Rainbows in the Rain

"The way I see it, if you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain."*

Dolly Parton

I have been a Dolly Parton fan for a long time but I had no idea that her many talents included insight into catching rainbow trout. After a rainy trip to the Kiamichi Mountains this past April I recalled something she said about rainbows and the rain. It turned out she was dead on...at least for this trip.

A close friend and I had been planning this trip for almost a year. As usual work and other life events forced us to change the launch date several times before we finally drove a stake in the ground for the last week in April and actually pulled it off.

We arrived that evening in time to squeeze in maybe an hour of fishing. The weather that evening was cool and overcast; perfect for fishing but the forecast for the next several days included the possibility of significant rain. We resolved ourselves to the straw we had drawn and put the idea of a washed out fishing trip out of mind. By sundown we had caught a few fish, nothing spectacular but promising nonetheless for a fruitful few hard earned days on the river.

The next morning we rose early for breakfast eager to get on the water. The skies were dark and threatening but no rain. The lodge keeper informed us that the forecast still included rain. We packed up the truck and headed for the river hoping he was wrong.

At the river I discovered that instead of a 5wt and a 4wt back up fly rod I had packed two 4wts and a 3wt. I shook off the thought that this was a bad omen and rigged up the faster of the 4wts with my fingers crossed that it would be enough rod for the trout I hoped to encounter. Charlie rigged up in his usual methodical way but with one eye on the ever-graying sky. We were both anxious to be on the water before the rain started. One advantage to threatening weather, only the die-hard anglers show up...we had this popular stretch of river to ourselves!

I found feeding fish shortly after getting in the water but they were small and very selective. It was several minutes before I caught the first small trout. An occasional bantamweight trout accepted the zebra midge pattern I was drifting through the risers but not with any consistency. Charlie had already decided to look for greener pastures and moved on downstream. Then it started to rain. Fortunately it was just rain with only one distant rumble of thunder so I donned the rain jacket and fished on.

The rising trout had disappeared. The river's surface was dimpled by the cascading raindrops. What would trout be feeding on in the rain I asked myself...stuff that washes into the river maybe? I tied on a soft hackle pattern that had been successful on this river in the past. Three casts later I was connected to a trout of considerable greater proportions. I threaded it through the laydowns and managed to land my first rainbow in the rain and then another and another, all decent size trout.

The rain stopped, birds began their songs of thanksgiving for the rain, owls chimed in and the fish kept on biting. I fished downstream catching more rainbows and thinking I would find Charlie but he was nowhere in sight. I had this stretch of river to myself. I returned upstream to new water and continued to catch rainbows in the fifteen to nineteen inch class all on the same soft hackle. Charlie showed up just as I was recovering from the last trout of the morning, the nineteen incher that battled me like a gladiator champion with grand leaps and lunges to the end. This morning had been a gift from the fishing gods and one I would not soon forget...and sometimes, like Ms Parton said, "...if you want the rainbow you gotta put up with the rain."

For video of this mornings action click on the link below:

http://vimeo.com/93035444

Goodbye to a friend and a part of us all

Garden Friend

I accidently crushed one of my garden geckos this morning as I moved my smoker wood box across the deck. She fell through the planks so I did not have to watch her die. I am sure her wounds were fatal.  I felt really bad...really bad still. Some things change as you grow old. A greater appreciation for life, the whole of life, I think is one of those changes. At some point you can no longer deny that all life is intimately connected and we are all pretty much in the same boat. We want to believe that mankind can alter Nature without negative consequences for us and for all life but it eventually becomes evident that is simply not true. Interconnected from star dust to prairie dust you cannot change a part without changing the whole. Tread gently on your earth journey so that when you reach your exodus you can leave content and perhaps someday be asked to return.

Fly Fishing for Sand Bass

Myrone Crysops or White Bass

One of the reasons Spring is a favorite season is the sand bass run that occurs this time of year. Sand bass are made for fly fishing and can be a thrill a minute on a light fly rod. When the red buds start blooming and the crane flies show up look for tributaries to your local reservoirs that have running water and you will probably find these little silver rockets running upstream ready to spawn and eat anything that looks like a small shad or minnow. For more tips on fly fishing for sand bass check out my video Sand Bass on the Fly at this link. https://vimeo.com/92262430

If you liked the video and learned something useful consider leaving a comment to let me know to continue with this type of video. Oh and by the way this time of the year you need to keep an eye out for other things than fish as you walk along the creek banks...watch your step!

Speckeled Kingsnake

Goodbye to a Texas Trout Fishery?

