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| 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".
