Tale of 3 states.....

Had to get it my spring trip to Austin for some bass fishing even though it was getting later in May. Spent 3 days fishing with my man Shea and it was difficult to find anyplace to fish. Would have loved to float the Llano River but they just finished 3 days of torrential rain and fishing in whipped mocha latte isn’t very productive. The Colorado River was being double pulsed…..having large amounts of water released out of the dam twice a day, messing the heck out of the water. Additionally, many of the sterile grass carp (in the 10’s of thousands) released upriver in the dams have entered the lower Colorado River in the last few years below Austin and the grass, weeds and most flora in the river are now non existent……it’s pathetic and a giant mistake by their fish and game people. They keep advertising they’ll be gone in 8 -10 years, they are sterile triploids, but my research show they can live to over 30 years of age…what a mess. Anyway enough diatribing.

So Shea decided we’d float a section of the San Marcos River, something I’ve never done with him, as it flows from giant springs and is relatively clear most of the time. He said the scenery was like no where else and he was right…..that float was esthetically astounding…….beautiful cypress tress flowing everywhere into the river. Wish I had done it some justice with some video of some of the sections. But I have a fish problem. Color of the watered reminded me of glacial water, like the Kenai River, in Alaska. Used my favorite sexy shad Lucky Craft and spent most the day catching small Guadalupe bass with an occasional largemouth. Halfway through the morning I caught a nice bucketmouth:



About 10 minutes later I get a much better hit and managed to get a photo op moment with this green guy:



Shea said that one was about as big as he sees in the San Marcos so I was a bit more stoked up. We had a couple hour stretch where all I managed was a couple of sunfish and some small guaddies…….until I caught the nano-guaddie….geez the lure is as long as this guy. I was trying to explain to Shea how big this particular fish would be by the time I got back home:



I think the formula was add the length of the fish and the lure and multiple X 2. By this time well into a 90+ degree day we hopped into the river to cool off. I noticed Shea didn’t go underwater and I kept badgering him if there was some problem with brain eating ameobas that crawl up your nose…..he didn’t think so. But I still feel something weird is going on in my sinuses….just saying: BEWARE….the brain eating ameobas…nuff said. We enjoyed the scenery and kept catching the occasional small guaddie. Managed one last decent largemouth throwing a bubble gum zoom:




Enjoyed the scenery through this stretch…it was amazing:



Lots of long jams to move around. Overall a fun day probably caught fish numbers in he low 20’s. Next day we planned on heading to the Llano River in the hill country but at the last check of the water it was too high and reminiscent of hot cocoa. The lower Colorado was not looking so good but we headed there by process of elimination. Kind of resembled pea soup (not my favorite) with no mid river vegetation whatsoever. It was incredibly difficult fishing……I only took 1 picture the whole day:



I did break off one large fish in a bunch of logs……it is soooooooo financially painful to lose one of those LuckyCraft jerkbaits……but I made the cardinal sin of not checking my leader for a long time and it just parted……dohhhhh. Probably caught 15 to 18 fish but there wasn’t much size to them. Then they opened the dam again, the water came up and the fish absolutely clammed up so we called it a day.

Hopefully we were going to head up to the Llano the last day but Shea checked with friends up that way and it was still a delightful muddy color. We headed to do another section of the San Marcos as it was the only relatively clear water around. At the put in we were inundated with a myriad of kayakers and canoers. We managed to get on the water before they did.

Ran into the occasional small Guadalupe bass and some sunfish for the first three hours or so…..nothing of size. Shea and I were just commenting, with our bass knowledge prowess, that all the fish were within a yard of shore and nothing was found in the deep water or log jams. Not 5 minutes after this deep, intellectually stimulating discussion we moved across the river to a large, deep log jam and I just chucked my chartreuse zoom bait over my head, backwards to the deepest water…..the dang thing disappeared in a flash of deep green. Set the hook and was onto a toad. Then our keystone cops routine kicked in. I’m trying to keep the bass out of the logs and Shea is rowing like crazy to keep us out of the log jam and as he whips the boat around the fish does a double wrap on the downstream oar. Now I get excited when a good fish is on…..Shea went berserk trying to get it off the oar (the video of this would have been priceless). Finally he gets it off we move into calmer water and net the beastie:



Took a few pics and put her back in the water. Not long after this I caught this really cool looking green sunfish:



Got another decent largemouth a bit later:



We stopped for a bit to eat some lunch then Shea sent me down a little split in the river which had some nice little gauds sitting in it:



Also managed to get sucked in a mudhole and put a 6 in gash in my leg….lucky there were no piranha around. Finally managed to catch one very nice guaddie:



About this time a large group of floaters, kayaks and canoes, composed adults and 12-13 year old boys showed up. None of them, including the adults, knew what they were doing….it was absolutely hysterical and kept us entertained for a few hours. Finally we found these two wayyyyyy behind their group and zigzagging from one bank to the other:



We took pity on them and towed them to the get out about ¾ of a mile downstream….don’t know what the adults were doing letting them disappear like that. Our good turn was immediately returned as Shea had locked the keys to his truck in my car at the get in point. So the idiot group gave me a ride back and everything was just fine. Would have been nice to have some of the better water be fishable but, hey, you can’t control mom nature.

From there I flew to Leavenworth, Kansas to my in laws and where my wife was having some elective surgery. They have a pond next to the house and the father-in-law was out of town but instructed me to thin out the catfish some. So I fished a few hours each day and took some table fare home:





I also transported 4 big channels to another pond close by for personal stocking. So this trip went well, my wife survived surgery, grandma didn’t shoot anyone so I flew back to Boise. Soon as I got home my friend Bill called to see if I wanted to fish walleye on the Columbia River…..who am I to turn down such an invite. We fished a few hours in the evening and got 8 walleye. The next morning we were going to fish until about noon or so but the fishing was really tough. We went through a large repertoire of lures and techniques and after most of the morning we had only caught 1 walleye. So, hey, let’s do something different on the way back to the ramp we decided to troll deep divers….we figured out they were right near the bottom at 19 to 21’. We had only been going maybe 5 minutes and hooked into a big fish…played it all the way up then it head shook and got off……wanted to cry. We dropped our gear back again and in about 10 minutes I was onto a monster. This time it didn’t shake off at the boat and we netted this beauty:



We trolled another 20 minutes and managed two more nice walleye….hit the dock and called it a morning.

Good fishing everyone,

Brian

I hate you!

Just a fantastic set of trips and reports to go with them. Great job!

nice trip and pics. i feel ya about the lucky craft jerk baits my fav is the suspending one but they are expensive to lose the bad/good thing though is they do catch a lot of fish.. its one lure that i would say is worth always having. and i dont think that really about any other lure or bait besides soft plastic worms. but ya i lost it around 6 times over past two years an i havent bought another one yet..i just mainly roll with soft plastic worms and thats it nowadays. maybe lizard and craw here and there but the worms get bit so its all i care about really. and losing them for how much i fish compared to other baits is a lot less on the pocket book though even the plastics add up in the long run. nice pics and post cya

man that is a big walleye dude

It must be exhilarating to be able to do all of that!

Great post as usual Doc.
That Walleye is a monster!

Great angling trip! Great pictures, thanks for sharing your awesome adventure:)