Destination Fly Fishing
Putting Pilot Point on the Map – Friday The 13th. Fly Fishing and More
Putting Pilot Point Texas on the map as a Fly Fishing Family Destination
Texas Fly Fishing Report
Got your black cat bone, and your salt over the shoulder while walking under a ladder? It’s pushing 9am CST, and still dark here in North Texas. Yes, the weather is beating us down once again as she has pretty much all week.
The wind we’ve been having this week isn’t a novelty, charming or wild-west romantic. It’s a physical beating that even went on through last night. Our lakes and ponds have been churned like the entire contents have been run through a ronco bass-o-matic. Even if the wind stops this very minute, it will be a couple of days before the color is back to normal (used to take a lot longer before the zeebs).
I did get on the water this week for just a little time before the wind kicked on, and I can say the water temperatures are still cold enough to be slowing the spring bite. Of course, you who fly fish further south are probably having a better time of it already – at least as far as temperatures go.
This spring is unique, and I don’t remember one to compare this to. It may not have been cold enough this winter to kill our yard bugs, but it was intensely cold enough to cool the water down. I measured it at 58-degrees on Tuesday on Lake Ray Roberts. And the wind …
CAN’T FISH? CAN PLAY!
For those readers who can’t fish due to the weather, but are looking to get out and play? I have been assembling a promotional on things to do, see and experience in Pilot Point, Texas, as well as all around Lake Ray Roberts, Texas. I ran into five – THAT’S FIVE – University of North Texas students fishing out on a neighborhood pond earlier this week, and NONE, ZERO had ever heard of Lake Ray Roberts. Talk about PISS POOR TPWD PROMOTION? This is it. I am betting the number of students that don’t know about Ray Roberts is in the 95-percent range, and when they heard it is $7-dollars a head to get in? a complete shutdown. There’s something wrong with that picture.
This new thinking came about after Conway Bowman and friends stayed at the (relatively) newly named Lone Star Lodge and Marina last September. (Okay, the “Marina” is more like a dock actually.) I was so impressed with the improvements at the Lone Star Lodge – that it seemed like the most lively and viable it has been in many years. That’s not easy for a motel – lodge inside a State park! The restaurant business will always be hobbled by the fact that alcohol is outlawed, and public consumption is also an offense.
However, there have been improvements, and Pilot Point has made great progress in general. Maybe it’s a good thing the tollway was rerouted through Prosper and Celina instead of Pilot Point. You won’t hear any complaints from the locals – THAT MUCH IS FOR SURE.
The “TO DO” list for Pilot Point has actually gotten so good, I am assembling a family package of information so anyone who wants to drive barely an hour to escape the Dallas Messtroplex, can book themselves into the Lodge, and hit the deck of the skiff, and not worry about their family having their own time away from the hustle-bustle. Nowadays, staying in Pilot Point, and booking a skiff outing with me for one of your weekend days? It really is a win-win proposition. Sometimes the best of things are right under your nose, you just have to get it out of the air.
Fly Fishing: DESTINATION PILOT POINT TEXAS
The new list of activities and events to be found in Pilot Point is actually so long, that it is going to take a couple of weeks to get it done! Let me leave you with a preliminary list of TO DO links for Pilot Point though:
- Lone Star Lodge and Marina – Jet Ski Rentals / Boats / Kayaks
- Historic Pilot Point Town Square
- Whistle Post Brewing
- Western Son Distillery
- Lowbrows
- Buff’s Grill
- TPWD Lake Ray Roberts Texas
- Sharkarosa Wildlife Ranch
Thanks for reading this Friday, and we will be ready to crank out another of those Texas Fly Fishing Reports on the YouTube Channel next week – if the weather allows (it’s an outdoor recording in case you’ve never seen it).
Shutdown Monday Morning Couldn’t Be Any Better – PLUS Dealing With Devil’s
Check Your TP Before You Sit Down
Good Shutdown Monday Morning! Do you feel it? Did you have to get your own roll of toilet paper before diving into the stall in your Federal government building bathroom? Now that you’e seated and enjoying the view – of your screen – on a Monday where the sky is not falling, and we will all get along fine during this continuing debacle.
IT IS TIME for some good questions though. Do these antique politicians get paid to not do their jobs? When the government “shuts down” do these fat cats still get paid? Why should they?
Politics. Politics are the third rail of fly fishing (the one that electrocutes you into ash), but there are other sections of the third rail line that are equally deadly to peaceful fly fishing conversation. And that’s why I have tried, successfully in my opinion, to avoid the third rail all these years. Locally, there are plenty of red meat bomb throwers, who just throw out something to generate polarizing debates. I always call those guys out.
CONFESSED: RED MEAT BOMB-THROWER
This past weekend, mostly to see who is actually looking and following on Instagram, I threw out a red-meat-bomb. It was a simple photograph of an auto window sticker, reading, “Does Your TRUMP STICKER Make You Feel Stupid Yet?” and it lit a fuse that burned through a record (for me) 33 comments and paltry 26 likes. I wish there was a “dislike” for fairness. It enlightened me. My “takeaway” is that people actually LOOK at the images on Instagram feeds, and the folks that comment fall into two distinct categories – I Got Money, and Now I Got More Money, and two, the other side that realizes exactly what all this great income is actually costing the environment, the future and their children’s future.
For goodness sake, why can’t we all just Rodney King (for young readers that means “get along”)? The only politics I care about are those that have a direct effect on fly fishing. I know I am done and gone as an economic force – as long as no one cares about, and understands and supports the values of quality, creativity and integrity.
