Jimbo
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Poor Mike, he doesn’t realize how good he really is……
It is true that the first time last season we found those rising fish, it was Mike that tied on a dry first. We’d been catching fish all day nymph fishing in the higher flows of last season. I was rebuilding a leader on the bank and Mike was over there hollering about a Trout taking his indicator and other fish that continued to rise around him. I thought, they probably won’t take a Dry, but Mike will put some over their heads. I wanted to see how high a number I could run up that day on nymphs. It was a Big Number already, so I keep on fishing my nymphs and even caught some while they were rising. Anyway, after he actually hooked his 3rd fish, I started looking for any dryfly in my vest. I was not carrying a single dryfly box, but I knew I had a few misplaced drys in nymph boxes from summers past. I did find a Para Wulff, cut off the nymphs and fluoro, and started to rebuild a mono leader. But before I could finish, they quit rising that evening. But I’d seen enough to know I needed to carry a good selection of drys the next time I fished through that water.
Jimbo
I’m probably better at telling the story than actually getting every catchable fish in front of me in the net.
So thanks, the first book will be coming sooner than later. If it’s a success I might even get to fish more than I do now. So if everything works out, there just might be more of my fishin’ stories to read…..
Jimbo
Come 0n guys John is a conservationist and nice guy. He owns several business’ unless he’s sold them lately. He usually feeds the fish in the early morning and late in the afternoon. If he starts feeding them and you still want to fish, just move upstream, or way downstream below the island and everything will be fine.
Jimbo
Really the whole point of this post is about enjoying fishing no matter how well or which methods you utilize…. while you fish. I am a pretty good fisherman, but I am not the Best…. and I know it. I know plenty of anglers better than I am and I am comfortable with that. As in many things only one person is the best, and even they are eventually eclipsed by someone better. I have a bunch of friends who really get upset when they are outfished by myself when we fish together, but they shouldn’t be. Everybody has certain skills they can master and ones that never reach that exceptional point. Heck, Flip Pallot will readily admit he is only a average caster, but he does pretty well with that ability, and really knows how and where to fish so he ends up catching a lot most of the time. When he was here at TroutFest he talked about the time when Lefty Kreh came to a club meeting and demonstrated how he could shoot 60′ of flyline with just his hands (No rod at all). There wasn’t another person in the room that could do that. Now he did learn a few things from Lefty and got better, but he never approached Lefty’s skills casting a rod. You can drive yourself plum crazy trying to reach a goal that you are just not going to ever reach no matter how much you practice.
So what is important is to develop your skills as much as you can, but don’t get bent out of shape because someone you run into can smoke those skills. Be comfortable in your own skin. Know where your limitations live and enjoy them as far as they will take you. You’ll be much more satisfied with your results when you start excepting who you are and what you can do.
Jimbo
Thanks Alex ! By the way, you are one of the finest flyfishermen I have seen on the river !!! And that’s the truth !
I did a little more editing this morning so it flows better.
I am ready to get back out there this week and see what the river and our fish want to do this time around…..
Jimbo
I too enjoy catching Trout on nymphs, otherwise I would be absolutely miserable fishing the Guadalupe. Now don’t get me wrong, I am not putting down nymphing by any means. But…. I actually consider catching Trout on Drys on the Guadalupe more challenging than nymph fishing or using some kind of streamer. Fishing subsurface is generally more effective and day in and day out, and they will put fish in the net. But I am constantly challenging myself to do something that is more difficult. Especially trying to get a specific fish to take my fly and then multiply that by trying it to take something off the top on the Guadalupe, well it’s a game of smaller numbers generally speaking. But I too mostly fish subsurface on the Guadalupe so I can reliably catch more than just a hand full in a day.
Jimbo
Nope, the rod I broke was a Sage 4100 ONE I built years ago with Dennis Freeman of Rodmakers. So the bad news was that what ever you break, that is what they replace. This being I bought a rod as a blank to build out, all Sage really guarantees to replace is the tip section with just another blank, with no tiptop or guides. Since Dennis retired I don’t have access to the tools needed to rap the guides, then use flexcoat on the windings, and putting it on a rotisserie for the hours it takes for the flexcoat to dry. The cool thing is I explained this to the Sage rep and he offered to send me a new tip complete built out and ready to use for a little bit more, which I gladly agreed to. So it should be back in my hands in about 10 days ready to fish again.
Jimbo
I missed it too Friday night. I wanted to bid again on the Ross San Miguel but waited too long. Congrats to the person who did submit the winning bid you have an excellent reel that I would have paid up to another $100 easy and been happy. You are the luckiest…..
