The doldrums are still with us, a 40 mph wind last night and sustained 20 (air temp. 49) today make for – nothing but touching base and seeing how fellow fly fishers are doing.

From South Texas, David Winters is in the doldrums too – with little to offer the Reds tailing the Laguna Madre’. I’ll be sending him some flies to see if they will do any good, and tie some more of the winners before going South this spring.

Local fisherman, Lane Kregel, gave his take on the outing to Texoma / Denison Dam last weekend:

The day started off with the anticipation for catching mad, pissed off stripers.

As I geared up in the unusually empty parking lot, I noticed that nobody was on the spot. So I threw the faithful clouser that has given me the tug hundreds of times. Nothing. Even the bait fishermen with their pawn shop ipods and screaming kids on the Oklahoma side weren’t catching fish. Not a good sign.

Still no luck. I move down river and try a different color, fast strip, slow strip – nothing worked. Minutes turn into hours.

Tired, pissed off, I was ready to climb Everest back to the truck for oxygen. Then the alarm sounded.

Now everyone has a story about grandad feeding the catfish; Honk the horn and the feeding frenzy starts like sorority night at the Dixie Chicken in College Station, Texas.
In a short period of time before the flow changes the river I caught enough stripers to feed a small family for weeks.

So the next time you are at the Texoma / Denison Dam parking lot, and see a bald-headed guy with a fly rod in one hand and pulling a two wheeler with a generator and a Model 840
Cannonball Express air horn with direct drive 150-psi compressor, that will be me.

It is strange behavior, but these super fat Stripers really do seem to “hear” the horn. I know I caught some heat for calling them skinny awhile back, but if these guys aren’t fat …

As for me, the doldrums reach into business as well, with clients puckering a bit in anticipation of economic or political news not to their liking and still not to their knowing. Yet, the dogged determination behind more than twenty years in photography forces the drive toward … something. I’ve driven away and toward before, and I keep reminding myself seeing something to go toward is always best. Looking back eats at one’s insides, and runs the added risk of a head-on collision.

I stood outside looking down at the ground, side to side – feet and shoes. The loose line, or congregation, was waiting patiently beside a building in the cold and damp for the next meeting. Occasionally I straightened my shoulders, looked up from under my flimsy jacket hood, and scanned the congregation. There were young, old, all colors, all denominations, Eastern Block, Western Europeans, a swirling neapolitan of … Americans.

Inside, the promise of music everlasting delivered by one Bob Dylan. Follower’s questions hummed through the faithful; “Which songs would he do?, How will he look?, How old is he?”. Did you hear this, or have you heard that? The talk all blended into one buzz filtered and muffled by my hood. I hadn’t planned to stand out in the cold, and was not clothed for an hour of standing on cold concrete. Shoe choice good. Coat choice bad.

Somehow at the last minute by the grace of God, we were able to get tickets to Dylan’s first show of three at the House of Blues in Dallas, Texas. Seventy dollars. No questions. Standing “general admission”. No problem. The when, where, why and how of seeing Bob Dylan does not matter. Dylan is the ultimate trump card. A small contingent of friends already made a pact, before they knew each other, that they would play the final Dylan card upon his demise. We can’t even figure out where he lives now, but when he goes – we will be there wherever there is whenever that is.

Finally the doors open. A civilized procession inside the House, and a series of surprises; artwork everywhere, a stairway down, hockers selling, scan my ticket with your Star Trek device, and down the stairs we go. Through the doors and into the sanctuary.

The miracles continue. Apparently there are three rooms at the Dallas House of Blues. I can only assume this is the largest, and at 1500 capacity, it is tiny. Keep in mind I come from the 70’s-80’s arena days and the only way I could get close then was to stage crash. So, the middle-age me took his place 20 feet from Bob Dylan’s spot as easy as that. The questions continued with added fervor; “What will the first song be?, What hat will he be wearing?”. OK, I got in on the hat thing because I am a hat freak. I predicted the steeply creased Stetson, western and white. “What if he came out with the white makeup and straight brim (The Band era)!”, another envisioned.

The stage is dark, but when he walks out with his band … no hat! Dylan turns toward the drum stage, leans over and picks up his straight brimmed, with the vertical rolled edge, and gingerly, like someone who values a good hat, puts it on. The lights come up – straight down bright white lights, he straps on his guitar and away we go.

The service begins with “Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat”. How could anyone predict what the open would be? It was like an opening shot, yelling I am going to play what I want how I want, and you’re going to like it anyway!

The current incantations sound nothing like anything that has come before. Dylan is still doing it his way, and the current experience sounds purely (with all humility) American. How else can one describe a sound that blends lap steel,keyboards, multiple guitars and a beat that sways coast-to-coast. Dylan’s sound seems to rest on a beat reminiscent of the New Orleans Funereal Dirges, but with its own tempo. It is similar to “Ballad of a Thin Man” (he played that mid-show) from the Bootleg Series, Volume IV (ends with shout from crowd; “Judas!”), but not the same – more swagger, more sway. Blues and then some.

It should be enough to say he closed with “Blowin’ In The Wind”, but this version turns anthem into song. I had to take a minute and wrap my mind around it, and then realized: It’s his song. He wrote a modern classic political statement. He can do whatever the hell he wants to do with it. Besides, he still punches his words at you like a fighter throwing jabs with something more powerful than a fist.

Not a word spoken to the crowd, Dylan and his suited troubadours line up for the final bow. No bow, merely a chance for us to show our respects, admiration, and praise more meaningful than applause. For most of us, this will be it. That’s how it goes when you get closer to the end than the beginning.

“Because something is happening here
But you don’t know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones?”