Love At First Sight

The summer of 1977 will always and forever be special to me.  I had just graduated college, had been accepted to medical school, and had a cushy summer job back in the old home town.  With my first paycheck from said summer job, I headed down to the local CR Anthony's to pick up a pair of orange and yellow and red and blue  suspenders.  Everybody was wearing them that summer, and I had none.

I sauntered in to the store, and was greeted at the door by the salesgirl, who, it seemed, had also landed a summer job.  I was immediately smitten, and thought she was the cutest thing I had ever seen.  The Anthony's store had no suspenders that day, but I left with a name, and a number, and a future.  Thirty-eight years later, she is still the cutest thing I have ever seen, and I love her more deeply than ever.  Love at first sight, I guess you could say. 

As fate would have it, though, that was not the only life-long relationship I forged that summer.  I had occasion to visit the local First United Methodist Church Women's Bazaar and Garage sale.  In the sale was a low white wooden table, strewn with magazines for sale. One caught my eye-I hadn't seen this one before, and it appeared to be some sort of outdoorsy-type publication.  It had a coffee ring on it, and some random scribbling, but for a buck, I thought I could swing that and help the Methodist Women out in my own small way.  I was immediately taken by an article, "Scratching The Surface", by some Charlie Waterman dude.  Fortunately for me, the magazine had a subscription card still tucked in the binding.  I tore it out, attached a check for the required amount (also a benefit of said cushy summer job prior to heading off to medical school), and dropped it in the mail .  The magazine arrived in short order, wrapped in plastic and new and fresh with no ink stains and no coffee rings to be seen. Except for a short hiatus a year or so later when the publication fell on hard times and missed a few issues, I have them all.  All of them.  I have scoured them, cover to cover, for over thirty eight years.  The mag is about sport-the way I see it.  We seemed to be of one heart, and one mind.  I fell deeply in love, for the second time that summer.  This time, though, it was with a magazine.  Since 1977, I have seen changes in publishers and in editors and in the always-changing bevy of talented writes,but the literature, the art, the wisdom, and the  appreciation for the sporting life-especially the sporting life as it appeals to me, has been constant.  There is no nicer surprise than the appearance of a familiar, plastic-wrapped GSJ showing up in the daily mail.  It is always a surprise, and always a joy.  

So, Happy Fortieth Anniversary, GSJ.  Thanks for being an integral part of my adult life.  Thanks for sharing a vision of how the outdoors should be, how the sporting life should be lived, and for giving me joy and beauty.   Now-about those missing issues from 1978..... 

The Tiniest Water

Home, they say, is where you hang your hat.  If I may be so bold, it is also where you pop your bug, swing your fur, or drift your nymph.  My home, at least since the end of the Civil War, has been a patch of briar, prickly pear, and scrub oak in the north central Texas plains close to Loving, Texas.  Seems the great-great-great-great-great grandfather (from the Guinn faction of the fam)  picked gray instead of blue,  survived Shiloh with one leg intact, and was rewarded for a losing effort (participation ribbon?) with a quarter section of hard scrabble (Thanks, Professor Graves) farm land on Flint Creek, near the site of the old Warren Wagon Train Massacre in Young County, Texas.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_Wagon_Train_raid

It was here that Great Grandpa Samuel David Stegall (also a Southerner, and the descendant of slaveowners in Tennessee) retreated near the turn of the last century,  married Emma Guinn, raised a family, grew some crops, wrote Methodist hymns using shaped notes, brought in the first oil well in Young County (which still provides $64 a quarter to the family fortune) and lived 'til he died.   The current house, built in 1905, has been re-imagined through the past 110 years, remains a family gathering spot, and is, in fact, what I consider "home".  I've never lived there, but have pored over her hills and creeks and dunes and gullies, man and boy, for my whole life.  I plan to retire here, and eventually, be buried in the cemetery in Loving.

On this patch of land, I harvested my first dove, quail, and deer.  I have avoided snakebites by inches.  I have fought fires, dodged floods, gotten stuck, and have alternately frozen and broiled under the extremes of North Texas seasons.  I and my multitude of dogs have been squirted by skunks, stung by scorpions, and blundered in to beehives and wasp nests.  I have celebrated holidays and birthdays and Independence Days.  My dear, dear friend died here. I courted my wife here, and eventually married off our

daughter here.   All of our registered dogs, since I was a boy, are "Flint Creek So and So", as in Casey, Gonzo, Kelly, Orvis, Nick,  Jake, Disney, Libby, New Libby, and on down the line to Bentley, our current mutt-in-charge.  This is home, if anywhere is.

