Golden Fall Colors

Fishing Report - Fall 2008







Well, another season on the flats has come and gone - and this one was GREAT! Excellent water levels, big fish, and quite a few guide trips (not to mention a new baby) made for a busy summer. Thanks to all my new and repeat clients . . . I hope you had a great time and I look forward to hearing from you again next spring.

Now it's time to settle in for the winter; hit Oklahoma a few times for trout, the dam at Texoma for Stripers, shoot a few ducks - we'll post some adventures as they come. Remember to support your local flyshops this holiday season when purchasing gifts; they provide us with a great service and EVERYBODY needs a new rod (or waders) in their stocking!

Here's a photo of my last trip of the season. Michael Gillman (holding carp) and his friend, Buddy booked a trip in early October - right before the strong cool front. A beautiful early fall day with clear water, no wind and super spooky fish. Fall carp are a real challenge as many of the food sources that are easy to imitate with a fly (like damsel and dragonfly nymphs or immature crayfish) have become fairly sparse. A fly really needs to be presented well with a long, fine leader.

Tight lines until next time!

A Change of Seasons

What happened to summer?!?!? Three weeks ago it was "situation normal" for late August in Texas. Football in the heat, getting ready for dove hunting in the heat, FISHING in the heat - and then BAM! I left the house yesterday morning for a run and made it to the end of the street before I realized the strange sensation in my arms and face; I was COLD! I cannot remember a cooler early September (even without the hurricane).

Ike did not turn out to be the rain producer they thought it would be, we were about 50 miles west of major downpours. Obviously, you've heard the reports from the coast. Those folks need help (please contact your local Red Cross for Salvation Army to assist). A lot of guides and commercial fishermen lost EVERYTHING - many without the means to recover losses. Flats guides that make a living off of understanding the nuances of inches of water will find their playing fields completely erased. Trash and petrochemical waste will litter the flats for years - it's going to be a mess for sometime.

As for our fishing, the cool weather has slowed some aspects but in NO WAY is it over yet. Carp are still cruising the flats and the water clarity is as good as it gets. Water levels are holding at about 10" low (http://ahps.srh.noaa.gov/ahps2/hydrograph.php?wfo=fwd&gage=rrlt2&view=1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1 )With water this clear, a long fine leader is needed for consistant hook-ups (especially if there is no wind). Hoppers can usually be used this time of year but really need a hot, dry SW wind to get going. Not much of that lately!

The sand bass are really confused. They're still around and "schooled up", but not surfacing as much as they should in September. This is usually the time of year when we fill the freezer with the evening sand bass bite. They can be caught deep - holding off structure - with slab spoons and jigs. Not what you would call fly rod fodder.

Tales of Tailwaters

Fishing Report - 6/18

I had an opportunity for a "guide's day off" and went fishing Sunday with David, Bart, and Travis from the Tailwaters Fly Shop in Dallas. Great guys, good times, and FISH! The meadow we cross to get to the south side of the flats is currently ablaze with color (Coreopsis and Brown-Eyed Susans - I think) - it's amazing to watch it change from the bluebonnet and paintbrush colors of April to the brillant yellow of mid-June.

As for the fishing, the east flats are beginning to show signs of stress/pattern change as we saw about half the number of fish I've seen in the past few weeks. By the end of June, it will be time to hit the westside areas as hydrilla will make most of the currently fishable flats almost impossible. Presentations and retrieves have to be spot on . . . they are not giving any "freebies."

Getting Close to the Ultimate Carp Rod

Product Review

Temple Fork Outifitters TiCrX 7'6" 6 wt.

Flats fishing for carp at Lake Ray Roberts is a game of dichotomies; flies need to sink but cannot hit the surface too hard, leaders need to be strong enough to resist abrasion and land big fish but thin so as to not spook them, and rods need to have the backbone to control a six pound fish headed for timber but also be able to hit a teacup at 20 feet. Catching these fish can require standing on some pretty thin "ledges" when it comes to your equipment.

