Now that’s a lot of people in a small boat! Makes kayak fishing seem practical, doesn’t it?

Be it photography, or be it fish, I do not know, but these photographs and their time capsule of history continue to intrigue me.

These three don’t have much in the way of identifying marks on the back, with the exception of the 1916, which says, “Winstead’s Quality Kodak Finishing, Htuchinson, Kansas.” What’s a Kodak, I wonder?

Rain is coming down this morning, and it’s a pale shade of grey outside our new windows here in Denton.

TO DO LIST

If you were thinking about hitting Lake Fork For the Bass Fly Fishing World Championships, you never know – it could be a bright sunny day at kickoff tomorrow morning. Last year, we were pummeled by severe thunder,lightning and rain the night before we paddled out to do battle with largemouth bass, and found our quarry had retreated to locations unknown to us. Defeat was ours. Read all about it at “Lake Fork: The Devil You Don’t”,“The Devil You Know vs. The Devil You Don’t'”, and this year’s release on the tournament – “Bass Fly World Championships Lake Fork”.

When the weather goes this way, it really is a grand time for exploration and rediscovery. I’ve had ideas about Lewisville Lake, found launch points, and watched intently as the lake level seems to be remaining pretty constantly at conservation level. Looking out the window, I don’t think there was enough rain to alter that assessment, but who knows how much it rained elsewhere. The idea that interests me most, is

revisiting the cut in the old dam on Lewisville Lake

, a place where I caught plenty of largemouth bass, an occasional palmetto (wiper in northern-speak), crappie and sand bass (this spot is where I set waterbody record for small, but largest, hybrid). The levels were so low that it was easy to walk to and across the cut. Not any more. Factor in the snakes, in walking across the top of the dam, and it’s a kayak reach with huge benefits of speed and access. And that’s just one idea I have for Lewisville.

Lake Ray Roberts is a known entity, and the northern reaches have been on my list since the end of last season. The vegetation and structure and clarity is the best on the entire lake – up north, way, way up north.

Oklahoma is calling my name these days, and a glowing report on smallmouth and largemouth activity on the enigmatic Blue River has me working to complete my weekend projects in order to get there first. I have a complete report from Oklahoma Wildlife coming out Sunday.

THE WELCOME MAT

I know there are some new locals reading, and welcome to you – from Montana to Texas is a heck of an adjustment. To help you in you assimilation, you must start with what goes in, in this case what goes in your ears. Strangely enough, while you are here, my stepkid is in Bozeman, Montana, taking in the scene there, and according to him, “getting tattoos and watching movies.” I am still trying to forgive him for not knowing Bozeman is fly fishing mecca. He’s a Boulder, Coloradan, and we all know there’s no reason to know any other geography besides where Lyons and upper Boulder Creek are located.

Also, to you new locals, enjoy this weather because it really isn’t like this anymore. We had extraordinary heat that succumbed to this rain respite. North Texas is no place to be in a Texas summer, and now that Austin and the Hill Country, the capital of Texas fly fishing, are getting some precipitation, it won’t be long to pack the tent and head south. If you want accompaniment (flies, rods and knowledge) in going to the salt, I am good for that too – just not certified to guide on salt.

THE SENSES

For newcomers and those relocated to Texas and looking for fly fishing cultural integration, we should probably start with a direct connection to the brain – the ears. Tonight in Denton, Texas, you can get a sense of what the genre “Texas Music” really is, when Joe Ely takes the stage at Dan’s Silver Leaf in the vital and growing (but still quaint) scene that lies on the east side of Downtown Denton, Texas. Joe Ely is top shelf talent in the “Texas Music” scene, and the ambience, a no smoking show, all combine to make Dan’s the place to be tonight.

With sound comes taste, and Denton, Texas, has a couple of newer places to contend for your buds. Mellow Mushroom has fantastic Italian fare, and a huge beer selection that most likely even contains Moose Drool! There’s a new (food-less) beer garden that is located on the site, and inside an historic house formerly known as the the Shipley Manor – the Oak Street Draft House could, after a couple, make you think you are in Boulder, Colorado, before the Californication. For a quieter time with wine and small selection of cigars, as well as a smoking room, stop at the Cellar 22, which gets its name from license plate number 22 from … Teton County Wyoming. Full circle, almost.

CHORES

We all have our respective weekend lists. Thankfully, my lists run all week long, and I have the job that gives me a chance to; plow, fertilize, purchase and plant in the garden / remember Mother’s Day / stock the bar / and a paltry few other things.

