First snook, and on a fly, 2019-07
snook

Capt. Mark put me in the right area at the right time.

A true friend will give you the shirt off of his back, and a great friend will actually loan you his lucky shirt.  I caught my first snook on this trip thanks to Capt. Mark, and Q.

Yeast cinnamon rolls

Dough
2 cups of milk, scalded and let cool to 95-110°F
1 tablespoon of yeast, or 2 packages
1 tablespoon of sugar
2½ teaspoon of salt
2 eggs
4 – 8 cups of flour

Filling
1 tablespoon of ground cinnamon
1 cup brown sugar
1 tablespoon of flour
Raisins (optional)
Nuts (Optional)

Topping
Powdered sugar
Vanilla
1 tablespoon of milk

Add all but the flour in a large mixing bowl, and stir.  Add flour until it is difficult to stir and pulls from the side of the bowl.

On a flour coated surface knead the dough until it feels slightly stiff, and keeps it’s shape when let go.  You may need to add more flour until you reach this stage.

Let the dough rise until double in size.  This completely depends on the yeast, temperature, and a few other factors.  What I do is draw a circle in the flour that is the doubles size, so there is no guesswork.

Mix cinnamon, brown sugar and flour thoroughly.

When the dough is double in size, roll the dough with a rolling pin to about the thickness of about 1/4″

Wet the dough with water or milk, and sprinkle the cinnamon mixture evenly.  Add nuts and raisins if desired.  Roll the dough up, trapping the filling.

Lightly butter a cookie sheet or 11×17 casserole dish

Cut the dough about finger width across the grain, and place in the pan, as shown in the featured image.

Let rise for another 30+ minutes, until double in size again.

Preheat oven to 375°F

Bake for 20-35 minutes.  The tops will be a golden brown when done.

Mix the topping, and blend until smooth.

Let stand for at least 10 minutes before drizzling the topping on the rolls and serving.

Galveston Bay, 2018-08-08 with Lamarr Scott

The plan was to explore waters that we normally could’t get into on a normal tide.

Water conditions were tough.  High-off-color water all day with an incoming tide made it a challenge.

Clear skies would have made sight fishing easy, if the water wasn’t so cloudy.

We made it to the opening and it looked like we could make our way in.  Getting into the area we wanted to explore  turned out to be more of a challenge than we had anticipated.  Both of us had to get out and guide the now super-shallow draft boat into the canal.  After ¼ mile of this, with the help of the incoming tide, we were able to float again, and poled for a while.

½ mile later we were able to drop the motor and slowly make our way to the ponds that Lamar had map-spotted.  After running the motor for 10-15 minutes the “overheat” warning sounded, and shut the motor down.  We had run so shallow for so long that the water pick-up was not getting enough depth to supply the cooling.

Back to poling, and moving with the current, we made it closer to our goal.

Three flies chosen for today. Skinny crack, spoon fly, and Voodoo shrimp.

I had a 3+ foot long gar hit and hook-up, for a moment on the Voodoo shrimp. That kind of heart-stopping excitement is always worth a trip to the salt. 30 feet later he became unbuttoned.

The skinny crack take was almost as good. We were pushed up against the shore, watching the water around us for activity, when I see this nice red fish just the other side of the grass island we are against. He was almost 5 feet away from my rod tip when he took the fly. I completely lost my composure as I saw, then felt the take. He lasted for 15 feet before becoming unbuttoned.

The spoon fly never saw the water.

Coming back the motor fired right back up, and we still had to get out to push the boat against the incoming tide for that last stretch.  A good day, but not one I’d recommend for somebody not in pretty good shape, as it took a bit of effort, and the fish just weren’t biting.

No tails, no concentrated bait, no birds.