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Friday Fly Fishing Report and Events You Should Experience in North Texas This Weekend

| April 27, 2018 | 0 Comments

Fish Aren’t Biting? Time To Grab a Bite and hit a real FESTIVAL!

Thanks for backing your viewing – of the Texas Fly Fishing Report – with some more information on what is going on in the North Texas area IN WRITING.

This comes out in advance of the video report which will be added to this post later today. Along with the video on the Texas Fly Caster YouTube Channel, that report will be simulcast live on the Russian Channel called Facebook. So welcome to all of our Communist friends via Facebook! Once that simulcast is recorded to (I call it) FaKebook, it will be deleted from their record. One cannot be too safe when it comes to FaKebook sharing these days!

 

STARDATE SUPPLEMENTAL

There may have been a worse fly fishing April in the last ten years, but I can’t remember a single one. This April (2018) has been marred by the strange weather patterns that allow for, at best, two days of fly fishing a week, and even then the damage from the prior days has carried over into the good days. For example, yesterday could have been fairly good, and I was out early with Finn, but no. Expectations and a decade of log books suggested it is time to look for carp on the warmer rocky points, as they begin to congregate and point in to the coves. If only the temperature were above 50-degrees when we started, and if only the water temperature were on the rise, and if only the wind were dialed down to (the predicted) five from the howling fifteen. Not only were the fish not there, they WERE NOT THERE.

So you and I are left to wait and rely on the internal clocks of our quarry – that is the final trigger that always gets pulled, regardless of conditions. I would suggest you bide your time at your neighborhood or pasture ponds, wait for your rivers to settle, head for the salt, or enjoy this weekend’s festivities …

DISSONANT CONVERGENCES

Just like there are harmonic (some would say dissonant) convergences of fly fishing events here in Texas, North Texas in particular, this weekend offers another convergence of events that our highly evolved audience may enjoy and bring family along with no hesitation.

While Denton continues to evolve at a pace I have never seen in my 36 years here, it still offers some down-home grass root fun. For example the Denton Arts & Jazz event, a true “FESTIVAL,” is going on this weekend in Denton. If you are a walk winer, and want a parking place up against the door everywhere you go? Too bad. You’ll have to walk a little – very little – to get to this event. Keep in mind, it is a Denton walk — meaning it is safer and distances are much closer than in the Messtroplex. And this event is bordered by some fantastic beer and food opportunities.

There are also events surrounding the FESTIVAL that glom on to the hundreds of thousands of people that attend each year. One such is the Grand Opening at Cave Handcrafted Home Furnishings put on by owner and artist Mark Holderbaum. Full disclosure – I built Cave’s website. The list of different related events are too long to print here, but are what makes the Arts & Jazz qualify as a TRUE FESTIVAL.

AUBREY & PILOT POINT

Downtown Pilot Point Texas Destination

There’s a lot of flesh being put on the bones of these two small North Texas towns these days. And I don’t just mean the chicken-fried-stakes at Buff’s in Pilot Point, Texas.

SATURDAYS in Pilot Point mean the Whistle Post Brewery and Western Son Distillery are open for business! Located near the tracks, and about a block as the crow flies, from the increasingly famous Lowbrows, these three places are arguably becoming the center of gravity for new life in Pilot Point. Restaurants are popping up there now, and this is all framed by the fact that barely three miles away lies the most popular walk-wade carp flat in Texas.

SATURDAY is also the culmination of the Aubrey Pasture Pickins event. I’ve already gone over the history of the event, and this is most likely the LAST TIME THIS EVENT will be held here. No holds are barred, and deals are to be made for antiques, rustic pieces for your outdoor bar, fence posts, horse trailers, boots, faded jeans and old western memorabilia. When it’s gone, IT’S GONE. Nearby the Pasture Pickins is a little row of businesses that include the “World Famous MOMS,” and, “The Upper Park Cafe” on South Main in historic buildings still standing there. Here is your map hint — https://goo.gl/maps/8iKweoNZdET2 Be sure to watch the Instagram feed or the Twitter feed for photos from the Pasture today. Here is their FaKebook page – Aubrey Pasture Pickins.

Thanks for reading, and being able to read! THANK A TEACHER YOU KNOW! I hope you take the time later today to tune into the Commie-Cast or watch the YouTube report for information about fly fishing in your neck of the Texas woods.

Monday Morning and We Survived

| April 16, 2018 | 0 Comments

Texas Fly Fishing and April Events in Texas

 

Good Monday Morning, and welcome to another Yo-Yo week of weather and fly fishing spring give-and-take. This weather … hailstorms, wind damage, sunny and cold. What next, pray tell?

I guess many of us residing at, or above, the I30 line got spoiled by two past years of mild winters and equally mild springs. What we have here is part of the new reality – unpredictability.

ON UNPREDICTABILITY

(aka. You Thought Trump was Bad? Try Texas in Springtime.)

