DFW Fly Fishing

I took Bart from Tailwaters out Sunday afternoon. Great day, beautiful weather, excellent casting, and picky, PICKY fish. The carp are definately on their post-spawn pattern – rooting in the shallows and grass, tailing up clams and crayfish, even taking a few damsels from the surface. Bart (an expert dry fly trout angler) pointed out a flying ant hatch and I’m sure some of those have found their way into some carp gullets.

Bart showed up with one of the new Winston Boron IImx 6 wts. Balanced perfectly by a Waterworks Force reel, it is one of the best light saltwater rods I’ve ever cast – it had no problem shooting a quick 70 footer and then loading up SHORT to hit a tea cup at 25 feet. WHAT A ROD! I’ve cast several of the “new – light” 6 wts (helios, Loomis, Sage) and this one is the top of the bunch.

Water temps are rising nicely and the lake is currently* a few inches below pool (conservation pool of Ray Roberts is 632.5 feet above sea level). The “east” flats are holding a GOOD number of fish – we easily saw over 200 carp in the four hours we fished. Clarity is VERY good for this time in May and this combined with the Memorial Day traffic led to some selective, skittish carp (more so than normal) – they wanted everything perfect. Presentation, retrieve, pattern, leader . . . it all had to be ON. We were able to stick several along with a few gar. Interesting side notes include a VERY large drum that refused all offerings, a new bird species for the “Ray Roberts list” (an Eastern Kingbird – Tyrannus tyrannus), and some absolutely MONSTER fish tailing at the deep edge of one of the flats. On later inspection of a photo, these had to be large channel cats; nothing else has a deeply forked, pointed, gray tail (and these tails were easily ten inches across). I don’t know if they’ll take anything (catfish can be tricky with a fly), but I’m going back soon with a 9wt. to try. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that they were tailing in well over three feet of water. I’ll let you figure out how long they had to be!

[* I say "currently" because as of this writing (Tues. evening), Ray Roberts is now over two inches high. We have dodged the bullet with the rain this spring but not this morning - the Denton airport recorded 2.88" of rain in two hours. Luckily, the Trinity River in Gainesville crested at about 2pm and is coming down - much of the water was absorbed by the relatively dry soils. The lake will be off-color for a few days with the west arm taking a little longer to clear.]