Jimbo
Do not use any of the LAP lease sites with anything but this year’s parking tag. It is not so much for the other LAP members to know who is a current member as it is for the land owners to easily identify who is legally parked there. I know this may sound harsh being you paid for this season and just forgot your current tag, but we must make it easy for the land owners or we could loose those lease sites. I was called several times in past years with owners complaining about vehicles parked using expired tags. Do not be the guy that gets an owner mad at GRTU and we loose that site. This is a “NO EXCEPTIONS” Rule.
Jimbo
SHHHHhhhhhh…….
Jimbo
Thanks for understanding everyone.
Jimbo
Thanks Chris for posting your find! Gene was all perplexed yesterday trying to figure out what happened to it.
Jimbo
Even when we post the stocking locations exclusively on the LAP forum, it still seems this information makes it to the general public more times and sooner than we’d like to admit. I usually don’t know who is doing this, but I would guess a few of our LAP members must be talking to their friends who are not LAP members to help them out. (A couple of years ago I found an LAP member posting times and locations on another site to non-LAP members.) Then again it could be somebody who is not an LAP member just watching our every move and ready to blab it to anybody, I’m just not sure in every instance. I know these locations are very important during the first 2 stocking because some years there is just no holdover in many locations. So fishing those locations with no holdover would be an exercise in frustration. But like I said after the second stocking we have usually stocked all the locations we are going to stock in a given season. And again after this 4th stocking I wanted to give something to those few volunteers that did show up to work, something special for their time and effort. That is all and it was not to punish those who didn’t show up.(Now you have another reason to show up for these 3rd and 4th stockings)
Now myself I like to explore just for the stake of discovering some new place that fish are holding where they didn’t last season (and they are out there especially after extended periods of high flows). I am self-reliant and motivated to find those out of the way places holding Trout even if it means catching fewer Trout than hitting the perennial hot spots like the “Kanz Weir, the Kiddie Pool, or Barking Dog Pool”. I also know there is a number of fishermen lack the skills and time to fish. They just want to jump in and fish those locations with the highest numbers of Trout so even they can catch a few. I would suggest to that crowd that it would be more satisfying to work on your; techniques, take some lessons, or hire a guide. This improvement in those skills will allow you to can catch some almost anywhere at anytime. I also know people who like to get into one of these spots the day after stocking, just so they can brag about a big number they caught. And I don’t find that is what the sport of angling is all about. I am not trying to sound elitist but instead trying to motivate anglers to work on improving their skills no matter what level they are at. There will not always be easy Trout in front of you to catch. That way when they go somewhere else to flyfish for wild Trout, say in the Rockies, they too will be capable of fooling some fish with these new found skills they have developed. I have always said luck always finds fishermen with skills.
Jimbo
Let’s talk,…
Why don’t we make stocking days public knowledge?
Because the hatchery quits feeding the Trout for 5 days before their trip. This keeps the amount of waste they produce to a minimum during the 12-14 hour ride in the truck. They are also very crowded in the individual cells on the truck which causes fighting and stress during the trip. 4,000 pounds is a maximum load for the largest hatchery truck they use. So we would like to give the fish time to recover, start eating, and spread out, before people start hooking and fighting with them. If we announced the stocking dates ahead of time we would see increased pressure on them the day they hit the water, resulting in more mortality from swallowing the hooks deep (they are very hungry not eating for 6 days) and more delayed mortality from lactic acid build-up because the lack of nutrition they had the week prior. This increase in mortality would result in lower numbers for Trout per mile in the river. (Remember GRTU is a conservation organization.) Giving them just 24 hours helps greatly in keeping the Trout alive to be caught and released over and over again by all anglers.
Why do we only give notice of the upcoming stockings to LAP members?
Because: 1) these anglers are the ones who actually pay for these fish through the Lease Access Program, 2) They pledge to catch and release all Trout on the Guadalupe, 3) we ask LAP members not to fish for the Trout for 24 hours and they generally give us the voluntarily compliance we are looking for, 4) we have 800 members in the LAP program and normally we get enough volunteers to handle the stocking. We generally need 40 volunteers to make stocking easy. 30 is really the minimum to get the job done, but they will be making numerous repeated hauling of the buckets to the water, so it wears everybody out. Plus with the low flows we are having right now, many places require bucketing, that if we had say 200cfs, we could shoot them directly into the river cutting down on the volunteers work load.
Notice about upcoming stockings?
We will put a topic on the forum (Lease Members) about the upcoming stocking date and send out an e-mail blast to LAP members at least 7 days before the actual date. Most stocking dates fall on Saturdays when most people have days off. (We have in the past had some Friday stockings to help lighten heavy angling pressure the day of stocking.) Now if you can’t make arrangements in that amount of time, I don’t know what to tell you. We also ask that people attending the stocking check in on the Lease Forum and let us know you are coming. This gives us a head count and know ahead of time if a secondary e-mail blast is necessary. We did send out a secondary e-mail blast this last stocking date. And yet we had only about 25 people show up plus Dan, Ron, and myself. Now we all know that on the first stocking dates we usually have more people than we can really use. Excitement is high about getting Trout into the river as the new season opens. As stockings go by and the season wears on, we get less and less numbers attending the stockings, but the work load is really the same for any 4000lb load.
