far out fishing
the travel blog for faroutfishingtrips.com (and other spiffy fishing stories)
Archive for July, 2007
July 29, 2007 at 6:57 pm · Filed under Texas Fishing
sorry about the lack of posts, but i swear it’s because i can’t get out on the water. we are having record rainfall and everything continues to be high and muddy. i fish and guide in about 500 miles of river within 2.5 hours of austin, and it’s mind boggling that 98% of the water is either too high to safely canoe, or too murky to fish. if you want proof, take a look at this photo of the rain from a trip yesterday and these links. for current weather, click HERE. for radar, i like to use THIS site. and for USGS river gauges, try THIS.
so anyway, i checked the gauges and saw that Barton Creek was flowing about 230 cfs. it’s hardly ever floatable during the summer time, as the flows get really low. it was amazing that i’ve been in Austin since 1989 and have never floated Barton Creek, but i never had easy access to make a reasonable day float, and i’ve always heard it was some tricky paddling, but i had always heard about the good fishing. anyway, i called Vince Wiseman up yesterday morning to see if he wanted to float it. he’s never really fished it either, even though his neighborhood is right on the creek. Barton Creek goes many miles through some private property right in Austin. we decided to give it a go. i think our total float was about 10-12 miles. luckily it was running generally clear.
anyway, short story is that we saw some enormous largemouth bass in the creek. we spent most of the time floating, as 200+ cfs is good for kayakers, but too fast for fishing in this narrow creek. there’s some technical paddling, i opted to walk some of the rapids since it was my first run and many spots you can’t see what’s around the corner, so better safe than sorry. there were a few wide pools, but some of the rapids are pretty tricky when all that water is forced into a channel only 6-8 feet wide with big rocks. i didn’t flip the canoe, but we sunk it when we got stuck on a rock and water filled the canoe. i destroyed a camera lens when water got into my Patagonia Great Divider bag, which is great for keeping out the rain, but not submerged.
anyway, we got into lots of big giant yellow breasted sunfish and several 1-2 pound bass fishing streamers and poppers. here’s Vince with a chunky bass, i’m guessing around 2.5 pounds. we probably would have had much better fishing with a lot less current and clearer water. the most amazing thing really was what a remote wilderness experience this was, right in the middle of Austin. i’ve been getting really depressed about the development of the hill country over the last 10 years, but this gives me some hope…
July 23, 2007 at 1:24 am · Filed under Texas Fishing
hey, guys. well, finally went fishing. everything has been blown out due to the non-stop rain. for some reason this last round missed the Llano River drainage. the river around Mason was around 500-600 cfs today, generally clear, maybe a slight tint to it. no matter, i was going crazy, so i just needed to float something and do some scouting. by the way, the hill country looks AWESOME, like it’s april or something. i saw so many scissortails today (those crazy forktailed birds), they are everywhere. so are the butterflies.
Read the rest of this entry »
July 17, 2007 at 1:02 am · Filed under Texas Fishing
man, the rivers are full and flowing from all the rain. it’s been tough finding clear water. fishing will be great the rest of the summer as soon as everything stabilizes. here are some photos from 2 recent trips i took. the first one is the lovely Celine Adams of Austin, on the South Llano River with a Rio Grande Perch. this was her first trip fly fishing to bass and sunfish. it hadn’t rained for a week and the river was clear, but above normal flows, when we put in. then a thunderstorm came and dumped rain on us for about 45 minutes, and the river got dirty from runoff. the fishing got slow, but picked up in the afternoon. Celine was a real trooper, casting like a champ with big heavy flies til dark!
the other photo is me last week with a 3 pound (boga gripped) smallmouth/guadalupe hybrid on the Blanco River. this fish was maybe only 18-19″, but FAT. he took a brown woolly bugger. photos by Joey Lin and Marcus Rodriguez.
July 9, 2007 at 1:59 am · Filed under Photo of the Week, Texas Fishing
ok, this is just an excuse for me to post some old photos that i liked. one thing about doing this blog thing is that i finally have an outlet for my photos. some of you may know that i used to work professionally as a photographer before i left the scene sometime around 1995 to pursue my life in fly fishing. don’t know if that was the right move, felt like it at the time, though.
anyhow, this is from about 10 years ago. i was out wade-fishing on the Llano River with some buddies and it started to rain. i set my rod down to take pictures or pee or whatever, can’t really remember. but upon return, i noticed a damsel fly that had hatched from it’s nymph form and had crawled onto my Winston rod, trying to dry it’s wings. anyone who is familiar with Texas Hill Country fishing knows how important damsel flies are to Guadalupe Bass and other species. i shot this photo with an Olympus Infinity Stylus, an $80 (at the time) point-and-shoot. perfect for accidentally dropping into the water. i’m too chicken to have more expensive cameras out on the water.
July 4, 2007 at 2:14 am · Filed under Photo of the Week, Texas Fishing
this is my friend John Erskine. here is his site: http://www.jerskine.com/
here is the funny story of how he one-upped everyone on the guadalupe river this particular day last december, catching the new fly rod state record striper. this fish weighed in at 36.65 pounds!! click HERE for the full story. photo by Shea McClanahan, i think. cheers.
