Time on the river

A fishing trip in rural Texas reunites me with two friends in an unforgettable week

Editor’s note: This is the second in a two-part series on a recent trip to Texas. For the first column, about cowboy singer Dan Roberts, click here.

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GRAFORD, Texas — It is The Three Amigos meets City Slickers in the land of Lonesome Dove, a reunion last week of Corvallis (Ore.) High buddies whose friendships go back more than 50 years.

“Every animal, insect or plant that can hurt you is there in Texas,” a Eugene friend who once lived in the state says after I tell him about our plans to fly-fish the Brazos River for large-mouth bass.

When I share his remark with our host, Texas musician Dan Roberts, hoping he might downplay the notion, Danny doesn’t. Instead, he says, “There are water moccasins in the river but, unlike other snakes, they swim on the surface so you can see them coming.”

What a relief, knowing you’ll be able to see the snake that’s attacking you rather than being attacked, Jaws-like, by an underwater predator.

“And the snakes around here can get up in trees, too,” Dan adds.

As if simply having a snake drop on your sleeping bag at night wouldn’t be enough to literally scare you to death, it is comforting to know they could not only drop on you but then sink their fangs into your face.

I exhale. As only an occasional fly fisher in the mostly snake-less waters of Oregon, I realize this promises to be the equivalent of my elk-hunting trip to Oregon’s Blue Mountains — on steroids. At least we won’t be riding horses, one of which — with a dude-ranch name of Rusty — bucked me off on that 2002 trip I had taken to try to understand, as a non-hunter, the allure of hunting. (Hint: it’s not about the elk.)

On the pickup drive to the launching spot, on private land whose owner was gifted a case of beer for granting us fishing rights, Danny had told us about a local event involving catching fish and shooting turkeys.

“They call it ‘Cast & Blast,’” he says. “Loads of fun!”

We push off from the launch in a 12-foot rubber raft. The plan is to spend a night, and fish, a six-mile stretch of the Brazos River about 40 miles southwest of Fort Worth. An hour into our adventure, when I ask about a series of muddy swaths intersecting the river along its banks, Dan tells me they are made by wild pigs coming down for water.

“Dang, forgot my .45 pistol,” he says.

“Which you’d use for what?”

“To shoot the pigs, of course,” he says. “It’s legal in Texas to shoot wild pigs!”

Of course, who could pass up a chance like that?

I think of the opening line of Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove, perhaps the best novel I’ve read: “When Augustus came out on the porch the blue pigs were eating a rattlesnake … .”

Ah, Texas. I am a stranger in a strange land, the only pair of Levi’s in a sea of Wranglers. Well, almost. If I am playing the part of Billy Crystal in this City Slickers adventure, my friend Jay Locey — best man at our wedding — is inexperienced enough to play one of my equally unprepared, urban buddies.

Best man Locey and me before I married Sally.

Though early on, in retying a shoe, I manage to lace one of my shoelaces through my coiled fly line (don’t ask), it is Jay who has forgotten our store-bought lunches in the pickup truck. (Offsetting penalties; no play.)

“My Twinkies are gonna get so hot they’ll explode,” I lament.

I HAVE BEGUN this trip, truth be told, with at least a hint of Oregon snobbery in me. My family’s early outdoor adventures meant fishing in well-riffled streams as cold as they were clear. Now, as we meander down the warm, brownish Brazos — rarely deeper than five feet — the contrast is jarring. I keep expecting to see a small riverboat coming around the bend or Huck Finn and Jim poling a raft.