Houston, we have a problem

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Originally uploaded by Pondbass

I went to the Sandy Lake dam yesterday and walked down about a mile to check out if there were any sandbass moving up yet. I decided that the current was a little strong from all the snow melt(making it good for sandies and hybrids to move up into the river channel but too strong to fly fish) so I waded out onto a gravel bar and made a few drifts with a white streamer. I found that the floating line wasn't getting the fly deep enough, so I changes spools to my sinking line. When I went to pop the spool out, it came out without any pushing at all, but that's wierd for a Lamson. I tried to pop in the other spool and it just wouldn't work. My reel broke completely! The ball bearing came out and the reel unscrewed and unthreaded the screw itself. I took it up to Bass Pro immediately and Gerry fixed it for me, after a lot of trouble with getting the seal undone. Now, why did this happen? grit in the reel, be careful with Lamson's and sand. Also, lack of lubrication helped it continue to unscrew itself. Well, it's fixed now. Time to go back out there!

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!

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 LLELA day

I fished LLELA today, and I guess I did pretty good. I walked all the way down to the old railroad bridge and fished around the steep banks. I never saw a single carp but saw plenty of buffalo while wading around the first island. I got 1 TEENY crappie, 3 largemouths, and a small but feisty spotted bass.

Got the crappie on a CarpRunner but the rest were on this, a hot flash minnow with a split shot

I'm now going out to the main lake side for a while. I hope I can at least get something!
~PB