Sunday Fishing
johnny quiroz and i went fishing on sunday. it was pretty good.
photo © Joey Lin 2008
far out fishing
the travel blog for faroutfishingtrips.com (and other spiffy fishing stories)Archive for Texas Fishing
Tailing Redfish Video on the Texas Coast
hi, everyone. here is some footage of tailing redfish from the texas coast a few weekends ago. this is a crappy edit of some shaky footage, hard to keep small cameras still while zoomed all the way in.
you guys will need to download quicktime if you haven’t done so already. hopefully the plug-in will detect if you have quicktime, otherwise go HERE to download it (it’s free). yeah, i know that FLASH video is more standard these days, but i’m not a technician and i haven’t figured out how to make good looking compressed videos for FLASH yet, that’s my next project. so for the time being, just download QT from the Apple site (click HERE), install it, and refresh. email me if you have problems seeing the video.
cheers, joey
Recent Redfish
so, we went to the coast the weekend before last. i was with my Argentine friend, room mate (in Buenos Aires) and business partner Sebastian Casado who was here visiting. the water had been super high from low pressure and constant north east winds that were piling up the water since Hurricane Gustav back in early September, so it made the redfishing kind of tough.
we had a good couple of days. found lots of big fish near JFK causeway on Saturday, but couldn’t get them to eat. came up on pods of hundreds of fish, mostly in the 24-28 inch range, but some 30+ inch fish. finally got a couple nice ones to eat. this is a photo of me with a 29″, 9 lb redfish.
the next day (Sunday), the wind was out of the northwest and calm, but the water dropped about a foot, to more reasonable levels. we launched out of Goose Island State Park and headed for some lakes on the backside of St. Jo Island. we found a lake with pod after pod of tailing fish, mostly smaller fish, but a couple pods had some big fish in them. we spent the next few hours catching all the fish we wanted out of those pods. i’ll post some video when i get around to it. here is Sebastian with a nice 26″ redfish. photos by Vince Wiseman and Joey Lin. cheers.
Crazy Bass Photo - by Erich Schlegel
this is a photo by my friend Erich Schlegel, shot years ago at Decker Lake near Austin. Erich is a badass senior staff photographer at the Dallas Morning News. can’t remember why he was here that day, but i remember him telling me that he saw this bass attacking dragon flies in the late afternoon, so he set up and shot this impressive shot. i asked him for this picture again because i lost it on an old computer that crashed. his only remark was ‘Need to go back and
reshoot that pond. I know I can get a better pic.’….photo © Erich Schlegel. cheers.
Sunday Float
guys, really really really sorry about the lack of posts. been having computer issues, and also i’m getting ready to leave for Argentina until June, so i’m a bit busy these days.
went sunday with the lovely Celine Adams to a secret spot out in the hill country. a great float with crystal clear water to 12 feet!! the fishing was a bit tough, they weren’t eating too well. also, the water was so clear that the fish could see us coming from a mile away. it was also quite windy, so i was making noise just trying to keep the canoe in position, as we were getting blown all around. and the cypress leaves were falling in the water, so we’d get hung up on junk every other cast.
it was an enjoyable day, nevertheless. Celine caught a few nice Guadalupe bass and hooked a huge largemouth in the 4+ pound range, but it got away.
-Joey
First Cast
finally got to check out the San Marcos with my guide partner and buddy, Marcus Rodriguez. the river is flowing about 600 cfs, so it was cooking. we decided to go in Hobie Float Cats (kick boat), just to get the exercise, and since we hadn’t seen it since the flooding this past summer.
there’s still good fishing in the San Marcos in parts, but it’s nothing like it was in the old days when it was some of the most incredible fishing in Texas. here are some photos from today. the first one is a largemouth about 3.5 pounds, 19-20 inches. this was the first cast of the day! usually a bad sign. i hooked and lost another big one, but it was generally pretty slow. Marcus and I hooked a few guadalupe bass, but we blazed through the float since we both needed to be back in town early. oh, still plenty of catfish in the river. here’s Marcus with un ugly specimen.
oh, and here are some funky clouds. photos copyright Joey Lin.
