The river was, by ordinary standards, heavily populated this weekend - but the fishing was still good.

I saw as many people in the river this weekend as I have the previous 8 months combined. Still, that's not a lot of people considering how beautiful this stretch of river is. More than anything it speaks to the fact that getting access to the river is difficult. If it was easy to get to, it might look like the Guadalupe with thousands of people in it. I didn't count heads but I'd guess I saw upwards of twenty people in the water at the max peak. That's in a mile stretch of water. Not many of them were fishing, most were swimming, well not swimming so much as sitting in lawn chairs and a couple had also set up sun umbrellas to sit under while out in the water.

Even with that teeming crowd the fishing was just fine. I fished Saturday, Sunday and Monday, for about four hours each day, starting generally at mid-day. I fished the up river hole the first two days and just below the dam on Monday.

The up river hole was excellent - I caught several large mouth bass, two of which were very nice, probably in the five pound range. River fish, mind you, do not get pot bellies - so if these were lake bass they'd probably be in the eight pound range. These fellas are muscular instead of the pot bellied couch potatoes in the lakes, and they put up some wonderful fights.

I also caught a ton of blue gills, some of which were very nice sized, all of which fought as only a blue gill can. I picked off a crappie, a couple of striped bass, a couple of hybrid bass, a small drum and a channel cat as well. The fishing below the dam wasn't much for me, but my son caught a half dozen stripers.

So I got plenty of exercise, which I sorely need, got plenty of sun, acres of fresh air, a couple of ice cold beers in the heat of the day, and enough fish each day to make it all worth while.

Not a bad holiday weekend. Hope yours was as good or better!

Sounds like a great 3 days fishing especially when its with family!!

sounds great....thank you for sharing Lloyd

I tried a lot of different flys - the black woolybooger was the king.

Good stuff. We picked the wrong stretch of river lol. A lot of people with bad etiquette and few Fish sounds like you had a good time we did manage one striper and a few Sandbass and some largemouth but nothing to write home about. But it is nice seeing people get out and enjoy the outdoors regardless.