the neighborhood influenced by the old Spanish and French styles of architecture and entered a darker more slum like area. World beat music with a lots of congas, heavy bass and soulful vocals in an African language carried to us from an indistinct source. It was loud but not overpoweringly so. My composite friend tripped along lightly, almost dancing, occasionally whirling around to see if I was still with him.

We came to what seemed to be fire escape type stairs and began to climb. The steps seemed uneven and hand carved. A tall man in colorful African dress began to ascend the steps behind us and we all arrived at an open air restaurant or bar.

Inside there were quite a few people sitting at a plywood bar on barrels for barstools and it seemed like I knew most of them. We talked about walking down Bourbon Street and after looking at a menu on the wall written in a foreign language that I couldn't make heads or tails of someone told me to order the mosquito plate. "It means something special to them" they told me indicating the waitstaff behind the bar so I ordered. 

A girl sitting next to me who I did not know asked if I always wore a suit. I didn't realize what I was wearing but it was my old grey thrift store sport coat. I told her yes, this color in winter but come summer I would shift to seersucker suits for the hot weather. She asked if I was heading back to walk down Bourbon Street. I said no. I might never walk down Bourbon Street again.

I awoke from the dream and after a period of thinking all this over it occurred that while I've been in the French Quarter a number of times over the past decade I have not actually walked down Bourbon Street since Mardi Gras 2014.  

I never did get that Mosquito Plate. 

               

             

Breaking in a New Fishing License...

September 1st is the day to buy a new fishing license. This blog post title is a little misleading because here's a photo of the only keeper fish I caught on a canoe trip to lake Pinkston. Gotta break it in slow. probably a good idea for an old retired guy, go slow. 

I could use the excuse that this was a new lake to me but I do have a bit of a history with Pinkston. In the lake 70s when it was first build as a water supply for the city of Center, Tx I was a college student without a boat and we went out here wade fishing. Many years later, I can't recall the exact year but I had a 1992 Dodge pickup and I took my dad's old bass boat out there and on my return to the isolated, vacant except for my vehicle parking lot I found the window busted out and a box of homemade cassette tapes stolen. That should give another tip to how long ago this has been, long enough for cassettes to make a come back. 

I got lucky on my stolen items. I met a sheriff on the way out, reported the theft and as is often the case he probably had an idea of who the local bad actors were and went right over and recovered these important tapes. I would imagine they are on a shelf in my record room right now. If I remember how to work the cassette deck I might play some of them.    

Anyway bites were few and far between and the wind got up a bit so I headed home. As the heat index was supposed to be 104 today I can give that to the fish as an excuse. Myself I was glad to tough out the hot weather, drinking plenty of water to stay hydrated and hoping that I keep myself in shape doing things like this. As a retired guy I don't want to get soft and I spend as much time outside as possible. I would guess I spent about 8 hours outdoors today. 

With all these lily pads I fished frog baits today but no takers. 

Look at this scene. I would imagine there would be a tropical peacock bass under that overhanging tree shade or at least an anaconda slithering around up in there. 

Did I just see a tiger? Do they have those around here? 

 

I'm sure there is a spare tube around here somewhere or how do you like my tube....

 Rock musician Neil Young is said to own 489 1950s Fender Tweed Deluxe Amps. I'm not making this up. I read it somewhere. There is one particular Deluxe that he acquired sometime in the 1960s that has the voice of God. When Neil plays it the mountains crumble to dust, hippie chicks wearing long skirts, halter tops and ankle bells levitate, those with over active imaginations feel a tingle in their private parts and old Loup-Garou crosses the Sabine River into Texas looking for barbeque. 

Neil always plays that one Deluxe, reportedly no other has that sound he wants but he bought the other 488 just in case backup was required. These are all tube amps and with the war in Ukraine tube amp supplies are affected since most instrument amp tubes are made in Russia and under sanction, China where a factory burned, or Slovakia which as far as I know is still on our side. There are a few audio gear tubes still made in the USA but making tubes is a messy business environmentally and our laws are stricter than elsewhere. I'm sure Neil has a stock of tubes but I don't. 

I own three amps with tubes. Here you see the backside of a 1984 Champ II. It was a couple of years old when I bought it for $85 bucks and it's really not a typical Fender but more in the Marshall or Mesa camp. Clean ones go for $500. A few years ago a friend scavenged tubes from cheap ebay military gear and fixed me up with the 4 tubes this little hot head takes that are late 50s early 60s military spec vintage and tested brand new at the time. It's a little more raucous than I like but that's ok. I'll work with it.   