The other “chores” are to install the kayak saddles on the roof rack so my kayak doesn’t go sliding all across those cheap and virtually worthless nylon covered insulation foam kayak pads – like the one’s sold at Mariner Sails (today’s DO NOT BUY) -

Do not purchase this style of pad from Mariner Sails, or anywhere, unless your kayak has a flat bottom.

Because of the dynamic shapes of the hulls of my boats, I decided to go with the Yakima Mako Saddles, and have a pair of these to install today -

Accurately measure the distance between your crossbars, and then measure the distance between the saddles while your kayak is upside down on the ground if you want to get close on the first try of positioning these. The great thing about these, besides the fact they aren’t Mariner Sails worthless pads, is they keep your kayak forward aligned – pointed straight into the wind.

The next chore is tying flies. I was distressed to open my fly box while fishing with this undisclosed person on an undisclosed lake (pictured below), and find that I was out of my increasingly famous and seasonally deadly double bunnies – and we’re not talking Playboy here. The one double bunny I had left was shriveled, lifeless and limp until moisture was added … undisclosed lake water that is. The double bunny comes to life once it gets soaked, and I will put it up, head-to-head, against a plastic worm anywhere, anytime.

Have a great weekend!

Publisher’s Note – Reminder that anywhere I am invited to fish, is on the record, unless we agreed to keep dirty little secrets in advance. That’s how this site started, and that’s how it will always be. I have kept your spots quiet a few times, but mostly because they would never have been hit anyway. The only exception comes when being formally guided, and I will defer to a guide’s preferences every time. I trust that those of you scheduled to go out with me will do the same.

Very near the north end of the Texas portion of the Chisholm Trail. I smell a book in this Chisholm Trail thing.

There may be more than meets the eye in the town of Nocona, Texas, but what met my eyes wasn’t much worth discussing. There is a strip of old downtown that does have a restaurant or two, but the Nocona Boot Factory is shuttered and the only real buzz is one that grips Montague County – oil.

If you want to get off the grid, and turn the non fishers loose, I suggest they consider the drive (after dropping you off at the lake) to Spanish Fort on the Texas-Oklahoma border. You will recall a story from last year on the Red River Meteorite and the part that Spanish Fort played in that movie-worthy saga played. Spanish Fort was the location of one of the, if not the, largest indian trading villages that existed west of the Mississippi River. Spanish Fort was a point of convergence for traders, indians, explorers and pioneers – a “free trade zone” where factions set aside their differences in the interest of their own survival.

Making your way north on 13 just off 82, the one strip of old businesses has a couple of restaurants to whet your whistle on the very edge, just before

Not only does 13 go north to Lake Nocona, it continues on to Spanish Fort, Texas. Before you leave Nocona proper, 13 cuts through the main strip of old buildings where you can find very few businesses and at the northern end a couple of restaurants. I’ve heard about the restaurants, but you’ll have to write your own reviews as I haven’t eaten in Nocona yet.

The town quickly drops off and modern prairie takes over. It may still be hard to imagine this land covered with buffalo, and grass – tall grass greater than five feet high, waving for as far as the eye can see. The area, only a little more than a hundred years removed from a prairie with no trees or shrubs, no barriers or boundaries, is now a modern prairie with cows, short grass, fences, brush lines, shrubs and trees. The tall grass is gone, and it isn’t coming back.

Passing the turnoff to the lake, the road begins to do a Texas shoddish around landowner’s corners, running between parcels, turning at 90-degree angles to prevent a parcel from being divided by concrete as if it mattered out here.


A few more miles and the prairie gives up its black gold to one of the true symbols of Texas … pumpjacks doing their pendulum best, day after day, to suck up the profits left dangling at the end of straight wells just hundreds of feet below. Pumpjacks as far as the eye can see, at random intervals, no straight rows, and no set easement between each – every bit as random as you would imagine the earliest signs of an industrial revolution would dictate. Well after well. These are the old school wells, wells that damaged the water table, ignited tapwater and still exist as functioning relics of the dark ages of the Texas oil “bidness.”

Many years after Spanish Fort’s early incarnation as a trade zone, the Chisholm Trail made it’s mark on this place. However, as critical as Spanish Fort is as an historical harmonic convergence of culture, it now sits essentialy as a town at the end of the road where the off streets are few and gravel, and the commemorative area is overgrown with grass and flowers, and watched over by a doorless, broken windowed building with a tall porch that must have had a million tons of feed or seed bags sitting on it over the years. All gone now, dogs roam the streets and there’s no traffic, no people walking around … you’re left to find the markers and imagine the ghosts all by yourself.

Click directly on the image to enlarge and read.

Click directly on the image to enlarge and read.