Meats and Rivers of Texas

I stood at one end of the narrow shipping container-turned rental cabin, holding my cell phone to my ear, and saw my compatriot standing at the other end. My eyes were blurry from lack of sleep and the absence of correctional lenses. I squinted in an attempt to gain focus on my friend and saw that he too was squinting.

“Can you hold on a second?” I asked into the phone. “Chet, what kind of meat do you want in your breakfast burrito?” I asked.

He stared back, unmoving, unspeaking.

“Chet?”

He coughed and prepared to utter his first words of the day.

“Chicken,” he said.

I frowned.

“Chicken?” I asked, clarifying.

He nodded.

“Chicken,” I spoke into the phone, and immediately received the answer that I expected to hear.

“Chet, you can’t get chicken in your breakfast burrito,” I said. “Sausage, bacon, chorizo… you know, breakfasts meats.”

“Just get me whatever you’re getting,” he shrugged, and then walked into the bathroom.

Twenty minutes later, we were on our way to the river, each of us with a hot coffee and a sausage breakfast burrito.

“Chicken breakfast burrito, huh?” I asked him, smiling.

“Yea, it didn’t sound right when it came out of my mouth, but I couldn’t think of anything else.”

—

Over the following half-hour drive, the caffeine kicked in, the burritos added much-needed fuel to our stomachs, and the realization that we were going fishing kicked in. By the time we pulled into the driveway at our canoe rental destination, we were primed and ready. The owner-operator of the operation, however, was not.

“I told him that we would be here at 8…" I muttered, staring at the CLOSED sign on the door. I knocked and tried the handle. It turned, the door opened, bells jingled, and light entered the shop, clearly the first of the day, similar to Chet’s first words entering the interior of the shipping container earlier. It revealed a dim interior and I adjusted my eyes to take in the scene.

Across a well-worn wood floor was a wall of canoe and kayak paddles of various shapes, sizes, and colors and adjacent to them were a similarly-eclectic mix of life jackets. Scanning the rest of the room, I saw a hodgepodge of river gear, in no particular order. At the far side of the room, I saw a counter and on the counter, a cat sat, staring back at me.

“Hello?”

Nothing. I stepped back outside, shut the door quietly, and looked at Chet.

“Well…”

And the door opened. A gentleman appearing equally as blurry-eyed as we were a couple hours earlier stuck his head out of the shop.

“I thought I heard the bells!” he said. “You guys want a canoe?"

We nodded.

“Fill out this form,” he said, pointing to a registration box attached to the side of the building. “And then meet me at the register.”

I knew that the canoe rental service didn’t open until 9 am, but - as offered when I called earlier in the week - I made our reservation for 8, to beat any others to the river. Judging by the lack of other patrons and also the speed at which our man was moving, it didn’t look like we needed to, or were going to, be doing anything quickly. So, after a friendly conversation, an overview of the stretch of river we were to soon be floating on, directions on where our canoe was stashed, running of our shuttle, we were finally ready to launch.

“Did you get an idea of what to look for at the take-out?” I asked Chet as we threw our gear into the canoe.

“It’s right before a spillover dam, on river-left. He also told me that when we’re a little over halfway through, we’ll have a little more than a quarter of the float remaining.”

I pondered the remark, wrote it down for further consideration later, and we were off.

Immediately I could tell that the river was unlike anything I had seen before. The water was green but unlike the glacial-greens I was accustomed to in the Pacific Northwest. It was an olive-green and it seemed to ooze downstream, but as we made our first paddle strokes, I realized that it was moving much faster than it looked. Sticking my fingers in the water, it was not as warm as I’d assumed; it felt like a trout stream, cool, fresh, full of life, and promise.

No more than 100 yards from our launch, the river narrowed and we heard a riffle approaching, something I hadn’t expected to see. Knowing that the river was full of warmwater species like our target, the native Guadalupe bass, I thought it’d be flat and slow but that obviously wasn’t the case. In all, it was just as obvious that I didn’t know much, if anything, about the river we were on.

I’d rigged us both with poppers and tentatively cast mine to the banks and around structure as Chet steered us downstream. The black Boogle Bug I’ve fished for smallmouth a fair amount and largemouth a little bit but I was unsure if my approaches to these species were right for this new water.

I chugged my popper, let it sit, and then chugged it again. The pops echoed softly and satisfyingly across the water back to our canoe.

Bald cypress trees of all sizes surrounded us as we continued floating. Root systems the size of cars created massive undercuts along the banks and we worked our poppers accordingly. Small bays and eddys with lily pads and grasses caught our attention and we fished those. Downed trees and logs came and went and we ran our flies as close to them as we dared, but the river showed us no signs of life.

For me, fishing new water is a mental exercise of applying what I’ve learned or know to be true and effective while also keeping an open mind to experiment with what I think to be possible. I try what has worked before but also try to remain conscious of the fact that it is equally-likely not to work at all. We discussed this, changed our approaches, presentations, and flies, and continued.

Finally, a disturbance in the water. It caught our ears first, and then our eyes as we watched the water settle alongside an exposed log. Chet slowed the canoe. I dropped a foam bass bug alongside the log, twitched it, and waited. I twitched it again, the rubberlegs of the bug flexing in the surface film. I cast again, intentionally splat-ing the bug down, in attempt to ‘ring the dinner bell’, as they say. Nothing happened.

Another exposed log appeared ahead of us and I brought in my line, preparing to drop a cast within inches of it. Suddenly, the log came to life as a turtle scurried down the limb and into the water. It created an identical noise and disturbance to what we’d seen just upstream and then we knew that we’d been duped.

The river alternated between swift riffles, sharp bends, and slow straightaways, like a pool-drop river of Oregon but in its own, Texas way. We saw gravel bars, log jams, cliff walls, grassy flats, and pools of indeterminate depth. The canopy enclosed us then opened up again, revealing glimpses of the surrounding farm land and homesteads. I lost track of how many times I said to myself, “I’ve never seen anything like this.” It felt like I was a long way from home, but at the same time, it felt homey and welcoming.

And, in the way that only two old friends can, our conversation bounced between the past, the present, and in the future with gaps, lapses, pauses, and long silences in between it all. Chet and I met as undergraduates, at a meeting of our college’s fishing club. So was it academics or fishing that brought us together? Perhaps the former to start, but the latter kept us friends, or it at least provided the venues for our friendship to continue.

Eventually someone’s stomach growled which led to a checking of the time. We had an agenda and we both knew well what the next stop was. Quickly agreeing that it was time, we stashed the rods and paddled out the last mile or so in silence.

—

An hour later, we stood in line at Black’s Barbeque, salivating as we waited our turn. First, you choose your sides.

“Next!”

We stepped up to the counter and eyed the sides.

“You want coleslaw?” Chet asked?

I nodded.

“And mac and cheese,” I added.

“Baked beans as well, please.” Chet said.

“And potato salad, please.”

Next, you choose your meats.

“Brisket?”

“Definitely.”

The server sliced two big pieces. We looked at each other.

“One more slice, please.”

“Ribs?”

“Yup. And pulled pork.”

“Perfect.”

Grinning, we walked our trays outside to the awaiting picnic tables in the shade.

—

Back in the narrow shipping container-turned rental cabin, we looked at each other from one end to the other, blurry-eyed again, full bellies and meat comas intersecting with the recent early morning which followed the recent late night. It was nap time, which was also on the agenda.

Each of us raised a single hand to say ‘Goodbye for now’ and also ‘Good job out there,’ then we turned to walk into our bedrooms.

“Chicken breakfast burrito,” I said as we closed the doors.

And I heard Chet laugh.