These unpredictable days, coupled with a weekly window shortened by three days, mean chances will have to be taken to do the research we had in mind for other fly fishing locations – listed earlier in the year. We are just going to have to roll the dice, and try to keep the damage to a minimum.

AS PER Lake Ray Roberts, and fly fishing that fertile field? It was beautiful, and untouched by carp as of last week. The water is still cold, and if they are just offshore; they are well hidden by the wind CHURNED water. The flats are greening up nicely though. I am still searching for that snakehead I saw there a couple of years ago, but I bet that was a once-in-a-lifetime sighting.

PILING ON

April has its share of public events as well. Already halfway through the month, some of the best events are yet to come.

Somehow, I am hoping the folks at the other Texas fly fishing related festivuses have learned their lessons this year. Your events are TOO EARLY in the year – in this part of the United States of America. That goes for the Athens Fly Fishing Festivus as well. Mid-April should be a minimum, with May-June being the right time for this Country. Question is; will they ever learn?

The Revolution Will Be Televised

| February 9, 2018 | 0 Comments

If we can’t beat them? Do we join them?

It just seemed a natural time to do some tweaking to the Texas Fly Caster look (SEE your new HEADER?), and since we’re all turning red anyway, maybe red is the color of things in these days of future past. Needless to say, it’s a color clash, but I am not really ready to give in just yet!

BACKROAD TO TEXAS – HWY281 REVISITED

I made a bleary turn and burn trip to Boerne, Texas, Wednesday, and it was a beatdown at 660 miles round-trip in one day. BUT, it also enlightened me to a whole new way of thinking about journeying to that part of the Lone Star State.

You see, it was a trip to help a friend pick up a car he left at the Boerne dealership after he picked up his new car there. So we were just going back down to pick up the old car. Get in, drive, get out, get in the old car and drive. HOWEVER, the new way of thinking involves the route down to near San Antonio.

I have not been on HWY 281 in years, and what a relief it was to be on a moving highway, pothole free, wreck free – a virtually open road from the past. It felt so good to pass over the Brazos, the Leon, Lampasas, the world’s largest spur, the Colorado River, the Pedernales, the Blanco, the Guadalupe — all west of the hell that is I35E and Austin. It was such a fantastic journey that I was left with a “traveling bone” to it Inks Lake which has it’s turnoff from HWY 281 along the way as well. Exciting and enlightening stuff, or maybe I just need to GET OUT MORE!

I call it a “Backroad To Texas” because it leaves a North Texan feeling (once again) like North Texas really isn’t “TEXAS,” and the fact that is so easy to move through the State via 281 makes it feel like the Texas of old. Sure, we clicked on a few extra miles, but sanity stayed with us for the entire ride. Actually HWY281 goes all the way to the Valley, and through the middle of my hometown Edinburg. Needless to say, the experience has my mental wheels turning.

Have a fantastic weekend, and if you can find your way to a fly rod, feel free to tell us about your Texas fly fishing adventures!

“JET PILOT”

Jet pilot for the day
Washed his sins away
Loves to see the Rangers play
His daddy has a job in Washington
Wants to raise a Harvard son

Junior liked to let his hair down
Only trouble is, word gets around

Revolution will be televised
across living rooms
and the great divide
Robbing barren ghettos
for us now
everybody needs a hunting ground

Read more: Son Volt – Jet Pilot Lyrics | MetroLyrics

 

Monday Evening Sidewalk

| December 18, 2017

Rio Grande Valley and Back

Welcome to a late afternoon Monday Morning Sidewalk. That’s the rub, nailing a regular column down to Monday morning sometimes, just sometimes, goes over deadline. You’re probably out of your cubicles, cars, offices, and limos and home by now, but I wanted to take a second to bring those of you  – who read – up to speed.

It has been a whirlwind week out of town, starting with the loss, and Heaven’s gain of my 98-year-old Grandmother in the Rio Grande Valley. At 98, you can guess that she was ready and willing to go on home, [ppw id=”183910689″ description=”Holiday Update” price=”.25″]

and there was no pain or suffering. It was one of those kinds of dying, the kind we would be more than willing to receive on a dark night with clouds and stars above.

Of course, that breaks my last human bond to the Borderland where I grew up, and that is the strange bitterness that goes with the sweetness. There’s no grand reason to go home anymore, and that is strange to me.

So with a little more than a thousand miles under my feet since last Tuesday, I am back where I began – in a cold, wet and foggy North Texas. If there’s anything going on besides dinky TPWD stocker trout around here? I don’t know about it.

The Pop Up Shop here in Denton is going great guns, and merchandise is running very low. This is the last week of course, so be sure and visit the shop at 301 South Locust St. in Denton – if you are looking to support local artists, and provide a boost to the local economy (instead of the invisible stockholders of Amazon). For a look at merchandise, go to the Texas Fly Caster Instagram feed!

