Texas was never high on my list of targets, but after doing a little research on the fishing around Austin, where my most recent employer is headquartered, the logic became clear. There's not just a whole lotta bass fishin around that part of Texas, there's also, given a willingness to drive a few hours, some really fine redfish fishing. Yes, the redfish of blackened redfish fame! Redfish, or red drum, or what some of the locals call "salt carp," sounds like a terrific game fish: it can be sight-fished in shallow water, reportedly it will take topwater lures and flies, and it fights like hell in addition to tasting great.
Unfortunately, I can't speak to that first-hand; the wind was blowing so damn hard over the weekend that it just didn't seem worth it to make the drive. So, Laguna Madre and Port Lavaca and all that are still somewhere in the fishy parts of the future.
What's in the recent past is a couple of days of really, really pleasant bass fishing that I was able to sneak in after a couple of company days in Austin. Classic, small-pond, weed-rich, frogs-n-crickets style largemouth bass fishing. Like most fishers from Maine, I have plenty of experience with smallmouth bass. The smallie is a wonderful game fish that will take topwater and put up a hell of an entertaining aerial struggle, usually in fact a faster and longer affair than you'll get with warmer-water largemouths. But somehow, the deepest and truest expression of bass fishing -- of stalking a fat, lurking ambush predator in the weeds and rocks where he hides, the scourge of all moving critters from leeches to ducklings -- is fishing for largies in some hot-weather, swampy southern country like Florida or Texas.
Thanks to some friendly helpful guys on the Austin kayak fishing bulletin board (never heard a single response from the broader, all-Texas board, which may say something about Austin people), I found my way to a sweet little lake about an hour east of the city that is fully bounded by a state park. The lake is vaguely star-shaped, with long arms stretching out about four miles between the coves that stretch back deep into piney, flooded hill country. With plenty of weed beds and nice warm water, it looked at first glance like perfect bass habitat.
As it turned out, the Austin boys did not give me no bum steer -- that water was crawling with fish. I got out Saturday with just a couple hours of light left and some SERIOUS wind blowing and still managed to get some strikes, including topwater action back in those coves. Here is my first official Texas bass with a rabbit-strip worm fly hanging out of his big old mouth:
From Maine to the Sierras, some of your best lake fishing is always going to be at first light, and that's even more true when 20 mph winds are likely to be blowing by noon. I made a point to ignore the time difference and drag my ass out of bed for a dawn start on my first full day in the area, and that was the right call. Though a breeze was already gusting periodically, the fishing was full-on at dawn. Bam! Bam! Bam! It seemed as though the local gangs of 16 to 18-inch largemouth had never seen a balsa popper before, and were racing each other to go grab it. And indeed, I didn't see a single other person fly-fishing on the lake, even when the weekend peak of bass boats were racing around that afternoon. This is a waste, because there are acres of fish-holding water with 2 to 6 inches of water above the weed tops -- perfect country for a balsa popper to get its paint chewed off in course of an April morning.
It is amazing how quickly you can start feeling intimate with a new piece of water. One afternoon and one morning were enough time for me to cultivate some "secret spots" on the south shore of the lake. Resting in a cove with the boat pulled up in the mud, eating a slummy lunch of Jalapeno vienna sausages and corn nuts, I honestly couldn't have felt more at home on my old standby ponds back in Maine. The pine scent in the air helped. Catching lots of fish helped too. Somehow, Texas struck me as an extremely friendly place to lay back and drowsily savor an outstanding morning of bass fishing.
My last chance to throw a line was a Monday morning before flying back in the afternoon. I got out at dawn on the north shore feeling pretty sure of finding some good fishing. But as I launched the kayak, the question hovered there: could it actually be any better than the previous morning? I will not keep my gentle readers in suspense: it was. Not 50 yards from the launch I tossed the balsa popper up against some promising tule grass, and immediately embarked on about 90 minutes of fish-a-cast action. When the first motorboat putted by out of the launch, I was fighting a fat five-pounder and probably grinning most obnoxiously. Early bird gets the worm, fellas!
This is more or less how I got started on Washington state fishing a few years ago. It's nice when the company flies you up to Seattle for some training or a conference for tech writers; it's nicer yet when you can then rent a car for the weekend and go exploring some brand new water with a fly rod and a few printed-out pages of information pulled from websites. For big chum salmon and dolly varden and a crack at a steelhead, you can't beat the Skagit river country in November with a stick. And now, thanks to my Austin company sending me out that way, I have a killer bass spot in my pocket and plenty of printouts on where to go looking for salt carp sometime this fall or next spring. Thanks DataStax! I appreciate it. And I think the bass will eventually forgive you.
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