Monday Morning Recovery
Cold Weather Big Flows Holiday Shows
Good morning to you, the many and few, who choose to start your week with a glance at the Texas Fly Fishing News source! You know Mondays are about regaining our footing for the week, and this Monday is no exception. REMEMBER: If websites and the internet doesn’t matter anymore? What are you doing here! Fake News …
We are beginning to feel a lot like winter now, and last Friday and Saturday are perfect examples of North Texas bluster – cold rain and temperatures having around forty made it good for nothing but ducks. You can see what this turns into as it moves to the Atlantic Seaboard – overwhelming snow and ice in the Carolinas and Virginia.
The “Leslie’s Backyard Show” was a raging success on Saturday. It moved from our backyard to indoors and the vendors that braved the weather to come set up indoors our converted home were well rewarded. For those of you who missed it, you can always schedule a time to come by for shopping in the Cimarrona Studio out back. I’ll also have some prints to sell in about a week.
SAND BASS INSTINCTS
I did see some images from Danny Scarborough (www.houstonflyfishing.com) catching behemoth sand bass down his way. As you know I have been testing sand bass instincts, by looking for patterns at the Ray Roberts Dam. Flows are at about 2200 cfs. and that is plenty of water to pull the trigger – IN SPRING. So I wanted to know if they would trigger to the flow if it happens in wintertime.
Sure enough, I took old friend Shaun Russell from Valley View – to the riprap at Ray Roberts. While he didn’t manage to catch any fish, I caught a fatty sand bass on the first cast and two more scattered over an hour. SO it isn’t one of those kinds of events. Shaun asked after the third one, “Did you catch ‘em all?” And I said I believe I did. There are just not that many fish, but they are of the huge variety. (It’s nice to know I am not missing out on some mythical event.)
The reason Shaun came out Sunday was that he was having some problems casting. So we took a look at a few of the rods in my TFO quiver, but I figured out pretty quickly that there was not much wrong with his fly rod (a little long for the Blue River for sure), but that it needs a new fly line. FLY LINES are great purchases at Orvis when they throw out those $25-dollars off a $50-dollar purchase coupons. And I just saw one of those last week. KEEP IN MIND, you could just need a new fly line to make a difference in your casting happiness!
Fly Fishing BOOK REVIEWs
I am working my way through the book by Rick Takahashi, “The Fly Tying Artist …,” and what I thought was a picture book on fly patterns is turning out to be much more. It’s highly concentrated on trout patterns, as one would expect, but I am enjoying his writing on why, where and who (besides monster trout) may have enlightened him on a particularly effective pattern. The scientific descriptions are also accessible in a way that makes you understand why you might want to tie a few of (some more obscure) a particular pattern. I will get deeper into that book and more the next couple of weeks.
Thanks for reading from wherever you are this cold Monday morning, and enjoy your own walk on the sidewalk as you head to wherever you are going today and the rest of the week!
THERE IS ANOTHER art show coming to Denton, Texas, this coming weekend. It is at Dan’s Silverleaf and it’s a small quickie of a show on Saturday. Contact me for more details, o
Category: Book Reviews, Equipment, Fish Art, Fishing Reports, Fly Lines, North Texas
