Mother's Day weekend family camping trip

This past Saturday, the whole family went to a park along Lake Georgetown in nearby Georgetown, Texas for a Mother's Day weekend camping trip. We joined three other families we know to camp on three adjacent camping sites. This was our first time at this park and it was actually very nice. I brought along a ton of stuff which included some fishing tackle and our two fishing kayaks.

Weather conditions on Saturday were fairly nice with overcast skies and temperatures in the 70s to 80s. The days before we had started seeing temperatures with highs in the low 90s but a cool front came through late Friday evening. The one thing that wasn't particularly positive for kayaking was winds between 15 to 18 mph with gusts above 25 mph.

Lake Georgetown, like pretty much all the Texas lakes, is a man made lake caused by damming the North fork of my beloved San Gabriel river. It is a good size lake covering about 1,297 acres. Besides largemouth bass, crappie, white bass, catfish, and striped bass it supposedly also contains smallmouth bass which is a species I have yet to catch on the fly.

The kids all wanted to paddle the kayaks so we went down to the swimming area of the park and I let them paddle around. After they had their fill, I took one of the kayaks on a scouting paddle to go fishing on Sunday morning. The shoreline was mostly rocky with some vegetation but not a lot. Not a lot of ledges either that I could tell. The wind was pushing me quickly which meant I would have a hard paddle back so I didn't go far and came back to the beach.

That evening I made burgers, hotdogs and sausage for 17 of us and we ate really well. I was stuffed! We made smores and toasted marshmellows, played some games and told some stories around the campfire. I turned in around 10pm.

I got up just before 6am and loaded up the kayak in my truck and headed down to the shore. It wasn't as windy as the day before but as soon as the sun started coming up, so did the wind. I fished the shoreline for about an hour and got just one bite. My stomach was grumbling so I came back in and headed back to camp.

At camp, I started up a grill to heat up an iron pan to make pancakes while someone else made omelettes. Once again, I ate way too much! Sometime later we all went down to the shore to fish for a little bit before returning for lunch and then packing everything up to leave before 2pm. Needless to say we didn't catch anything.

Regardless of the fishing, the rest of the weekend was a lot of fun and I hope my kids had fun, too. We plan to do this again in the fall when the weather is cooler.

Kayak anglers in Corpus Christi are shot at

Read this story a couple of days ago and my cousin in Corpus saw it on the news as well. Pretty scary night for those two kayak anglers. Thank God for the game warden and that the two kayakers came out OK.

The new pocket fisherman?

Recently, I received a Emmrod kayak king compact fishing rod combo as a birthday gift from a family member. Obviously, it is because I fish out of a kayak. It took us a while to figure out how to assemble the stainless steel coil tip. I appreciate all gifts given to me but I don't think this one will replace my Sage XPs anytime soon but I thought we should keep an open mind, be appreciative and maybe be surprised by trying to fish with it.

So, anyone remember the famous Popeil Pocket Fisherman? My dad had one when I was a kid back in the 70s. I remember trying to fish with it and the biggest problem with it was casting since the tip really didn't load or flex much. The Emmrod sort of reminds me of it except it has a coil in it that I suspect is meant to help in casting. My son was particularly excited about trying it out and he had watched the video on how to do a slingshot cast with it so we picked up some worms and headed to a nearby pond for a trial.

Personally, I couldn't see just how this rod can cast as far as a 6' fishing rod or have the same leverage if you actually caught a fish with it. I was able to cast as far as with my daughter's first Barbie pole which is to say it didn't cast too bad but with a light weight, less than 1/8 ounce, the coil tip wouldn't load and it cast fairly poorly. Obviously, this was meant to cast slightly heavier lures but we didn't have any at the pond we were at.

My son decided to fish with it anyways for a while. He eventually figured out how to cast it well enough but the fish were not biting though the red-ear turtles were going nuts and attacking the worms and were careful not to hook any of them. My son was sort of disappointed in the lack of fish and in the casting ability of the little rod though he wants to give it another test sometime. We may bring it along with us on a camping trip we have scheduled for Mother's Day weekend coming up.

Supposedly the rod weighs 8 ounces but I think it is probably a little more than that. This is a big difference in weight from my son's 8' 5wt Albright fly rod and reel that probably weighs less than half of that.