Insane Fishing Day
ok, here are some photos from friday, a guide trip i did with Hans Sander of Austin. before i get into the details of the fishing day, i just want to say a few things. back in the mid 90’s when i was working at the Austin Angler, nobody was guiding in the Texas Hill Country. there was a guy by the name of Dan McGrath who did some Llano trips, and Scott Graham who did some stuff on the Guadalupe and Blanco Rivers, and moved on to do more at the coast. but essentially, nobody specialized in Hill Country streams or (guadalupe) bass fishing. i took it upon myself to learn the Hill Country rivers, inspired by the late Bud Priddy himself and my own desire to promote wild, native fishing rather than the putt-putt golf-esque, put-and-take trout fishing we have on the Guadalupe River.
anyhow, during those years, i paid my dues, setting standards for guiding on rivers like the Medina and San Marcos Rivers, to name a few. i regularly guide and fish over 500 miles of water within 2.5 hours of Austin. suddenly, now, everybody and their moms are fly fishing guides, which is cool, i supppose. but this isn’t so much to rag on anyone, just to set the record straight, and to say ‘I REALLY know what the HELL i’m doing’…. Read the rest of this entry »
Private Waters
hey, so this is from last week. i was out west of Austin on a 17,000 acre private ranch that has an awesome creek that are headwaters of a major river system. i’ve promised to keep it secret where i was. not really important, besides that it was a pristine piece of property. lots of deer and turkeys all over. fishing was great, lots of largemouth bass in the 2-3 pound range, i only fished briefly for an afternoon, but it was clear that there had to be much bigger bass there. they have the creek dammed up in places, otherwise there’d be no depth to the water. it’s all spring fed. the springs were so strong that they were bubbling up with turbulence in some of the pools. these are photos of mainly some cliffs. i like cliffs. oh, and that waterfall was in the main river. it’s about a 5-6 foot drop. a very few amount of people will know where this is. cheers.
Float Trip on the South Llano River
here are a couple of images from a trip on the South Llano River with Wilson and Nelson Jaeggli. the river was clearing, but running fast (i estimate around 180 cfs??), so we opted to float 9 miles. fishing was decent, lots of activity, especially between 2 p.m. and 4 p.m…lots of smaller fish, as is usually the case on this river since the big floods in the last 10 years changed the river. we did have a couple 2-2.5 pound largemouth come out for a popper, but most were the average sized Guadalupe bass of 10-12 inches and some monster bull red breasted sunfish. the guy on the tractor is Curtis Thomas taking our canoes out of the river on his property. he runs South Llano River Canoes, so if you need a canoe or shuttle, give him a call at 325-446-2220. cheers.
Classic Fishing Day on the Llano River
this is Celine Adams on the Llano River today. we put in the river around 9 a.m. in a weird stretch that i like to float. it was about an 8 mile float that took about 9 hours to fish…and holy crap, it was a really hot day. humid, super strong sun and no wind. preferable to all the rain we’ve had, however. river was cooking in places at 350+ cfs, not a lot of boat dragging, but plenty of weird rapids. i was pretty beat from all the paddling, considering my late night of drinking last night and mere 3 hours of sleep.
fishing was on fire today, especially with grasshopper patterns and poppers except for a weird lull in activity between noon and 2 p.m. Celine caught around 50-60 bass (not too bad for her 2nd time ever to fly fish), most of them were Guadalupe bass to 14 inches with some largemouth mixed in, including breaking one off of about 3 pounds. my fault for not putting a heavier tippet. Celine was pretty hard core, fishing the entire time while we melted in the hot Texas sun. i estimate at least 2000 casts were made (a cast every 20 feet X 8 miles @ 5280 feet per mile = 2112 casts). ok, i know that’s a silly statistic, but what the hell. anyway, we finished the day with a yummy meal at Cooper’s BBQ.