Why don’t we post information about the sites stocked?
Again as much as we would like to keep stocking days secret, that information gets out before the actual date. If we can’t totally keep the date a secret, at least we can keep the locations secret. And when the Hatchery truck is spotted the day of delivery, the local internet lights up, and still we often see anglers waiting at sites for the fish to go in river. Now again we can not tell the general public to not fish for them the first day because once the touch the water they are the property of the citizens of the State of Texas and all anglers with valid fishing licenses can legally fish for them. Many of them just don’t understand how much mortality increases fishing for them right when they go in the water. (Did you notice the numbers of dead fish in the river this year?) They are very hungry from their fasting and tend to swallow anything deep to fill their stomachs, causing injuries that can result in mortality. That is why we ask our members to give them at least 24 hours to adjust to their new surroundings and get a little in their stomachs without a hook, so they can gain their strength back, and tolerate an encounter with a fisherman that much better. Catch and release tactics don’t work if the fish still dies from delayed mortality.
Why did we not post the sites stocked this last time?
After we have the first 2 loads of 4000lbs of Rainbows we will have stocked every site we are going to stock. This year we did that on the first day for the first time ever. Water conditions, especially the water temperatures, where favorable for such a mass stocking. Many years the lower river has not cooled off enough and air temps are too warm, to allow stocking the lower leases without significant loss due to those high temperatures. So we do a second 4000lb load later in the season giving the lower river time to cool off for better survival. Subsequent stockings (3 and 4 this year) only add Trout to sites already stocked. So it’s not like we put fish in new places, we merely added to the numbers already there. So there is no real need to announce these locations that are stocked in the 3rd and 4th stockings. The only exception is when we stock Brown Trout. We have stocked them in some places that we have not stocked before (like the regular Rainbow Trout stocking locations) usually at the request of TPWD and their objectives for the fishery. Again, this last time (4th stocking of Rainbows) merely fortified the numbers at locations we’d previously stocked. And with such a low turnout of volunteers and them working so hard to get the Trout in the river, we thought to reward their efforts by not telling everyone else where we stocked them right away.
Remember GRTU is primarily a conservation organization. Most TU chapters fish over wild fish, with no stocking necessary, unless it’s a restoration project. When TU chapters do restoration projects those places are often closed to fishing for some time to get those fish established. GRTU is a very usual chapter in that our fishery normally requires stocking for any significant numbers of Trout to be in the river. Thermal impacts on lower leases can result in 100% mortality during the summer. We also still have significant harvest and delayed mortality which limits the numbers of Trout that could potentially holdover in the upper river to the following season. There this breaking point is depends on flows, water temperatures, and fishing pressure.
We are not trying to punish those who did not attend this last stocking, but in fact give those who did, a reward for their hard work. If you fished the river anytime after the first 2 loads of Rainbows were stocked, you already know where the Trout are that can be caught. We merely put more fish in these same locations. I have never heard so much whining about the locations we stocked in all my 15 years working directly with VP’s and being V P of Fishery than this last time. I have attended every Trout Stocking over the last 25 year period except when I had a heart attack 2 years ago and I was still in intensive care. Generally I see the same faces over and over again. I would say the people I see at any one stocking, have helped with at least one stocking, if not 2 of the stockings per year, every year. There are many LAP members I have never seen at any of the stockings. To those who have never attended a stocking I would suggest you do some time, especially these later stocking dates when we really need the help. It was very surprising to see so few members attend this last stocking when we now have 800 potential members who receive stocking information ahead of time. Myself I have not fished yet. I have been suffering from a painful spinal condition and I aggravated it during last Saturday’s stocking. I can’t even sleep on my own bed because of pain radiating down my legs and into my feet (two weeks of sleep deprivation have also taken a toll). I was warned not to do this, but I felt obligated because 1) I may not be VP of Fishery anymore but I am on the Fishery Committee and GRTU Board, 2) I saw the low response on the 4th stocking announcement and knew we would need every set of hands we could get. 3) And I really enjoy seeing these fish go in the river. So I went and now I am on pain meds and waiting for a MRI and it’s results. Now I am not trying to shame anyone about this I’m just saying when healthy people and numbers don’t show up, others have to pick up the slack and that is disappointing for a volunteer organization with so many members.
Jimbo
Fine looking Brookie !!! Get that Orvis rod tip replaced and back in the action?
Jimbo
