Monday Morning A Dry and Sunny Walk
texas fly fishing #flyfishing music
Good morning fellow fly fishers and friends! We have today to get out and hit the water before the entire week apparently closes out due to rain back in this area of North Texas. Be careful what you wish for, we ALL might just get it! Honestly, this weather is a blessing to all those who have suffered through these past five years of drought, and we can all only hope that wiser heads prevail, and water restrictions continue long into the future. Pause from your rain dances to remember: North Texas had missed out on an entire year of rain going into this spring. That’s one year short.
I sent JH out on, what I expected was a fool’s errand yesterday, when he asked where to go with his young son to fly fish for carp on Lake Ray Roberts … the conditions I described are in full swing. He said the carp were actually up past the (here’s an old term renewed) STICKS, but stick one and what do we get? A run straight for open water through the sticks. NO THE ONLY HOPE is to be outside the sticks and target carp moving in and out of this impossible cover. Of course the other benefit is clarity and those trashy green trout that are also running along this hard cover.
It’s going to be a week of work around here, interlaced with writing while the work’s being produced (you gotta’ love digital photography!), and there’s photography to do in Houston, Texas, next Monday. So we’re headed to Houston on Friday to allow for some time buffer to hit the salt, or whatever is happening.
TANGLED UP IN BLUE
For those of you who are looking for a real cultural skid, look no further than the Bob Dylan concert at the Winstar Casino in Oklahoma last Saturday night. It wasn’t the concert that provided the skid, it was the hundreds of yards walk through the casino that cut a slice of American life from the bone. All kinds of people. A low audio hum ran through our synapses, some audio sound that had a jet plane effect, perhaps addictive or intended to numb the senses. Slots by the thousands, row after row, grabbing their users, some casual and some obviously addicted. Old ladies sit around at scant restaurant seating, playing games on their phones, keeping their fingers limber, or maybe their brains. Cigarette smoke. Vapor vapor.
As we watched Bob Dylan perform, it was easy for me to see the historical value. His music, is truly original. The sound original, and the band he has assembled (looks pretty much the same as the last concert I wrote about here) is masterful. They know Bob, and they play to Bob. The highlights, besides the dark New Orleans music, had to be fresh renditions of classics like “Tangled Up In Blue.” What was different about these renditions? Absolutely everything.
When I said “historical,” I say that in terms of our collective United States history, circa 1960 to present. If you’ve been west, along those old roads of the 1960’s, as I had as a little child, then that could be your vision when you hear the music. the all important lyrics. It seems to me it’s about his ability to tap into the American experience, the psyche, and deliver it to us on an asphalt level.
The “show” was good, but it wasn’t about the show, and somehow we know … Bob Dylan really isn’t about the show. For a guy his age? Two sets at about 45-minutes each, with a twenty minute break in between. A couple of songs in encore, and the lights came up. We drained the huge ballroom (the size of a football field), and walked past the bars showing the Mayweather – Pacquiao fight without slowing down. People young, and old OLD, ran through the veins between slots, and out into the lots, clutching their Bob Dylan posters, shirts and caps. Time to get off the reservation.
SPEAKING OF BLUE
Closest friends are already aware of a new fly fishing platform coming this way soon. That news, not to be coy, will be coming out later this week – once I get past the, “it can’t be true, it’s too good to be true” phase of this, and get to work on a whole new phase of the Texas Fly Caster reader fly fishing experience. There’s no telling where this will lead, but it’ll hardly be considered a “tangent” of our collective fly fishing experience. It’s a whole new thing, and as I consider the consequences, it could be considered by many of the purist trout readers, to be a clear line in the fly fishing sand … one that separates the coldwater fly purists from the warmwater rebels.
Category: Backcasting, Culture on the Skids, Fishing Reports, Life Observed, Music, North Texas
