far out fishing
the travel blog for faroutfishingtrips.com (and other spiffy fishing stories)
Archive for August, 2007
August 31, 2007 at 12:03 am · Filed under Mexico Fishing
yo, everyone…a quick update. just spoke to Ludwig, the ex-veteran pilot for Casa Blanca Lodge, about the status of the lodge and the effects of Hurricane Dean. He said that there was a lot of clean-up necessary to the lodge, but that it was mostly debris from vegetation and sand. water had gotten into the lodges (Playa Blanca also), but structurally there was no damage, as the concrete buildings withstood any threat from the hurricane. there wasn’t significant water damage as none of it was standing water, just tons of sand, and maybe some repairs to any wiring or anything electrical. the thatch roofs need repair and a lot of clean-up from downed trees, branches, etc…and washed up junk, but they will be up and ready to go for opening of the season in October. maybe the fishing will be awesome. cheers. (p.s., sorry about the puke-green photo border color)
August 28, 2007 at 4:29 pm · Filed under Texas Fishing
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.
August 21, 2007 at 12:24 pm · Filed under Mexico Fishing
hey, all…sorry about the lack of posts. rain screwed up some rivers again and haven’t been out fishing this past week. here is the water vapor image of Hurricane Dean as it slammed the Yucatán Peninsula, just south of Casa Blanca and Playa Blanca Lodges. pretty much a straight shot at Chetumal or around Espiritu Santo Bay. supposedly it was a strong category 5 hurricane when it hit, let’s hope nothing happened to the lodges. i know some of the shacks of the local lobster fishermen along the coast there had to have been hammered. i’m sure i’ll get a report this next week. cheers.
August 12, 2007 at 10:50 pm · Filed under Texas Fishing
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.
August 9, 2007 at 11:32 pm · Filed under Texas Fishing
so, finally got to get out. rivers are still a bit high, but with the warm temperatures, everything is drying out and stabilizing. this week, i went with my good friend and fellow fishing guide Johnny Quiroz to float the lower Nueces River near Uvalde. this is the section of river that basically transitions from lower hill country into south Texas.
we floated roughly 8 miles the first day, then did a ballsy 15 miles the 2nd day. very tiring as the river was flowing 600 cfs. these sections of river were quite broad. the water was GIN CLEAR, you could see the bottom at 12-15 feet in places, it was CRAZEEE clear!! we spent a lot of time casting to dead water. seems the fish only held in pools that carried water year-round, as this area is part of the Edwards Aquifer recharge zone, so the river runs underground at normal flows. also, the river seemed especially barren due to the combination of damaging floods and severe drought. a lot of pools and runs with bare white rock and no vegetation, not ideal habitat for good fishing…however….
despite only 10% of the river having quality fishable water, it was a gorgeous float. you could see the devastation due to big floods dumping gravel into the river bed (due to excessive clearing of land, erosion of topsoil). but this was the closest thing to a true trout stream i’ve ever seen in texas. we missed several big largemouth in the 4-4.5 pound class (21+ inch fish) due to crappy fishing (break-offs, bad hooksets, etc.). we did manage to hook some nice channel catfish and some chunky Guadalupe bass. there was also an abundance of tilapia, some Rio Grande perch and alligator gar, which is unusual since spotted gar usually dominate in the hill country rivers.
all in all it was a fun 2 days of fishing and floating. i really enjoyed the mesquite and brush that is characteristic of south Texas, and all the different types of birds from the usual hill country varieties. the only weird part was the last part of the 2nd day where we transitioned into farmland. the river’s 600 cfs of water suddenly channeled into narrow clay banks that were twisting and turning. 50-yard width of river suddenly turned into 15 feet of raging current with trees covering some spots with only a foot and a half of clearance. luckily Johnny’s a good paddler in front of the canoe and we coordinated well our way out, but needless to say, there were some scary moments. all photos copyright Joey Lin 2007, except the one of me of course, copyright Johnny Quiroz.
August 5, 2007 at 2:10 pm · Filed under Texas Fishing
this is my buddy stahl. yesterday afternoon, we floated a mile of Onion Creek on his property in Buda, Texas. we put in at 6 p.m. and floated for 2 hours, dinking around with light spinning rods, fishing small plastic worms. the water was still high, flowing at around 230 cfs. we saw some nice bass up to 3 pounds, but didn’t see any of the big fish that we know are in the creek.
August 3, 2007 at 1:36 pm · Filed under Texas Fishing
hey, i just wanted to post this to show you what’s been typically happening in the hill country this summer. as you can see from this graph from July 1, that the rivers are way above normal and have been spiking from the non stop rains. almost every hill country river has been doing this. it’s not that it’s terrible flooding, but every time that it’s down to almost fishable conditions, it gets screwed up again. the little TRIANGLES on the bottom of the graph data represent the average daily stream flow, so you can see we’re way above average for this time of year. hopefully we’re done with all of this.
