Friday Texas Fly Fishing Report
Weather a Big Variable This Week
Folks in Dallas are still picking up the pieces after a severe storm pelted the area with huge hail and damaging winds early Wednesday morning. I believe they estimated the damage at $400-million, with 25-thousand cars and 40-thousand homes taking the brunt of golf ball to baseball sized hail.
The strangeness doesn’t end there. Following my own advice, I skipped past the edge of that Wednesday storm that rained on Lake Ray Roberts, and went on to Texoma to try and find the striper action. All I found was an armada of boats, tightly packed, and from what I could tell – a lot of straight rods. And all my electronics showed was a vast underwater nothingness, from the dam outward. I was doing a submarine dodging zig-zag to try and locate fish wherever they were, but their hide-and-seek was better than me. Water temperatures were hovering around 80-degrees, so there wasn’t much that I could find along the rocky shores either. It was just plain slow. I did find a huge school of buffalo grazing on the Oklahoma side in a strange mode I have never seen before – shallow on the shore much like common carp do during spawn. In fact, they had every characteristic of spawning carp – especially the NOT EATING characteristic.
Thursday on Lake Ray Roberts, I wasn’t even allowed to take out my frustration on carp. All my searching on the west side only showed me that the lake has been dropping like a rock. And that is the only explanation I can come up with for the lack of carp – at least on the west side. The wind kicked up huge, so we were not even able to run to the east side, and by the end of Thursday? Another damaging storm cell made its way right down the middle of Denton, Texas, and on south to Dallas once again. Strange days indeed. Fortunately we had given up the ghost around 1-pm, so that serious weather was never a factor on the water. Otherwise, there would be a much different story to tell …
There’s no time for a YouTube video report today, and with all the construction noise around the house, it would be next to impossible to create the show – without major interruptions. So we will come back at you next week, with a full report, and maybe finally a chance to get the TFO Axiom II on the water and onto fish. That is a taller order than I ever expected!
FLY FISHING ACROSS TEXAS
From what I can glean, the saltwater picture is becoming more dispersed, and difficult since the heat kicked in with force along the coast. The main idea is now to know your tides and tidal movements. Fish the usual areas on the incoming, and hit the constrictions (guts and drainages) on the outgoing. Tides are running at night, so that’s your main problem now.
It seems like Falcon Lake is right on track with plenty of big fish being caught, and tons of sand bass as well. The other highlight is over in Southeast Texas (near Houston), and that is a lake I have heard a lot about for awhile – Somerville near Brenham, Texas. I have not heard anyone stop talking about that lake for several months now. It MUST BE on. Generally, you are looking at a summer pattern locking in on Texas lakes.
Have another great weekend! And we will see you bright and early Monday Morning on the Sidewalk of Fly Life.
Category: Adventure, Culture on the Skids, Equipment, Fishing Reports, Fly Rods, Hot Spot, Houston Fly Fishing, North Texas, Saltwater Fly Fishing Texas, TECHNICAL, Technique, Texas Gulf Coast