I am going to be manning the Pop Up Shop for the next few days, so I will bring the Texas fly fishing community up to speed, or MORE LIKELY, catch up with the Texas fly fishing community in coming days. I certainly need to close out the year with one final Texas Fly Fishing Report (yes, the original on YouTube), and a Christmas list for fly fishers, and BEFORE YEAR’S END, another Top Ten Fly Fishing Music Countdown (probably an audio broadcast).

There’s probably another trip to Houston to see family for ACTUAL Christmas in a few days, so you have to believe I will be almost as busy as you this holiday season. The schedule is about to clear though, and that starts in the week between Christmas and New Year’s. I am looking for someone who wants to hit Dangerfield for chain pickerel during the holiday break, and if anyone in the Galveston area wants to show me to their fish? All you have to do is give me a text or call at the number you know, and I will give you the potential dates. Our cold North Central and Northeast Texas weather has probably given us the break that we need for both flounder in Galveston and those chain pickerel in Daingerfield. 

There’s going to be a very rough cut to free/paid reading in January, and that is because the part of this site that separates paid/free content is a POS that is more expensive than you can probably believe – you’d laugh at me if you knew. I will try and bring you up-to-speed before end of year, but essentially everything that is “Paid Content” will be rough cut as far as the “teaser” opening content.c

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Monday Morning Sidewalk Hits and Misses

| October 30, 2017 | 0 Comments

Astros 13 Dodgers 12 Homerun Derby

Well, with all the “drama” surrounding the day to day, I missed giving the Texas fly fishing contingents a heads-up on the Texas Clay Fest down in Gruene over the weekend. Somehow, I have come to know a lot of clay artists, and in Texas the Texas Clay Fest is ground zero for their harmonic convergence of art, music and a lot of storytelling behind the scenes. Virtually none of it is related to fly fishing, but the location is pure gold. Just like everything else in that part of Texas, I imagine it has been usurped by hipsters, but then that is what separates that part of Texas from the rest of us (besides its blueness).

I am not going to miss out on the opportunity to tell you that we are at the beginning of the month, and that means a lot of fly fishing clubs meet all across Texas. By now you know where I am when it comes to “The Club Life,” but my attitude on that is not set in stone – no matter another birthday last week! I am more than willing to resample the club life when I hear about, and I quote, a “Fort Worth Fly Fishers youth movement.” I am going to do a throwback, and run the list of clubs that are meeting in Texas this November. If I had the freedom, I would attend every single one of these – just to check the heartbeats. You may have noticed; I discontinued my own CPR efforts of these organizations — because these patients seem to have DNR as their primary goals. The 21st. Century marches on leaving them all behind.

This should be a very off-topic week if I have anything to say about it. I have a phone full of music to pass along, I am still in possession of the Nikon 360 camera (I don’t think the company wants it back!), it’s time to tie some flies, it’s time to reveal a new prototype for a skiff / fly fishing accessory, and yes, it is time to hit the water somewhere somehow. There’s a long to-do list …

We’re locked-and-loaded for a batch of new stories to carry us all the way into year eleven (that would be 2018 for the numerically challenged such as myself). We have the book reviews, a brand new building for Living Waters Fly Shop in Round Rock, Beaver’s Bend, the flounder run, striper action on Texoma, striper action on the Guadalupe, Texas Gulf Coast salt in winter, fly tying, rod building, music, beer and gear for winter review. Is that enough to keep you old geezers reading, and you newbies wanting more?

BEHIND THE CURTAIN

You may have noticed there’s not a ton of “Paid Content” reading these days, and that is because the extension that allows me the luxury life – is “broke down.” Right now, that bleeding edge is needing a tourniquet, and there’s not a lot I can do. IT WILL BE REPAIRED before we head into this new series of Fall and Winter 2017-18 stories though. The reason for that is that we are headed toward some extremely revealing information on Beaver’s Bend (put that gas money back in your pocket and stick a quarter in the slot), and these other topics. You may have also figured out that your subscription also allows you to see more “opinionated” views and language on the topics that concern me these days.

CLUB MEETINGS NOVEMBER 

  • November 6 Dallas Fly Fishers
  • November 7 Red River Fly Fishers
  • November 7 Fort Worth Fly Fishers
  • November 9 Brazos Valley Fly Fishers (do you still exist?)
  • November 9 Laguna Madre Fly Fishers
  • November 14 Central Texas Fly Fishers
  • November 14 Central Texas Fly Rodders
  • November 20 East Texas Fly Fishers
  • November 21 Alamo Fly Fishers
  • November 30 Rockport Fly Fishers

If you have a new club / group / gathering of like-minded fly folks – feel free to let me know! If any of the above dates have been altered – feel free to let me know! If any of the above organizations no longer exist – feel free to let me know!

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