There is a body of water at my home, located on a ridge high on our property, part of the Flint Creek/Salt Fork  drainage.  My Uncle Allen paid $800  to have her dug, back in the Seventies.  She was originally 18 feet deep, and occupied a third of an acre. In spite of horrible droughts, I've never seen her go dry.  Gerald put a hundred channel cat fry in back in the eighties, and I have put a few bass from Lake Graham and PK into her over the years.  John, who always sat under the pole to shoot doves, once witnessed a giant whiskered maw rise from her depths to ingest a floating decapitated dove head one hot September day and returned with a rod, a bobber, and a hook baited with worms from the cow pasture.  He was rewarded with a six pound channel cat. That fish remains, to my knowledge, the record for this body of water.   When Whitney was a toddler, I took her up to the tank in the pickup, and she and I caught dozens of stunted sunfish.  She baptized them with her trusty water gun, called them "Glitterfish", and we set them free.

So, anyway, I rode up to the tank this morning, carrying a pink ribbon festooned  TFO four weight fly rod and a box with just a few bugs picked for this water.  When I got to the tank, I saw that there was no tippet on the line, just a three foot butt section of thirty pound line.  Undeterred, I knotted on a popper, and flung it around for a while.  One stunted sunfish couldn't resist it, and came to hand.  Nobody else seemed to be interested.

If I had to pick one fly, anywhere, for any species, it would be an olive weighted woolly bugger.  Since I just happened to have one, I clinched it on, and heaved it out past the weed line, just in the shade of a mesquite tree.   On the first cast, a channel cat of two, maybe three pounds, found my offering irresistible, inhaled the little nymph, and gave me a right good tussle for the next two minutes or so.   I took a hasty cell-phone pic, and let Mr. Catfish return to his muddy, weedy, home.

October 2014-The Spirit is willing, but the weather not so much.....

Ahhh-Bucket list.  We all have one.  Spending some time on the Devil's River was one of my pet projects, and that came to fruition this fall.  Zach and I drove eleven or so hours to the gates of Rye's-n-sons Ranch past Del Rio, then another hour and a half down the Devil's own road before pulling up to a little piece of heaven on earth.  "Drive 'til you come to a big hill.  Believe me, you'll know it when you see it" were Marcus' instructions, and believe me, too-I knew it when I saw it.  At the bottom of the "hill", we were rewarded with a long weekend spent with Marcus Rodriquez of The Guides of Texas.  I knew he could cast, I knew he could paddle, and tie flies, and read water, and tell stories, and teach me to be a better fisher if not a better man.  Now, I can also attest to his aptitude as a chef and grillmaster extraordinaire. The river is as advertised-pristine, clear, diverse, and teaming with life.  The fishing, as seems to be the case with me, was not as good as "last week".  A cold front, followed by a stiff southerly breeze, put a damper on the usually hot October bite.  We each managed to break off really large catfish (6-8 pounds), and landed a dozen or so smallmouths in the 10-14 inch range.  Scattered sunnies and a nice-in-anybody's book three or four pounds largemouth filled out the bag.

This was the first time in over ten years I have been out with just Zach, and we had a great time.  Zach is blessed with great eyesight and outstanding hand/eye coordination.  After a few minutes of flailing around, he regained his casting stroke, which had been in storage since Alaska.  He acquitted himself well, and put his bug in all the right places.  Oh-he can sing and play guitar a little, too.  That's him on the video.

The Devil's is notorious for being rough, tough, and extremely inhospitable.  I can attest to the toughness of our sleeping arrangements.  We stayed at Mr. Rylander's house, slept in regular beds, had central air, satellite tv, high speed internet, hot showers, and a washer and dryer.  We had to get by on our rations of burgers, ribeyes, baked potatoes, and breakfast burrito with fresh hot coffee from the Keurig.  Brutal conditions, but we endeavored to persevere.

Number one, though, on my list of priorities, was visiting the cave drawings.  Marcus affirmed that they were near-by, and only a dozen or so yards off of the four wheeler track.  Off we went-he had neglected to mention that the dozen or so yards were bushwacked down a vertical cactus infested bluff.  Eh.  No hill for a stepper, as they say.  I'll repost the original video of the cave tour later, with Marcus' expert interpretation of the drawings.  First, though-you might want to find some peyote.

I'll also upload some photographs so you can share the rugged beauty of the Devil's paradise.

Photos(by Marcus-he's also a great photographer):

http://tgot.smugmug.com/2014/Devils-River/10022014-Devils-River-Bill-and/n-qRHZz/i-ckdh6vP

The Guides of  Texas

https://guidesoftexas.com

Ryes-n-sons Ranch

http://www.ryesnsonsranch.com

Original music by permission of Zach Balch Band, zachbalch.com