We needed to shoot some video where there was clear running water, an increasingly difficult challenge in this prolonged drought we are experiencing in Texas. The Llano River near Castell seemed like it would do the job nicely. So a plan was formed to get in some early morning fishing while the sun rose up to give us more neutral lighting, as such we timed our departure to arrive a little after sunrise.
Holy crap was that a cold 1.5 hour drive out to the river!
With the temperature in the low 40s we took our time getting ready, letting the sun climb up and soak us with warming rays. I kept hoping to see fog lift off the water, an indicator that it would be much warmer than the air temperature but none appeared.
Neither Jaz nor I had brought waders. A week before we had spent a day in 68 degree water without wearing any so it didn’t seem like we would need them now.
When we finally slipped our tubes into the pool, the pain from the cold was excruciating. Against my better judgement I checked the water temperature and it was 54 degrees. Since we had already committed, I decided to at least see if the fish were active.
The water was gin clear and the pool was devoid of almost all activity. This and the fact that I didn’t even get a single hit in 20 minutes lead me to believe we were freezing our lower bodies for naught.
My experience has been that when the water is this cold in Hill Country Rivers 2 things happen. (1) The fish move to the deepest pools they can get too and (2) they typically are only active during the mid-afternoon to sundown when the water is warmest.
Down river were the deep pools and up river threaded out into lots of smaller pools and riffles. We decided to get out, change clothes and work on the video shoot in shallow water until it got warmer. Depending on how much time we had once we finished the shoot, we’d try fishing again.
While setting up the camera equipment, 4 other fly fishermen showed up so time was spent doing what fly fishermen do best; talking about fly fishing. We finally finished the the video shoot around 3:00pm and decided to try our luck up river in the smaller pools where the river threads out.
Admittedly, our primary reason for not going to the deep pools down river was that we didn’t want to get back into the float tubes. After our butt numbing experience in the morning, we were excited about the prospect of wade fishing in shallower water.
So we began looking for pools that had fish that were more or less trapped in them. Unable to move down river or even up river to the big pools they would end up in water that would warm even faster in the afternoon sun.
Both of us decided on tying on a Flying Cat so we could have a fly that we could bounce slowly on the bottom. Cold fish stay low and don’t like to expend a lot of calories. It wasn’t long before I had the first fish on. I was working a slot channel with a strong current so I expected the fish to be a Guadalupe or Smallmouth Bass but was surprised to see a Largemouth Bass fighting strongly, using the current to his advantage.
The little guy fought hard so I gave him plenty of recovery time before he slid right back into the fast current of the slot.
The first and prettiest Guadalupe Bass of the day went to Jaz. Although I took a terrible photo, the fish could have been used for ichthyology textbooks the markings were so perfect.
The best fish of the day was a 16″ Smallmouth that Jaz coaxed out of a different deep slot that was running good current. I wasn’t close enough to get a photo of the fight, but watched a nice battle from the distance.
As the sun started to set, I found a sweet spot where the current passed under a large boulder. The Redbreast Sunfish were hitting my fly on every cast.
Then just as I was running out of light, I caught the final and most surprising fish of the day, a White Crappie! A couple of weeks prior I had caught my very first one on the fly out of the Colorado River but I never expected to find one in the Llano River.
The light was fading faster than we had time to get back down river to the Jeep, but a little bit of stumbling through the night was well worth the experience of fly fishing we shared.