The Doom Magnet

It seemed like forever since I had been on the water. Work, the holidays and life in general had all conspired against me for about 2 months. But now, my schedule was easing up and I wanted to take full advantage of it. Plans were made, gear was purchased and flies were tied.

It was on.

The first trip Jaz and I made was to the lower Guadalupe River to try our hand at tailrace trout fishing, something neither of us had ever done. Despite our experience chasing trout in mountain streams, rivers and lakes, we knew that this would be completely different.

We drop the Jeep at Rio Raft and paid for a shuttle up to the Mariposa Lodge launch area. This is actually just the public easement next to the bridge. We paddled up river maybe 50 yards and worked dead drift rigs in the edges of the swift water columns with only one hit.

Deciding to work down river, Jaz got in the front of the yak and I handled the boat for her. She worked drift rigs, streamers, more drift rigs and then back to streamers for hours without a single hit. She was obviously discouraged so I asked if I could work some streamers through some limestone troughs we were drifting by.

Within a few minutes I had a fish on, it ended up being a nice little 16” Rainbow, caught on all things a FlyingCat that I had just switched to.

Jaz was up again but had no luck no matter how much she tried. We eventually headed down river again. On the way to Barking Dog pool it started to rain a little on and off again but not enough to run us off the water. While fishing the pool however, it began to really pour down. We waded back to the yak and paddled back up river to Rio. Our first day of fishing this year was okay for me but Jaz was definitely feeling the skunk.

A few days later we were back on the lower Guadalupe River again to try for a better day. We launched at Lazy L&L Campground and headed down river. We pulled the yak to the shore after passing through the first chute and started dead drifting. I pulled a little 12” trout almost immediately, a good omen I hoped.

Noticing some small trout feeding on the surface just down river, I grabbed the dry fly box and waded up next to the shore past them. Once down river of the action, I kept trying different flies until I found the one they wanted. I was able to catch 2 little 12” trout before they stopped rising, sort of fun on the 000wt rod.

I was feeling good about my day so far but Jaz was starting to get frustrated. When she caught what must have been the smallest Redbreast Sunfish we’d ever seen, she only got more resigned. It didn’t help that we saw other anglers pulling in good catches.

It was about the time that I started to imagine a little dark cloud over her head that things started to really go downhill. We were working the yak down a chute when it caught on a rock and swamped. Most everything was tied down and in dry bags but after wrestling the yak off the rock, we noticed a few small items had gone off on a journey of their own.

With the yak pumped out, we headed down river to access the damage. One pair of paddling gloves and a water bottle were missing and Jaz’s phone had died from the massive condensation that formed in the dry bag it was stored in. The day had definitely turned for the worse but I was determined to make the best of it. So we kept fishing.

This is when the rain started. At first it was light showers that would come and go but it wasn’t too long before the sky opened up and dumped on us in earnest. The rain was so bad that I could not see past the bow of the yak. We watched the water levels and paddled down river to the pull out. While we were waiting under an overpass for the rain to let up, I declared that Jaz was a doom magnet. She did not disagree.

Eager to break our run of bad luck, a week later I decided that we should head out to Lake Bastrop. Since it is a power plant lake, the warm water makes the fish spawn earlier. We were hoping the carp were spawning since last year at about this time we really had a blast catching them.

Unfortunately we found out quickly that the surface temperature of the lake was only 57 to 64 degrees since the plant was not generating electricity. This meant the fish were not quite ready to spawn yet and with a 20% chance of rain in the afternoon I wondered if Jaz would once more be a doom magnet.

The lake was much higher than I had ever seen it before. Typically they lower the level during the winter for weed control but due to a broken pump, it was low all last summer and fall so I guess they didn’t need to lower it this year. The weed beds are major feature that we understand and use to our advantage, now without them it felt almost like we were on a new lake.

We began our morning working our favorite shoreline from Tower Point through Pelican Flats. Jaz was up front casting a Super Cypret’s Minnow while I kept the boat moving slowly along within casting distance from the shore.

After maybe 20 minutes without a single hit we were both getting sort of down, this shore is usually our most productive where we’d usually hook up with 5 to 10 fish by now. Just as we were finishing up this “prime” stretch of shoreline, Jaz gets slammed and its fish on!

After a great battle with a half a dozen jumps, she lands a chunky little 15” bass. Not a trophy but her first decent fish of the year. Maybe the curse of the doom magnet is gone?

We had never worked the rip rap along the dam before and I thought that a FlyingCat might be a hot ticket there so we paddled our way over to it. The clouds rolled in and the wind kicked up a notch but it wasn’t bad at all. It took a bit to figure out the steep drop off but once I started casting all the way to shore and only working it out for 10 feet, I got a hit pretty quick.

I’ve heard the largemouth bass originally stocked in Lake Bastrop were brought in from Florida because they deal with the higher water temperatures better. I don’t know if that’s true but I do know that I have yet to harder fighting largemouth bass anywhere else.

Unfortunately my little 16” fish was the last one we’d catch that day but not for lack of trying.

We spent another 3 hours trying different techniques all over the entire north area of the lake trying to figure out a way to catch them more consistently. In the end, we packed up the yak wishing we’d caught more fish but happy that the dark cloud of the doom magnet had finally seemed to move on.