FLY FISHING IN TEXAS by Alfredo Zubiri
FLY FISHING TEXAS BAY WITH HARRY BRISCOE
By Alfredo Zubiri
I knew Harry at the lodge. We have a friend in common, a very dear friend, Jim Repine, who passed away in June. We miss him.
Jim was a Master of the Art. Jim fished all around the world; had a floating trip operation in Alaska, managed his own lodge in Chile, wrote books about fly fishing and of men around him. And that experience got deep inside him; he trained his hands, but he also thought deeply, and opened his mind to the unknown. Just for pleasure, just because he was that way.
Jim and Harry were close friends and they both love the Hexa, the wonderful rod Harry makes through Hexagraph Fly Rod Co. So Jim invited Harry to the lodge three years ago and we fished together one evening. Two years later he gave me an Hexa #5 (Jim would correct me and write Hexy), dedicated to me, which I have at the lodge, dressed with a Hardy Ultralight Reel and a yellow Rio Selective Trout fly line. Nice rod!
So last year, at the time of planning my fishing vacations, I called Harry to see if we could spend a couple of days fishing. Things matched so we were set and Harry planned two nights at Falcon Point Lodge at the shore of Matagorda Bay in Texas, close to Seadrift and Port O’Conner, and hired Scott Sommerlatte as our guide, who we met at 5:30 am at Charlie’s Baitfish Camp, on August 26, 2008.
Texas! The air was warm and humid and the sun weighed heavy over our shoulders, so even for me who usually wakes up really late, it was fine to wake up at night!
We were looking for Reds.
The water in the salt-marshes is warm, shallow, transparent and unexpectedly calm. The Mississippi River transports huge volumes of sand to the Gulf of Mexico and, as the current in the Gulf is counterclockwise, the sand is deposited SW along the shore for hundreds of miles, creating a string of barrier islands which protect the marshes from the inquietude of the ocean. We fished behind the barrier islands. Within that giant pool life explodes. Birds, cranes, pelicans, and in the salad water, crustaceans and fish make the water bubble. They called the movements “nervous water”.
We used the motor until we got to the marshes, and there Scott climbed up on his tower, pole at hand. “What are we looking for?” I asked.
You can see the Reds while floating slowly through the marshes, but there are some fish which are special, and let me tell you, you want these ones!. A Reds goes very shallow to get his food, so shallow that you see half of its body out of the water, nervous, in danger, alert. They root with their noses for crabs, shrimp and shellfish.
Our weather was very calm and hot. The water was very low and the fish saw us from a great distance. The tide was low and the water was shallow. “Skinny water” they called it. Our presence created such inquietude in fish, that all of them run away, creating a cloud of dust which shadowed our vision. It was a difficult day.
Consequently I needed a long cast (with a big fly!) just on the fish nose, second chance not allowed. It took me time, but finally I hooked some. But Harry got not only the biggest, but also one of those I described above, those you see from distance and say to you: “I want THAT fish!”
We used a Shrimp Fly tied by Scott which I have as his gift.
Fly Fishing is a sport which combines many things and I love all of them.
The water, the fish, the mountains, the forest, the sea, those places where you have the feeling of being the first, that your footprint is the first in the just fallen snow.
The activity of the body, long days outside.
The casting, something we will never learn completely as we are always improving, learning the art.
The huge amount of tackle and stuff you can desire (and buy!) even when you do not need it.
The tradition, a knowledge you receive, enjoy, and pass on to others.
The solitude it offers to you, the opportunity to remember, think and feel.
And the fire and friends around, with some more wine than usual (just to mention an example!).
Mo gave me an article he wrote which starts with this statement of Aldous Huxley: “Experience is not what happens to a man. It is what a man does with what happens to him.”
Aldous Huxley and Hermann Hess! I read all they wrote at my twenties!
Evening at the Magic Theatre
For madmen only
Price of admission your mind
Claimed Hermann in the early 60s, while Aldous, living in the Mojave desert wrote, “The Doors of Perception”.
What do we do with our experience? Is the right question, clearly expressed? What do we do? Or, how deep do we let it come into us?
Do we have a personal experience, not in the sense that we are one self, but in the sense that we have something new?
Experience is what happens in our mind and heart, what we do with the things that our hand touches and investigates; experience is not a list of the facts that happened to us during the day.
I spent three fishing weeks, and fished Alaska, the Elk River in Canada and the Texas Bay, and met Mo in Los Angeles and John in Portland, in Oregon. And I realize now, after writing three short articles about those places that the experience cannot be separated completely, as it is the cord, the thread, that joins all together.
On a calm night the lake (Lago Verde at Los Alerces National Park, where I have my lodge) is sleeping and quiet; it becomes a mirror. The light of the moon is visible but the moon is still hiding behind the mountains. The stars are as bright reflected in the deepness of the lake as they are in the sky. And when you look at those stars in the lake you realize that they are at once there in the deep and also in the surface of your conscience.
It would be nice to reflect beauty as the lake does, with the light of the stars!
It would be nice to let the experience go deep within us!
The week before I fished with Harry I was in Alaska, fishing for rainbows. Life in Alaska is governed by salmon. At the time I was there, millions of red sockeye painted the water. And their eggs were the source of life for the trout. Imagine them, swinging close to the bottom, awake, moving across to get the eggs, manna (the bread God sent from the sky to feed the Jewish people in the desert), not coming from the sky, but from ahead. So what did we do?
Instead of a fly, you have a plastic egg, an imitation of the salmon egg in different colors which represent the different stages in its evolution. For those who were raised in the old tradition it is not a fly, but none-the-less it is very effective. Approx. 50 cm from the fly, a small lead shot is added, a little weight that helps the egg to get to the bottom and drift like a real egg. Thus, what is intended is that the drift is that of a dry fly, but on the bottom. To ensure this, a strike indicator is applied above the split shot, at a variable distance corresponding to the river’s depth.
It is quite similar to nymph fishing. You cast upstream, mend and let the nymph sink and reach the bottom area.
When we discussed this with Jim he told me that the method was called “the ca-ta-plum” as the three points of your leader (egg, lead and strike indicator) make such noise when they touch the water!
From a casting point of view the cataplum requires different casting abilities than traditional dry fly, for casting a light feather is different than casting the cataplum.
In the open waters of Patagonia I am used to have 1, 2 or even three false casts, so that’s how I started with the cataplum, but quickly my guides corrected me, until I learned. Instead of the false casts I started to use rolls, as they recommended, and I learned a lot and my cast improved as I saw later on the Elk River.
Casting for reds is completely different; it is like hunting. You see the fish almost on the shoreline and have to present the fly, a big crab fly, right to its mouth. Challenging. As the day went on I started to do it better. The main problem is to remain calm; just cast, no thinking, no illusions, just cast. As I slowly became a part of the Bay, as a big heron looking for its prey, my casting improved until things just happened and the fly was just there and the Red took it. Victory!
Wonderful waters, wonderful fish, wonderful friends, wonderful experience. Worth the price of the ticket!
For further information contact
Harry Briscoe
hexagraph@hexagraph.com
Scott Sommerlatte
Or myself
Alfredo Zubiri is Argentine and has been fly fishing for 33 years. He is Lago Verde Wilderness Resort’s concessionary in Los Alerces National Park- www.el-aura.net
TRIP SUMMARY:
Hotel: Falcon Point Lodge, Texas
Date: August 26, 2008
Host: Harry Briscoe
Guide: Scott SummerdaleSommerlatte
Waters:
Texas Bay
Rod and Reel: Hexagraph # 8 and J. Ryall No. 8 reel