Born on the Bayou

I went with pops to Cedar Bayou this weekend, via Goose Island State Park. Roughly the latlong is 28.071130 N, -96.84465 W. We took a boat from the ramp there across Copano Bay towards San Jose Island, taking a left at the ICC, up to Mesquite Bay, then into the bayou, almost all the way to the outflow into the gulf. We parked the boat, picked up some mullet with a throw-net, and wade-fished the surf on the gulf side for an hour or two. Pretty rough waves but otherwise very comfortable. We didn't get any bites, but there was plenty of seaweed getting caught on the lines and, thankfully, no stingray encounters. The actual bayou itself appeared to be somewhat plugged up with grass and debris. Human modifications on the flow regimes of our rivers in Texas appear to be affecting the natural passes through the texas barrier islands - important refuges and nurseries for fish and other animal species. Here's a relevant article from Texas Parks and Wildlife magazine.

We went back to the boat and drove back out to the mouth at Mesquite Bay to wade the oysterbay and throw artificials for a half hour as the sun went down. No fish caught there, either. Just as we were leaving, we spotted some porpoises circling some baitfish in the shallow water, slapping their tails and splashing around. We got back to the beach just after dark, and as we unloaded some overnight gear, the mosquitoes commenced their attack. We set up a tarp on the gulf-side beach in the stronger wind, set out some pads, and tried to catch some z's. Unfortunately, from time to time the wind died down and enough skeeters got through to start a blood bank; I'm covered with bites pretty much head to toe. Still, if I hadn't been woken up so many times by the shitty little bugs I might have missed the big family of peccaries that came through, squealing and snorting when we startled them. Apparently the resident coyote came by as well but I somehow managed to sleep through that.

Around five, the Off ran out and we booked it for the boat, driving out to the bay to idle around until the sun came up. The tide had gone out and several times we had to wade around in the darkness in order to find a deep enough channel to run the motor and get out. Back at the Mesquite Bay mouth we threw some more lures in the water trying one last time to catch a red or speck to no avail. The sun came up and created these two large blue beams in the sky and luckily they came out in my picture (below). There was noone else on the bay but the birds, including some ibis, herons, spoonbills, pelicans, frigates, and terns.

We headed back to Goose Island and drove back home, tired and empty handed but still happy with the experience. It's an awesome place and I hope to return with better luck fishing next time.

Me and c2 watched Animal Factory the other day. C2 was so-so about it, I thought it was great. It's a prison movie written by Eddie Bunker, directed by Steve Buscemi, starring Eddie Furlong, Willem Dafoe, Danny Trejo, Mickey Rourke, Tom Arnold, and Jake La Botz. There were also a couple of Wire actors in there too. Obviously being a prison tale it was stark and depressing, but pretty interesting overall with good acting and a suspenseful plot.

This bathroom stall foot tapping whathaveyou is kinda funny.

We played a round of discgolf again on saturday. I scored +7 and c2 got +11. Bad maybe but we're getting better.

You say they were pacing on a ferry? Never heard of such a thing. They probably just didn't know about the cardio gym on the second deck. They could have gotten much more beneficial exercise up there.

Par for the course

Played some frisbee golf this weekend. My impeccable form:



And that of my brother:



We watched The Fountain yesterday and it was terrible. I'm almost done with season 3 of The Wire and it just keeps getting better and better. Brother Mazone just rolled back into town, looking to finish business with Omar. Ah shit, it's going to be good.

Still playing a lot of Day of Defeat and looking to probably get Company of Heroes in the next couple of months. DOW: Dark Crusade is awesome but the single player campaign system is pretty grueling. I was amazed the other day with the power of a quickly built, mass imperial guard infantry army. With a command squad distracting their HQs space marines and chaos can be fairly easily overwhelmed if they haven't yet built up vehicles or dreadnoughts.

The Vick bust has come full circle. I feel slightly conflicted about the deal, honestly, because while I feel justified in thinking some douche that kills dogs for sport should go away for a long time, I can't help also feeling a bit raw that the media is in complete control of my judgement from the arrest to the plea bargain. Emotional manipulation, call it. What the fuck do I really know about this guy, his buddies, and the whole shebang? Meh.

Hot as Hello by Morning

I visited beautiful Amarillo this week for a work project. I took a few snaps with my camera phone; Amarillo smells about like these pictures look. Most of my time was spent in a wide open pasture with no shade and a hot wind that made it feel like I was standing in a blowdryer. The flights were extremely crowded but thankfully short; airlines are just getting shittier and shittier with no sign of stopping. Blegh. Still, it was a fun trip, much better than sitting in the office all week.

This was actually the second day out in the field. Here we are using a large trailer-mounted air compressor to purge and sample a monitoring well. This specific type had a pump submerged at the bottom that only needed high pressure compressed air to pump water - Bennett Sample Pumps are themselves made in Amarillo. Most wells with dedicated pumps require a source of electricity to run. Some wells necessitate a separate pump that is lowered into the well only when it is time to withdraw water.

This was Day 3, gauging and GPSing a monitoring well that has its own dedicated electric pump. We didn't actually sample this well, but gauging the depth to water at this well and at least two others allowed us to establish the groundwater gradient in the area.

This was a nice little note left by one of the landowners. Scavenger hunt, indeed.

This was a colorful, mucho interior mexican mural on the side of a work semi parked at one of the places we sampled. I did find a few things about a town called Huejúcar, in Jalisco. Looks like a nice enough place.

All in all it was an enjoyable trip, plenty of challenges, but we did get to stay in a fairly nice hotel. We didn't eat anywhere that spectacular, mostly because by the end of the day we were usually too wiped out from the heat to get too ambitious.