    

    

Here's a 1978 Fender Bassman 70. I scored it and the matching cabinet in a Nacogdoches pawn shop for $250-$300 (I forget) and excellent examples of this head now go for $700. It has 6 tubes and some years ago I installed a set of Groove Tubes. Fender owns GT and puts them in all amps these days but GT does not make tubes. Most tubes come from the Russian and Chinese plants and just have a famous name stamped on them.   

I had this amp out on the porch recently and stepped into the house for a moment leaving it and a four year old unsupervised. I returned to find it upended. No harm done but don't try this with your modeling amp with digital simulations. 

And here's the big boy. A 1968 Fender Bandmaster Reverb that I purchased in 1982 with original cab  for $400. Looks like these days the head only will set you back about $675 but prices are all over place on gear like this. It's old, it's big, it's heavy, you got to really want it. There are 8 tubes in this head. Looks like mostly RCAs and they might be pretty old. Seems I can recall an occasional but never a whole set.  

Since Covid I have not loaded a big tube amp and taken it anywhere. I load up the little old Texas Red Fender guitar amp and paired with a Sans Amp Bass Drive use it for acoustic bass accompanying acoustic guitars at church. Catch the sound of it on our livestream. I do own a Peavy bass amp that lives up at church for all to use and Morgan has my Fender solid state Ultra Chorus. That is an under sung amp that might become popular with a tube shortage.  

Chances are at this stage of the game I'll limp along with this old gear as long as I can. Western Electric, an American manufacturer of audio tubes is examining the guitar tube market due to current events and you can take a survey here so they have some feed back for business decisions. 

I might have a few odd tubes laying around. Like other things new ones are expensive and NOS still available is for the cork snifters. If I see Neil I'll ask for spares, made in USA please.  

Bream Fishing Report...

I was not the only fisherman on the lake this morning. I was the only one in a canoe probably but I did spot a kayak that took a spin on the water from a campsite. I did not see him fish. I was there to fish and using light tackle and small lures I managed to catch enough fish for a nice lunch.  

Most of the fish I caught we call them bream in the south. Actually I think this colorful specimen is a long eared sunfish. I just fished around the boat ramp cove where I launched and with a swimming area and a camp ground there is lots of open, clean bank. All these fish were caught where there was some brush in the water so they were pretty spotty, one fish here and there whenever there was a bush in the water. Best baits were the faithful crappie slider and a beetle spin dressed with a gulp minnow which is some kind of scented fish food molded into a jig body shape. I have had pretty good luck on this even though it does not look like much.

   No lunkers like over at B. A. Steinhagen Lake which has had an explosion of weed growth brought on I was told by a park volunteer by the warmer than normal winter making fishing light lines and lures harder.. 

There is no size restriction on these boys so fry them all nice and crisp.     

It's pleasant on the water and these turtles are enjoying it. Once I got home as I was finishing with the fish cleaning chores I walked out on the patio to a narrow edge catching the morning sun. I was barefooted and it burned my feet. I can't really recall that happening before in the 38 years I have lived here.  

Final catch was 8 bream. Not a record but a nice paddling work out and not too many to clean. That's when it starts to get hot, standing at the cleaning table, unloading the boat and disposing of fish guts. 

My cat, Balls thinks catfish is better eating. Cathy says it was the best lunch she had in a a while and asked what time I was fishing tomorrow.  

 

Fishing Lure Tips...

We were on our way to hit the spring East Texas white bass run and made a pitstop at one of those bright, shiny and modern convenience stores. It was all colorful and cheerful with clean restrooms, unlimited choices of caffeinated beverages, high carb snacks and probably brought in a million dollars a year in beer sales. In a place like this which is in close proximity to a hot public sandbass spot there is also usually a small tackle corner which I like to check just incase they stock a brainstorm lure locally made by the resident fish whisperer. There was nothing like this and the standard white bass staples hung on the racks including my favorite the Blakemore Roadrunner. Recalling a Trinity River trip I took decades ago when the water level was low and though the fish bit well I hung up and lost a ball cap full of hair crappie jigs on the old river snags it occurred to me that a few more Roadrunners for the box wouldn't hurt. I passed when I saw the premium market price with the sandbass run full on was $10 for a pack of two dressed with tails. I didn't need them that bad.   