In looking at the website, I was astounded to find that besides a spincast and baitcaster version, they have a fly rod version of this! It doesn't really mention what the line weight to use should be. I have had fly fishing instructors that could cast and shoot plenty of line with just the tip section of a 4 piece fly rod but this seems weird.

Cheap Trick at SXSW

I am a product of 80s music for the most part. While Hendrix is probably the only exception, I was a teen during the 80s so the music of that period is some of my favorite. During the 80s, I went to many Spring Break concerts on the beaches of South Padre Island. I saw Steve Ray Vaughn a couple of times as well as a lot of the popular bands of the day and one of my most memorable was the one with Cheap Trick. I thought Cheap Trick was such a cool band. I went out and bought the "At Budokan" live album and really liked it. I have a "best of" CD somewhere that I have played for the kids a few times. All my kids know "I Want You to Want Me" and "Surrender".

Yesterday evening, I went with my wife and family downtown to Austin's Auditorium Shores for a free concert for the South by Southwest (SXSW) festival headlined by no other than Cheap Trick. Lots of freaky looking folks around but once Cheap Trick took the stage at 8pm, all was forgotten and we enjoyed the music until about 10pm. It was like 1986 all over again. Cool.

Milton Reimers Ranch Park

This morning my wife informed me that my son had a tennis lesson and my youngest daughter had a birthday party to go to and suggested I got fishing. I had taken vacation this week to get some things done along with doing things with the family such as when we went to the Star of Texas Rodeo yesterday. I decided to go to a place I haven't been to in years; Milton Reimer's Ranch Park near Dripping Springs.

Reimer's was acquired by Travis County in 2006 from the original owner as part of the county park system. It offers bike trails, hiking, rock climbing and of course fishing. During the early spring, it is a popular destination for the annual white bass run as the white bass enter the creeks and rivers from Lake Travis to spawn. That is, when there is water. This year, thanks to all the rain we've been having, the Pedernales river is running at peak capacity.

So, being unprepared, it took me some time to get all my gear together this morning and load up my kayak. Since white bass was the target, I took my 5wt with Teeny T-130 sinking line and a selection of Clouser minnow and Cypert minnow flies.

I arrived at the park around 11am and finally was in the water about 15 minutes later. There were several folks fishing by the time I got there. I found a spot I could wade and proceeded to fish.

While I was able to see fish in the water, I was only able to catch one keeper white bass in the almost hour I spent there so I started heading upstream. I paddled about a mile and a half to a set of rapids and there were about three guys fishing around them so I kept going but the next set of rapids were too fast and there wasn't enough sandy bottom there so I turned back.

As I passed the first rapids I noticed two of the guys had moved downstream so I beached just below the rapids. This spots looked ideal because there was slower water with seams meeting up to the faster water. Additionally the water had a little more color than where I was fishing the first time. And lastly, the bottom was sandy.

Within the first two casts, I caught my second keeper, a 11" male. In the next hour and 45 minutes, I caught around 20 white bass from 11" to 12" with one going 14" so they were mostly males.

The bite was really on for a while and all the fish were caught on an olive green and white translucent supreme hair clouser that I eventually snagged and lost. It also had a bit of peackcock flash on it plus brass dumbell eyes to keep it on the bottom.

That seemed to be the trick, keep the fly bouncing off the bottom so that basically required me to cast the sinking line and then stick the rod down towards the river bottom so there was no slack in the line. The bite was sometimes hard to detect and just the lightest of pressure.

The fish all fought hard for their size. I was thinking of staying until I got 20 on the stringer but my wife had mentioned she was going to go out with some of her friends so I started my way back to the put in.

Just as I was getting in sight of the primitive launch, I saw a couple of empty anchored kayaks start shaking and one flipped all on its own. Very weird sight. It shook violently and a couple of PFDs came off the kayaks. A boater nearby told me it was a small water spout that did it. Weirdest thing I've seen in a while.

Once I got home, I cleaned all 14 fish which took a while. I forgot how small the fillets are but it should be enough for dinner tomorrow. I am very grateful for these fish and the chance to get out on such a nice day. I hope to do it again soon.