17 1/4 inch Brazos River Rainbow

The Brazos River below Possum Kingdom Lake has for years been the fishery that filled the gap for me between fall and spring warm water fishing in North Texas. More than that I would have to say it is where I learned to fly fish for trout. 

I started fly fishing when I was twelve, bought my first fly rod from "Monkey Wards", taught myself to cast with a book under my arm and caught my first trout from the White River in Arkansas on a fly I made from yarn from my mom's sewing kit, a rusty hook from dad's tackle box and feathers from my pet parakeet. When I first brought the fly rod home dad asked me what it was and what I was going to do with it. He was pretty much a "anything that bites is big enough to keep" bait fisherman then and had no interest in fly fishing. Ironically my interests in trout and fly-fishing were spawned reading articles in the Field and Stream and Outdoor Life magazines he subscribed to.

Born and raised in North Texas I had never seen a trout in person until the White River trip. Fly-fishing for me until then had been hiking from one farm pond to the next with one pocket full of homemade squirrel tail flies or poppers and the other a peanut butter sandwich to sustain me until I returned to the farm house hours later. The quarry then was bass and sunfish not trout. After reading an article about the White River below Bull Shoals dam I pestered my parents for months to vacation there. I was surprised when they agreed to do that. I was the only one that was impressed with the river so we never went back. I recall on our return drive home we stopped at a fish farm somewhere in Arkansas that raised trout. There was a small stream stocked with trout that you could fish and keep your limit for two bucks or a pond where you paid for the trout you caught by the pound. I had no interest in fishing from the pond but really wanted to fly fish the trout stream. Dad said fish the pond or nothing, which ticked me off, so I cast my fly on the nose of the biggest trout I could see in the pond. It took the fly and cost dad about four times what letting me fish the stream would have cost him. That made me feel better about his terse decision.

Although the White was my first exposure to trout fishing, the Brazos as I said, is where the trout first educated me about their ways. I can remember standing in the river during early fly fishing adventures there watching trout rising all around me but could not for the life of me get one to bite. For many that is more frustration than they can bare and that is the end of their interest in fly-fishing for trout. For me it was a mystery that needed to be solved. I spent years listening to the trout there, learning from them and from the river. Some snub their noses at such put and take hatchery fisheries but this one became an old friend to me that I loved to become reacquainted with each winter. Each trip I brought more knowledge with me about the trout, the river and about the others that fished there ranging from guys with canned corn for bait to dads taking their kids on their first fishing trip, to fly fisherman so new to the sport they looked like a shiny Orvis store manikin perched in the water.

Time changes things though and I'm sorry to say the pleasures of this fishery these days are much diminished. The demise I think began several years ago when the federal government ended its support for the trout-stocking program on the Brazos. At that time seventeen to eighteen thousand trout were stocked each winter beginning in December and twice a month through the end of March. Today that has been cut in half with stocking occurring officially only once a month after the December stockings.

The bigger impact is the water flow. Power generation from the lake was stopped a few years back which meant the river flow is regularly low and high only during flood control. This plus drought in recent years has reduced the flow from an average of about 150 cfs to a trickle at 20 cfs, hardly enough to employ many of the drift presentations used in fly fishing. Low water flow has changed the distribution of the trout along the river. Before you could find trout for several miles up and downstream from the Highway 16 Bridge. This of course spread the fisherman out too giving everyone room to catch their trout in their preferred manner without crowding. Now everyone competes at the bridge pools for a tiny slice of river not unlike the trout fishing in the kiddy pool charade once seen at promo events. Gone too are the days when you could catch trout into the summer months. Packed into tiny stretches of the river the trout are removed quickly, sometimes legally sometimes not. Now most of the trout are gone before they can acclimate to the forage in the river and become a greater challenge to take.

Stronger flows created a diverse set of challenges as each section of the river had different structure and different insect habitat that one had to discover and understand to find and catch trout. The missing power generation flows have changed the ecology of the river. Predominant insects of years ago have diminished significantly. Different insects are showing up but in limited numbers. Even the landscape has changed as tons of limestone rock has been dumped along some of the high banks to fight natural erosion. Fishing this stretch of river with its high red banks dotted with mesquite and prickly pear was once something of a wilderness experience but now is like fishing alongside a landfill. I miss the challenges I once had on this stretch of Brazos. I am not sure if anything can be done to negate these changes but if not we may have to add to the John Graves lament "Good bye to a river and its trout fishery".

Surviving the Guadalupe

Evil Cypress Roots

In my younger days getting up long before sunrise and fishing until sunset was never an issue. Today, with many more miles on this old vessel, such is not the case. I still enjoy fishing just as much, maybe more, because I now know much better how to enjoy it.

