On Saturday eight yak fishers from my fly fishing club and I floated six miles of the Colorado river down from the city of Bastrop. I've made this float many times and the fishing has always been as good or better than most of the places I fish. I don't mean to toot my own horn but when it comes to kayaking and bass fishing the river I do know a thing or two.

I was on the Colorado river about four weeks ago with two coworkers new to kayaking and fished this same six miles then. On that trip I wasn't so concerned with fishing as I was making sure the two young women were guided safely down the river. I did throw spinnerbaits for bass in all the likely looking places resulting in only one good hit but I got nothing to hand.. I chalked up that skunking to high stained water and not fishing hard enough. The gals and their dogs were fun to watch and laugh with all the way down the river so the poor fishing didn't matter on that trip..

I had thought that by this time the river would have cleared up from the Memorial day flooding. The flow was close to normal but the river was still stained. Visibility was less than two feet but hugging the bottom was a layer of even muddier water as the current kicked up loose sediment. All the way down the six miles the nine of us fished hard throwing everything we had trying to find the bass.

I noticed that almost all of the seaweed and grass beds that was in the shallow moving water is gone. It appears the floodwater has scrapped the plants right off the bottom and with them the habitat where the fish would be holding normally. That real muddy water close to the bottom also indicates that the floodwater carried in lots of new sediment that is easily stirred up.

Needless to say we didn't catch much, only six bass between the nine of us and these guys know how to fish! Contrast this fishing to the trip we made last October on this same stretch of river where we quickly lost count! Maybe a hundred or so bass and sunfish from the moment we hit the water!
My how things change...