Monday, January 3, 2011

First Fishing Folly

I can sum the whole new years day trip with Shannon Drawe on the Red River at the Denison Dam with 3 words= COLD AS HELL! It was absolutely freezing! I got up at 7 and looked out the window to a snowy looking heavy frost. I looked at the weather and an "Oh Shit" echoed from my room as I saw the number displayed on the screen- 22 degrees. That's insane for Texas. A text from Shannon assures me the trip is still on, so I went downstairs, loaded up my stuff and jumped in the truck. We were on the road.

Fast forward 1 hour. We have the kayaks in the water. Shannon looks at me and says "Amigo, we are complete idiots for attempting this, but lets get going!" I stick the kayak in and walk into the water, boosting myself into the Diablo and watching my wet waders turn white freezing before my eyes.
Arriving at the dam
Rigged and ready!

We paddled down about a mile and started casting around the deep holes I marked. You can feel the line becoming stiff and the guides freeze before my eyes. The line i'm stripping in is freezing my index finger to the line. I had a striper follow the fly right to the kayak without striking. It's freezing, and being this far downstream we aren't protected from the wind by the dam.
Me flailing the rod into the stiff wind.

We decide to paddle back to the dam and suddenly shannon sees a bunch of bait rolling around on the surface. we cast around but the fish seem really lethargic. We decide to go target buffalo near the dam. We see at least 50 buffs but they are super lethargic, very hard to catch becomes nearly impossible. The fish just weren't there. I hope they start generating, there needs to be some water down there, but we had a good time skipping between the Texas and Oklahoma sides. I have decided that I need a new carp fly soon since I spooked so many today from my fly splashing in. We had a good time, but it was really cold. I think the high was like 33 that day then it dropped back to 16 again. Still, this kicks off the 2011 Year on the Fly. Happy New Year!

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