Great end to a great year

I braved the insane wind today(15 gusting to 35) and fished with Shannon Drawe. We fished for carp at Ray Roberts first, which I already knew was inevitable. They were super spooky and the wind made spotting fish extremely hard but we still saw several fish (a lot for December is like 5 and we saw about 15) and I only made one cast all day and I spooked the only fish I casted to.

Then, we decided to hit the ray roberts dam to make the day worth it. We had an awesome day. We walked down and I rerigged, sticking a clouser on my TFO clouser, casted, and fish on!

I broke the fly off on a rock the next cast. Rerigging again with a clouser tied on a EC410 jig hook, making it more weedless (or rockless in this situation)

Back to fishing. Fish on!

They might be small, but they are sure fun to catch! I broke out my new 4wt. It's absolutely perfect in this situation.

Thanks to Shannon Drawe for taking all these pics! It's a change not being behind the camera. I still love the camera.

I decided it was time to change flies, giving Shannon a chance to jump into the action

You can see how hard sandbass are on flies here! This fly went though like 20 fish before it looked too torn up to continue fishing!

Shannon caught a few and I caught a few more. We moved back to the concrete walkway and fished around there for another 20 minutes before hitting the road again. I lost count at 60 sandbass, with 10 being keepers. A great end to 2010. Happy New year!

A day at the library

I decided it's been long enough since I pond fished. I braved the wind and beat the banks at the Coppell library yesterday. I got there and there were a bunch of conventional fisherman. They all said that the fish weren't biting and the wind was too high. I stuck on a little streamer with a tungsten bead, purple ice chenille, and a brown marabou tail and proceeded to catch 2 fish in 2 casts. the guys just looked at me like I was insane, whipping the fly rod around in 20mph winds. I worked my way around to my favorite culvert picking off a few bass here and there. I caught a few more in the culvert to end the day with 7. I successfully schooled 9 conventional fisherman with a fly rod and a teeny little purple streamer.

They were biting pretty good. I plan on going back soon to check it out again. I just hope there aren't so many people!

Cabin fever is setting in

I'm already tied of being cooped up in the house (it's been to damn cold to fish here in Tejas and the barometer is going up and down daily making the fishing hard) and cabin fever has gotten the best of me. I've been fly tying  like a madman and also playing with my new kayak (GPS/fishfinder is going on tomorrow) but I've had almost no time to tend to the tying shed. It's a wreck! I haven't cleaned it since...  well, I can't remember. I went out there today and there is stuff on my desk that I really will never use. flies everywhere, feathers floating about. It looks like a fricking bomb went off in there! So, tomorrow is a shed cleaning day. Yay...

I'll finally get to fish on Friday and Saturday in the new kayak at Texoma or maybe the Ray Roberts dam. I think I might actually get trips in those two days without freezing my ass off (high will be in the 60s and 70s instead of 30s and 40s, I hope the wind goes down!)

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Merry Christmas guys! Hope you guys have a great Christmas!

Oh, heres a present for you to look forward to- the new webstore will be up by the end of January! I finally found a webstore provider that I like so i'm starting to add to that and will have it here soon.

No Texas snow this year, but this is Christmas day last year. A snowy wintery mess. It only rained a bunch with no snow here. Still, we had our white Christmas and I saw a snow man fly fishing in front of my house!

Mery Christmas!

~PB

First trip in the new Yak

Got out on Grapevine around 12 and stayed until 4. I hooked 1 fish all day on a Black Angel jig and broke it off when it made a run under the boat and I couldn't react fast enough. But, I got a few great pics of the new kayak. Enjoy!

Diablo

Today I got it. Finally. I was down in Austin for almost the whole day (got in a bunch of traffic on the way home)  and dropped by Diablo Paddlesports and Austin Canoe and kayak.  First of all I got it- the Diablo Chupacabra, new seats to go in it, SUP paddle, a few Diablo stickers, and a few hats. Thanks Thomas!

Then I dropped by ACK and picked up a mount for the fishfinder, a new PFD, a new light, and a new sunglass neck holder (don't wanna lose my Costas!) then started home. Of course I put it in the pool when I got back!

The light goes on tomorrow I hope, then I'm taking it out! I really want to fish in it. Oh, it feels better to paddle in it standing up than sitting, it's incredibly stable! Completely different from my little Emotion Kayak I have.

Thanks Diablo Paddlesports!

El Luna

Told you guys I'd get eclipse pics. Not the best quality (don't have the right lens for my D3000 so I had to use my little Coolpix S630) but they came out ok.

Hey, it's the best I can do with a tripod and a little digital camera with 7x zoom.
Here's what I got with my D3000

About 25 minutes earlier. Had to find my tripod which I thought I had lost.

Up next- Diablo...

Early Christmas at PB's house

I've been hanging out in Tailwaters for the past few days trying to decide on a Christmas present for Mom to get me.  decided I want a new 4wt rod that's a lot better than anything I currently have. Casted 4 of them alongside my Clouser and fell in love with a 7'9" G.Loomis Whisper Creek GLX 4wt.

http://www.gloomis.com/publish/content/gloomis_2010/us/en/fly/rods/trout_rods/whispercreek_glx.html

Yes, that is a $625 Fly rod. Travis got me a sweet deal on it ($340 or something like that) and matched it up with a sweet reel (Sage Click 4wt) http://www.sageflyfish.com/dyn_prodlist.php?k=132673 and a SA GPX line (I'm literally obsessed with this line)

This combo just seems perfect. The rod casts line really nicely, I love how light the reel is, and the reel is the exact same color as the reel seat. The problem? Mom won't let me use it until Christmas.

 This rod is just awesome. I haven't even fished it yet and I love it.


Now tomorrow is a big day. Wake up at 5, get in the car at 6 with Grandpa, drive 4 hours to Austin, pick up my new Diablo Chupacabra, go by ACK and get a new paddle, stand up paddleboard paddle, mount for my new fishfinder (more of a real graph and a GPS), and a few other things, then drive home. Now,  I need to set up a time to sneak off to one of the rivers and mess around with some Rios, Sunfish, and maybe a few bass. I may just end up back at Shoal Creek or Waller Creek that I fished during the clouser contest(and hauled on Rios and sunfish) or LBL is probably a good choice too.

Hey Guys-FULL LUNAR ECLIPSE tonight. It starts at 1:20 so I'm waiting on it so I can go get some pics. Everyone was all excited about it at Tailwaters. I hope it's really spectacular! I'll post some pics right after I get them tonight.

Another creek day

Hit the creek again yesterday after one of the elusive Golden Redhorse I saw last time. I noticed right when I started to go down the little path I made to get down to the water that the water was clearer and there were more leaves. I got down to the water (before I put my waders on) and felt the water temp. It was colder, much colder. I saw the redhorse again but wasn't able to get it, it spooked almost immediately after I saw it. I fished a size 18 Beadhead Zebra Midge the whole time. I got several on it.

I got about 8 little longears, 6 or so little bluegill, a few greenies, and 1 Red Spotted sunfish. A pretty good day considering the water temp and water clarity spooked fish and made them really lethargic. A fun day!

A trip to The Cliffs

Went to The Cliffs yesterday. I got 1 blue cat and 1 buff. Kinda slow day out there. I got the buff on salty maize and got the cat on a pineapple boilie. 

New alarms worked great! I love them already.

10lb Blue cat

I had Sophie with me. She just sat there and stared at me, tried to eat my method mix, and got scaed of fish.

10lb 3oz buff