I’m in the process of reading Jerry Kustich’s book, “At the River’s Edge: Lessons Learned in a Life of Fly Fishing”. I’ve been reading John Gierach books
Nice article with location information to help the local central Texas folks fish for White Bass. It’s about the time for the run. Leave a note on here if you find a good spot.
So, it isn’t exactly the Provo River in UT like one of my previous home waters, but it’s not bad either.
I took a 20 minute drive out to the Pedernales River at Reimer Ranch today for a few hours. The drive out is a nice hilly trip with little traffic and some nice views. I turned into the park and was surprised to see that it was really rustic, which was refreshing. Rustic out here means rocky, dusty, cactusy and hilly. The road in was basically a one lane road that turned into a dirt road.
After paying $8 for parking at the park rangers station, I drove down to the water. The park ranger said the White bass were running so I was getting my hopes up.
I parked and started walking down into the Canyon.
I decided not to bring my waders for some reason, I really could have used them at first. The best hole had someone at it.
So I walked downstream a bit and tried casting a pretty heavy conehead olive wooly bugger. Nothing. I impaled my arm pretty good with it. So good/bad, that I had to actually yank the hook out as gentle tugging didn’t work. The wind was making it very difficult for me to cast.
After a while, the guy at the good spot left so I took his spot and started casting my wooly bugger again. 3rd or 4th cast, I hooked into an acrobatic bass. He made 2 nice out of water jumps and a few valiant runs, but I was able to get him in on my 5 wt Ross reel and 5 wt Headwaters Bamboo rod.
Yes, those are my lovely toes… had to wade out on a sandbar to get good access to a very deep hole.
I tried a few more times but didn’t get any other bites. Another guy and his son where working their way down to the spot so I decided to let him give it a try. I caught a great fish (for me) and had a very nice day. I’ll be back….
I ran in to Sportsman’s Finest, my local fly shop, this afternoon and noticed that the book, Fly-Fishing the Texas Hill Country was released. i have an early edition by Bud Priddy, but have been anticipating the updated version for years. Texas fly fishing forums have been full of rumors about the release for a long time so I had to get it due to the hype.
If you fish in Texas or plan to fish in Texas, it’s a must have. All fishing spots mentioned have GPS coordinates making them easy to find. I just realized that my iPhone accepts coordinate inputs so I started inputing the more interesting sounding locations into my iPhone this evening for future use. Very very cool!
I also found out that an excellent access point is only about 15 miles from me at Reimer Ranch. I can’t wait to try it out. It’s supposedly a great Striper fishery. I wouldn’t have guessed that I would have a clear stream so close to my house. BTW, if you head down there, stop at Verdes Restaurant. It’s excellent. Went there today and had an interesting experience… waitress spilled an entire frozen drink on top of my head. I got a free shirt out of it.
Not sure how I missed it until now, but I guess I filtered out previous emails announcing that last 2 issues. The Catch Magazine is quite impressive. I so wanted to grab the pictures and use them as desktop backgrounds. I especially liked the Adam Barker Provo pictures as the Provo used to be my home river and I recognized some of his photo locations.
Take a look when you get a chance. I may just buy some of the photos.