I've been searching for the Ultimate Carp Rod (UCR) for sometime - really since I first started fishing for them in the late 90's. At first I used a 9 foot, 6 wt. Sage RPL because it was the same rod I used for light redfishing on the coast and for small bonefish in the Yucatan. This rod definately had the backbone to handle any cast/wind and when combined with a Lamson LP-3 (one of my favorite reels of all time), it could stop a small freight train. Problems arose when I had to cast it short (<25>

And that's what the majority of carp fishing at Ray Roberts is . . . short range. Most of our casts are 20-25 ft. Subtract 9 feet for a leader and you don't have much flyline past the tip of the rod. Many of today's "fast" action flyrods do not begin to load (and therefore become accurate) until you have 30-35 feet of FLYLINE past the tip. What usually happens when you try to cast one of these rods at short range is you crash the butt of the leader and/or last few feet of flyline into the water on top of your target. Carp REALLY don't like this and will respond with a boil of mud and a wake streaking across the flat.

What is needed in a UCR is a rod that is not so fast in the upper third of the blank but that has enough stiffness in the lower third to give you fish-fighting "backbone."

Length is another consideration. A nine foot flyrod is not going to load at short range as fast as a shorter rod. A seven and a half foot rod will give you another foot and a half of flyline out there to help straighten a leader - and we've all read our Lefty and know that a straight leader is a good thing. This reduction can only be carried so far - accuracy at distance drops dramatically when a rod gets shorter than 7 feet. As I said, MOST of our casts are at short range. Every trip, however, gives us an opportunity to throw a "Hail Mary" at a departing drum or large bass on the edge of a flat. All of a sudden, an angler needs to throw 50 or 60 feet of line . . . NOW . . . with a minimum of false casts. Shorter, slower rods are not very good at this; a UCR needs to be between 7.5 and 8 feet long.

One last criteria - it helps if the rod has a "saltwater" setup. A full wells grip and fighting butt to battle large fish and larger stripping and snake guides to clear line quickly and get fish on the reel.

Well, I have found a happy middle ground. It is the Temple Fork Oufitters TiCrX 7'6" 6 wt. This rod is fast, like the rest of the "X's", but not. It has a softer tip and will throw a nice loop and straighten a leader at 18 feet (yes, I measured it!). The rod still has enough backbone in the butt to lean on BIG fish. I caught a 9.5 lb. carp with it about a month ago and had no problem getting the fish in. Luckily, I was fishing a new, 12 lb. bass leader and could really pull on the fish - the rod bent deep into the butt section but I could tell it was no where near "stressed". That same butt section strength will enable this rod to throw a quick 70 footer with 2 false casts.

The rod has a full wells grip and large guides. The fighting butt is my only real "gripe" with the rod - it's too big. Unlike Sir Mix-a-Lot, I don't like big butts and the folks at TFO put the same size fighting butt on all the TiCrX models (I understand this - it saves them $$ and enables you to purchase a great rod at $250). I'm a fanatic about rod/reel balance and want that rod to balance right under my thumb - about an inch back from the edge of the grip. The standard butt balances just fine on the 9' models but puts too much weight on the back of the little 7.5 footer. With my venerable LP-3, the balance point was two inches up from the back of the grip. So, my rod received a much needed "buttectomy." I removed the fighting butt and about the last1/3" of threaded reel seat (after measuring the fit of the largest reel foot I would use) then attached a smaller, one inch fighting butt. This moved the balance point to the middle of the handle - acceptable, for now. The addition of a light, modern, large arbor reel like a Lamson Litespeed or Ross Evolution will make it PERFECT! Check out the photo above - you can tell the difference between my "semi-custom" 6wt. and a standard TiCrX (you can also see this rod in action in the video further down the blog).

This same outfit will be great for redfish (I'll let you know in three weeks when I get back from South Carolina) and as a canoe rod for bass. It's a quick, ACCURATE little fish fighter that would make a great addition to your warmwater arsenal!

Clearly Better Fishing!

Many people ask me if the fishing at Ray Roberts is as good as I make it out to be (this is BEFORE they go on a trip). People find it hard to believe that there are miles of clear flats just an hour from Dallas or Ft. Worth. "Is it REALLY like fishing on the the coast?", they will ask, adding "I've seen Ray Hubbard (or Lewisville, Lavon, Lake Worth, etc.) and you can't see a thing in it."