And politics – State of Texas politics – leads US to what will be the longest discussion about, arguably, the most political geography in Texas – THE DEVIL’S RIVER! I was talking to family at a recent gathering and a couple of cousins have boys that are the right age for a Devil’s River trip, and are familiar with that area from behind a rifle scope (hunting leases in the region). The time may well be right …
THE DEVILS RIVER
So taking on the last great wild ride in Texas is a bit daunting to me. In my mind, I see it as my own personal “health statement” about just how well I have healed, and as I see age 60 off in the distance … the time seems right.
Let the gathering of information begin! If YOU KNOW ANYTHING about the Devil’s River, if you have done the Devil’s River, I would sure like to know about it. I know the situation on the ground there – has changed in recent years. But I don’t really know exactly how it has changed. I am going to reach out to people I have seen have done the Devil’s – people like Alvin Dedeaux (check out that Devil’s YETI video), and Thomas Flemons at Diablo Paddlesports. I know there are more people than that, but I will start there (and try to jog my memory at the same time).
I am cautiously optimistic that I can make this trip happen, and if you are interested in making this trip – let me know. This is starting from scratch though … the Devil’s is in the details.
Friday Fly Report New Story Drake Magazine on Newsstands Now
Friday Texas Fly Fishing Report Gift Giving Drake Magazine Goes Big
Well, I wish there were more time for a Christmas fly fishing present list, but not in the life I lead nowadays!
Word started trickling in that the story on Clyde going to Rockport – Port Aransas, Texas, had actually gone “big” in the winter Drake Magazine, and sure enough, the editors decided to go two pages, a tease on the cover and a few photographs inside. To my way of thinking, story ideas should come pouring in now! (Right)
I will grab a copy and make sure to brag (show-and-tell) a little more when that chance comes along. The insanity of going to a mall, and speculating the local bookstore (at the mall) has the magazine, is frightening. Why even bother?
Saturday is the last day at the Pop Up Shop in Denton, Texas, so for those of you who are sitting there on the fence wondering what to get? Let me spend my last bit of effort on “Christmas Gift Giving” in pointing you to the shop located 301 S. Locust St., Denton, Texas. You will find something there that fills the bill. Unfortunately, none of my fly artist folks came through with anything (to sell) this year – which I honestly half-expected. Those who dabble in art soon realize what the game is all about – when deadline push comes to shove. I will be ready next year with an entirely new line of art in several different media, and almost all fish based – and no gimmicks.
THE REPORT You Decide
Hey, salt is salt. It’s the Texas gift that keeps on giving.[ppw id=”183910524″ description=”The Report” price=”.25″]
I see plenty of reports of FAT redfish in the area where Hurricane Harvey made landfall, and I see a lot of speckled trout being caught as well. The specks do winter well (remember Leslie’s fish from January 2016?).
To read the saltwater report from TPWD, simply click here – TPWD Current Saltwater Report, un-pimped and from the source. What a gig, getting paid by the state to reproduce those weekly reports that barely ever change!
With the current weather, your best bet (if you are in North Texas) is to head for Oklahoma. This is the weather we’ve needed, and once the water clears from the runoff, it should colder which helps even more. I had a local contributor give me some super inside info on fly selection for the Blue River this week …
If you are an Instagram watcher, then (I assume) you see the cute way images are coming from BendBow lately? Blotting the background at what was once the Evening Hole, or other “magical, mystical” locations? Just a little too cute for my taste … just calling it as I see it.
It’s hard to believe how sketchy posts have become here, but I am looking for someone to notice that there’s slack in this line, and so far? If you read this low down in the post, I like you even more! I believe something has happened to people’s reading habits, and I feel I am behind on the uptake? It wouldn’t be the first time.
[/ppw]
Tuesday’s on My Mind – Blue on Black Plus More on OK Leaves
BLUE RIVER VIDEO LAST SEASON
Happy Holiday week to those of you with actual days off this week! Funny, in this abusive work Country, the bossman can call it a holiday, and then not pay traditional double-time for working the day. It seems that when it comes to humane treatment, “traditional” kindness is out the window these days, doesn’t it? In case you are wondering, there are no laws requiring holiday pay in the good old red-white and blue.
The weather seems to have finally forced our hand into the cold water fly fishing days here in North Texas. For those of you elsewhere? Feel free to laugh at us as we wait for our cars to warm up, double check we have our layers of clothing packed, put it in gear and head for the OK State. The only game in town isn’t, and the game is underway.
If you read the digital tea leaves, you may be getting wind of a couple of things that are taking shape in the Southern Oklahoma scene.
1 – Beaver’s Bend is still suffering with the new version of the LMF. TIP – I hear the browns are concentrated in upper spillway’s deepest pools. That should be pretty clearly doable. Problem is; that leads to merciless pounding of these fish, until finally they are cleaned out or too wise. I would be tempted to throw big meaty flies, but then that’s no original thought either.
2 – It looks like the Blue River is receiving exceptional numbers of stockers, and with great consistency. Unfortunately, just about everybody that fishes these two places reads. You can expect more people at the Blue River than you are used to, perhaps more than ever were there in the past.
I am looking to do the Blue on Black this Friday, and hoping the leaves have fallen, I can find the wind favorable, and fish biting. If you are interested in the Blue River, Friday would be a good day. You are welcome to contact me, and we can figure out the logistics of a Texas Invasion of the Blue River this Friday morning.
Got Gas? Come on and Take a Free Ride
Monday Morning Fly Fishing Week Full of Hopes Dreams
“… high on Jesus and hooked on dope …” – James McMurtry lyrics
You know, Monday Morning Sidewalks are a double-edged sword, or AT LEAST they should be. As predictable as your Monday Morning is, as you sit there in your respective bathroom stall, I am so sorry that your reading here has been mostly … far less than unpredictable.
READ MORE!!!! (NOT LESS!) Continue Reading
GET CONNECTED!
CLICK TO CONNECT