They have been making Roadrunners since 1958 and I've fished them for about 40 years. Except for maybe the so called rough fish like gar, carp, buffalo, and grinnell which I imagine would bite if it crossed their path, I have caught everything else in Sam Rayburn Reservoir using this bait. Once I even hiked to the top of a rainforest mountain in Puerto Rico and caught some fish I never identified with a Ronco Pocket Fisherman and a Roadrunner. 

Even though you can buy a Roadrunner with any kind of wiggle tail you think attracts fish I usually buy mine in the bulk packages, undressed and they are $5. I then put my own tails on them. A few things to know about the Roadrunner is that you can't fish it wrong as long as you fish it slow and that any color is right as long as it is yellow, white or chartreuse. Usually I'll keep a few red or pink heads in stock and either the 1/16 or 1/8 size depending on the skill of the casters on the expedition. 

Grab a couple of Roadrunner packs, a variety of plastic wiggle tails and some light fishing tackle and head out to any place, any country and catch a fish dinner.    

 

Fishing Report...

What the world needs now is another picture of Cathy with a catfish. I should go through the archives and count how many photos there are like this, audit these fishing reports for the total number of cats caught each year and come up with some kind of percentage ratio comparing pictures to numbers and a formula like x divided by y equals mean results squared. Wait a minute, that's math! Let's fish!

Fishing was a bit slow on a 100 degree afternoon. With a swim and a cool south wind we did not suffer and in about two hours of fishing ended up with 8 cats, which we took right home and fried up. It was the perfect amount for the two of us. 

Usually the spot we are fishing is highly productive late summer through January. It's deep water, with even deeper water nearby. There have been a couple of times when we have come out to find others on our spot this summer and that's ok, I have other spots but there seems to be a reduction, not some much as in numbers but in the size of the fish. I'll be poking around on the next few trips trying to find the next hot place   

I made this cormorant photo  It was with the zoom lens so really not very close to where I was fishing but he was enjoying the sun and wind to dry his feathers. If you check the LAKE LEVEL on this interactive graph you with see that on May 29th this stump was under 6' of water. By doing a little math (oh no) this stump was just barely under the water on Aug. 6th just right for catastrophic boat hull damage. You can be your Zebco there are many more just under the water in this photo. 

Personally I like when this stuff starts sticking up because it is usually on river and creek drop offs and there be fish in these type of places. A modern invention you find on bass boats these days is the spot lock trolling motor. A GPS unit (some math again) will keep the tolling motor making minute adjustments so that your boat stays right on the spot and all you do is fish. I don't have this so I still operate by tying up to stumps and bushes (my dad used to ask me when we did this "do you see a snake, a wasp nest, all with great urgency") hauling on anchor ropes or judging the wind to make a good drift over a prime area. 

Fishing will probably pick up, I'll find a new spot but keep a watch for stumps and leave the math at home.    

 

Stone Wall Studio Fall Jam...

 Back in 1969 I was 12 years old. I had an avocado green transistor radio. It was roughly the same height and width as the average cell phone is today but to pack in the  nine volt silicon technology that was required to tune in the three local AM radio stations it had to be about four times as thick. 

One of those local stations, KRBA played country music all day long but at three o'clock, conveniently the same hour as school let out they switched over to the pop hits of the day. One of the hits that year was by the Beatles and called the Ballad of John and Yoko. It peaked at #8 on the Billboard Hot 100 and the content of the song was a description of the couple's wedding. 

I remember well that when Lennon sang the line, "the news people said say what you doing in bed, I said we're only trying to get us some piece..." that the local radio bleeped out the word "peace" to save those local innocents who might get the wrong idea. 

This past weekend Cathy and I performed as Goat Rodeo or maybe it was Skindog depending who you asked at the annual Stone Wall Studio Fall Jamfest/M.D. Anderson Cancer Benefit to raise money to sponsor Thanksgiving dinner for the Children's Hospital. We opened our set with the ballad of John and Yoko. We could tell by the smile on the guy in the audience with the John Lennon t shirt it was a good pick and afterwards East Texas singer songwriter Chris Edwards, a dear sensitive old soul says to us, "man it takes some balls to open with the Ballad of John and Yoko deep in East Texas..." I say he's a sensitive old soul because he must have caught that bleep out vibe somehow. No one bleeped out the word peace on us and it seems at least two people listening caught a bit of that nine volt silicon charge. 