Well, sorry for the cliche, but we'll let this picture say a thousand words. I took this two years ago on one of the west-side flats (the camera had a UV filter but NOT a polarizing filter). I was standing in about a foot of water, the angler is in 5-6 inches - the shoreline is 75-80 yards past him. This flat extends about a quarter mile down the shoreline and takes us two to three hours to fish. On a good day we'll easily spot 150 fish on this flat - "SPOT" being the key word.

Roberts is a VERY clear lake by North Texas standards. It is a newer lake so it doesn't have 50-60 years of silt and sediment to get stirred up. It also has a limited upstream drainage and large areas of rocky shorline. All this adds up to a lake with amazing clarity. We even spearfish in parts of it!

So, the answer to the question is "YES, it's really like saltwater flats fishing." Big fish tailing in clear water, tricky presentations and reel-clearing runs. Give me a call and I'll show you . . . (940)391-9480!

A Great Afternoon

Fishing Report - 5/25


I took Bart from Tailwaters out Sunday afternoon. Great day, beautiful weather, excellent casting, and picky, PICKY fish. The carp are definately on their post-spawn pattern - rooting in the shallows and grass, tailing up clams and crayfish, even taking a few damsels from the surface. Bart (an expert dry fly trout angler) pointed out a flying ant hatch and I'm sure some of those have found their way into some carp gullets.

Bart showed up with one of the new Winston Boron IImx 6 wts. Balanced perfectly by a Waterworks Force reel, it is one of the best light saltwater rods I've ever cast - it had no problem shooting a quick 70 footer and then loading up SHORT to hit a tea cup at 25 feet. WHAT A ROD! I've cast several of the "new - light" 6 wts (helios, Loomis, Sage) and this one is the top of the bunch.

Water temps are rising nicely and the lake is currently* a few inches below pool (conservation pool of Ray Roberts is 632.5 feet above sea level). The "east" flats are holding a GOOD number of fish - we easily saw over 200 carp in the four hours we fished. Clarity is VERY good for this time in May and this combined with the Memorial Day traffic led to some selective, skittish carp (more so than normal) - they wanted everything perfect. Presentation, retrieve, pattern, leader . . . it all had to be ON. We were able to stick several along with a few gar. Interesting side notes include a VERY large drum that refused all offerings, a new bird species for the "Ray Roberts list" (an Eastern Kingbird - Tyrannus tyrannus), and some absolutely MONSTER fish tailing at the deep edge of one of the flats. On later inspection of a photo, these had to be large channel cats; nothing else has a deeply forked, pointed, gray tail (and these tails were easily ten inches across). I don't know if they'll take anything (catfish can be tricky with a fly), but I'm going back soon with a 9wt. to try. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that they were tailing in well over three feet of water. I'll let you figure out how long they had to be!


[* I say "currently" because as of this writing (Tues. evening), Ray Roberts is now over two inches high. We have dodged the bullet with the rain this spring but not this morning - the Denton airport recorded 2.88" of rain in two hours. Luckily, the Trinity River in Gainesville crested at about 2pm and is coming down - much of the water was absorbed by the relatively dry soils. The lake will be off-color for a few days with the west arm taking a little longer to clear.]

A New Season

Greetings All!

A new season of flats fishing at Ray Roberts has begun! After the literal "wash-out" that was last season, this summer looks to be shaping up nicely.

For those of you that don't know, we had the flood of the century last Spring. Ray Roberts went up about 8 feet in two weeks - effectively killing the carp fishing last summer. The fish were still there, doing their thing, but it just wasn't fun trying to catch fish in the flooded vegetation. The bright side is that the flats received a needed scrubbing and look great. I scouted one of my "afternoon" flats this past Sunday and counted over 200 happy carp - and caught 6 in about 30 minutes.

The carp have finished their spawn and are started to feed in a usual pattern. Gar are in the middle of their spawn and are sharing the flats with the carp. They will take a fly now and go absolutly NUTS when hooked - and nothing's more fun than trying to get your fly back from an upset gar! I began to get the black buffalo dialed in last August and will be on them again as soon as they show a predictable pattern. Water temps are warming nicely and the fighting ability of the fish is increasing proportionately. At this writing, Ray Roberts is about an inch above normal conservation pool.

We have dodged some bullets with the last few rounds of thunderstorms/rain. Everything has either gone just north and fallen in the Red River drainage or into the Brazos/Trinity to the south.

Keep your fingers crossed, folks. This could be one to remember.