This trip included a jobsite stop for some quick touch up and with any luck with that an afternoon of fishing the Guadalupe River. This adventure had many challenges for my creaking, misshaped and aging physique. Rising really early was the first test. I was up at 4:30 a.m. ready to begin the quest. A four-hour drive to Austin was made less of a senior event only by the good company of my also growing old fishing friend and a stop in West for some Czech breakfast goodies. Once at the Austin jobsite manicuring the gazillion blue tape spots for an hour or so contorted my joints into new and sometimes vocal complaints. I was sure I heard creaking and popping. Finished at last we headed for the Guadalupe. A stop at a quirky local BBQ eatery made me forget the joint insurrection. Lunch was downed hurriedly and soon we were on the old familiar River Road and had picked a starting point for our afternoon of trout fishing.

Getting suited up for fly-fishing has always been an adventure in itself. There is so much stuff that has to be donned and the pressure is huge to get on the water. Put it on in the right order, get it right the first time, or you have to start all over from where you jumped track. Being some pounds heavier than I once was makes the application of waders to my torso much like stuffing sausage in a casing without a funnel. It is not a pretty sight.

Finally things are rigged right and we descend to the river. It's low, lower than I have ever seen it. The cypress trees lining the river had much of their twisted tentacle like roots exposed creating an obstacle course that instilled terror in my joints at the sight of them. Determined to make these few hours fishing time we had carved from this day worth what I already had invested I plodded on looking for a fishy looking deep hole that might hold some trout that hadn't had their scales scared off by kids, dogs, tubes and kayaks piloted aimlessly by spring breakers that were all already in the river.

Traversing those roots was much more difficult than I expected. Between each step from one gnarly root to the next flashes of my long life zipped through my mind. I was pretty sure I could die on the Guadalupe tripped and consumed by a mass of dastardly cypress tree roots. After about fifty yards or so of this bankside toil and trouble I came upon a promising pool. Being rather fatigued by now and glad to be alive I made my first hopeful cast from the bank and atop a pile of those evil roots giving no thought to how I would land a fish from that perch should I be lucky enough to hook one. That thought came seconds after the take.

A strong trout doubled my 5wt fly rod and headed downstream toward an undercut bank. After the second run like this I knew I would have to negotiate the tangled roots between me and the river and get in the water if I ever wanted to land this fish. What followed was something just shy of a miracle. I danced (I’m not sure danced is this the right word because it certainly was not graceful) from one root to the next, heart pounding as I could feel my balance failing, recovered then catching myself against a cypress trunk lucky enough for me to be in just the right place. I splashed into the river's edge, all the while holding my rod high and doing battle with the trout, once again feeling blessed to be upright, in one piece and alive.

The fish made one more lunge and then began to succumb to the rod. I netted the trout being careful not to lose my footing on the narrow ledge along the drop off where I had landed at the end of my precarious descent to the river. She measured sixteen inches and put up a good fight. Not a bad catch but being somewhat wiser in my old age not sure worth risk I took to catch her. One more fish, a hand sized blue gill and it was time to crawl my way back upstream to where my friend was safely in the middle of the river trying to entice the trout with fur and feather. He offered to share his spot with me but I decided sitting, catching my breath and counting my blessings was in order. Mike fished and I watched for another twenty minutes or so until a glance at the watch told us it was time to pack it up and head north. The trip back involved the usual sluggish episodes on I35 that added untold time to your trip. I made it home just before midnight. I wouldn't have to be rocked to sleep. I had survived another senior adventure, had a great time and caught some fish in the process. It was good to be alive in spite of all that.

I'm Little...But I'm a Great Winner HD 1080 Dolby surround 5.1

Sometimes it is good to know that the little guy can win. I'm not sure how this video was shot but obviously recorded and edited by someone that knows what they are doing. A perfect portrayal of the obstacles that can cross our path and how courage, tenacity and perseverance can help us prevail and overcome bad odds. To all you little guys, in whatever sense, chin up and hang in there!

2014 at last!

2014 at last! I thought it would never get here. There have not been many years that I wanted to say good riddance to but 2013 was certainly one of them. Being a bit superstitious about the number thirteen I thought perhaps that was part of the problem with the year past but like wine ranking maybe it was just a bad year. Whatever the cause for the downside I welcome the opportunity for a fresh start.

It wasn't all bad. I made new friends and old friendships grew stronger. Those will be carried forward to the new year along with all the lessons learned from both disappointments and successes. Thanks to all those that taught me something last year even if it was what not to do. Special thanks to those that added to my new knowledge, new interests, new adventures and new stories. I love stories and storytellers...the spice of life. Hopefully for you and for me this new year will be full of stories of success and happiness. Happy New Year to you, everyone!