If you don't know the jam fest it takes place at Stone Wall Studios in Groveton, Tx and involves a varied cast of characters that play music, contribute auction items, sound equipment, cook food and hang out for an evening coming together to make something bigger than themselves. It can get loud and since it was my first semi post pandemic electric guitar experience in about a year and a half my tinnitus is still cutting up this morning. 

I don't have any pictures of us playing. Maybe some will surface. A video is promised but they can bleep out words on that. Here's a run down of the other bands. 

The Brick Street Blues Band. I vote best band there. I think they are out of Nacogdoches and you should check them out. 

Mark, the MC. This guy can sell fish plates. Plays guitar also. 

The Don May Project. Local band out of Livingston 

Roger Karber of Roger and the Karburators. He's got new music out on all the platforms. 

This years version of the Stone Wall Rockers. 

Couple of the Brazos River Rats. The Rats are a group of guys that have been playing together since the days of 9 bolt silicon. Thanks for letting me join the band this year.  

Mark and the host and musical misdirectior of this affair on bass, Travis. 

The Brazos River Rats in all their glory. They are only trying to get em some peace.  

I think I covered everyone. If you would like to contribute to a good cause or just be in contact with good people check out Stone Wall Studio. 

Peace. 

      

Shakedown Cruise for the RPod and Good Blue Cat Bite...

 We stayed close to home for the shakedown cruise for the new to us rpod heading out 15 miles down the road to Hanks Creel Park on Sam Rayburn Reservoir. Our camp site was on the water and being so close to home we made a second trip back to get the boat because it is our normal launch with our best fishing spots nearby. 

I posted this photo on facebook and many thought we were tent camping but the trailer has a zip on canopy that provides shade and also served as sleeping quarters for brother in law Matt and also my son Morgan and his son Cullen who stayed one night. We were also joined in nearby campsites by my mother in law Geneva in her new truck camper (should have got a photo of her rig), the Zamoras in their VW camper and my brother Glenn as a day camper.  

The hot Texas summer finally broke a bit with temperatures a few degrees less making it more comfortable for the outdoors and the fish bit well. We probably caught less than 30 fish but it was enough for a fish dinner each day for whomever was in camp with the number of campers and fish eaters reaching a high of 8 adults and 4 children. 

A neighboring camper stopped me and asked if these were all my grandchildren. I said, "yes, half of them." He said, "my kids have not had any so it's just me and my wife and it's so boring!" I felt a bit sorry for him! Of course I don't have a boring wife but that's another blog post. 

Everyone caught some fish I think. They were mostly blue cats running to good size and we just threw back many of the smaller but still keeper sized channel cats. Parker caught a PB (personal best) two days in a row and even Miguel caught a few. 

Good fish for Morgan

Matt helps Luca land one. 

Cathy caught a good one and before we could land it I hooked one and we netted mine before she could get her's untangled. 

I can't believe they ate all that fish! Usually with the smaller channel cats I fry with the fish cut into strips. These big blue cats were fried up in big fillets and large hunks. 

Well, we can get more! just for the record the big blues like this were 40' deep and the bite was extremely light with the larger fish just clamping down and sitting on it. Your pole would just suddenly feel different, not a pull but a second sense of when to set the hook.   

The last fish of the trip was caught by Matt on a rod baited with a small sunfish that he casted behind the boat and left out overnight. It was a 3 pound blue cat, caught, photographed and released by campsite #16 in case anyone wants to try for him. 

We were not the only ones fishing the area as the river otters put on a show for us a couple of evenings playing and dining on our left over fish cleanings right beside our boat landing and we also had a bald eagle sighting.  

One last look a camp catfish. There's a couple of minor repairs and adjustments to make on the camper and looking around for our next trip we have discovered that any parks an hour drive from metropolitan areas are going to take planning several months in advance to get a site. 

Also we have a bike rack around here or on loan to Miguel I think and we had a lot of fun riding bikes in the park. They will be a piece of equipment to always have on these trips. We also carried guitars and I played one afternoon but they may be more used on future trips where the boat is not involved and we have relaxed sitting around time. 

I think this crew can handle camping.