Hi,
I'm hitting the lake shore this Saturday, and will hopefully get a chance to toss a few flies in the water (was going to last weekend, but on the way down to the water I slipped and snapped my fly rod ). Now, I haven't done any fly fishing in TX since I moved down here - used to do some trout fishing up in MN, and then also a whole bunch where I grew up (Ireland).
So my local lake (Georgetown) has some small brownies, but lots of bass - so I figured I'll try hitting those this weekend. Now having never fly fished for bass at all, I'm looking for any tips on flys/colors to fish. I've picked up some local flys and will string a cast of those together, but any other help on what should be hitting this time of year would be fantastic.

Thanks, and I'll let ya'll know how it goes.

R.

Howdy, and welcome to Texas! Twex my suggestion is that you can use any color you want in Texas as long as it is Chartruse! Go and get ya the largest Olive Wolly Bugger that you can find, get one of RRhyne56's 4' sinking flouracarbon leaders to get it down and cast it on a 5 wt. Other goodies for bass are poppers and Bunny Leachs, again in Chartruse, but buggers is HARD to beat. This time of year on my lake, I am gonna try an electric blue Damsel fly, could be murder on 'em.

Another suggestion- go to Walmart and see of they have a small popper called a "Miss Prissy" or some "Betts" bass poppers. Fish these real early in the morning or in the evening. Vary their retrieve. Sometimes fast erratic strips work, sometime slow pops and long pauses work too.

o man, go to lake travis, and go to the resturaunt thats really popular, i think its called pompanos, and through a couple wooly buggers at the BIG OL cats down there

Welcome Twex!

I believe that you'll find the wee hours before sunrise to be tremendously successful with topwater flies, poppers, anything foam that floats. Your milage may vary but I have found that once the sun gets high in the sky the topwater bit often turns off. But then you just tie a dropper fly off of the popper, some wet fly or nymph on 18-24" of tippet, and continue having a blast.

When you mentioned brownies in Lake Georgetown, did you mean brown trout? I was not aware that they could survive in these warm Texas waters.

At any rate, hope you enjoy some fine fishing!

Thanks for all the tips everyone!

I'll definitely be dropping by the store on the way home tonight, pick up some wooly buggers, poppers, and any other green that looks tasty.
I was planning on hitting the water around 6am, so should hopefully get some pre-dawn action then - fingers crossed.

Artan: I heard a story the other day about divers that 'volunteer' to clean the lake bottom, they only tend go out once... cos there's 'cats the size of volkswagens' down there. Someday I'll fish em, but not today...

Robin: you're right, I meant to say that there should be rainbow trout in it (1.81 lb lake record), not brownies .

i hear the story about cats the size of volkwagens in every lake. chances are, not true. but you are definently going to hook up into some 4-10lb catfish by the resturaunt

Fishing was pretty productive, tallied up a total of seven fish, 4 bass, 2 crappies and a sun fish.
The bass came off an olive wolly bugger and olive nymph, the other fish came off the nymph and a black wolly worm (3 fly cast).
The bass were all relatively small (<3/4 lb), but still fun to play for a bit.
Did toss in a chartreuse popper for a bit, and it rose a few fish, but they didn't take it down - admittedly this was closer to 11am, but showed me they were still interested in it even with the sun shining brightly.
Did have a beautiful ripple on the lake this morning, though the wind kept changing directions, kept me on my toes for sure.

Thanks again for all the tips, I'll hopefully be able to hit the lake at least a few weekends a month.

Keep yas posted of future outings.
~R

Twex

Good to hear that the catching was good as well as the fishing!

What weight rod are you fishing? I have gotten ruined on light weight stuff; I have a couple of three weights, a two weight and a one weight. Its one big hoot to get those bream and bass on an ultralight setup

Read here to get spoiled a bit yourself
http://www.byrdultrafly.com/ultramain.htm

Hey Robin,

I've just browsed through a few of those articles, and they are great indeed.

This weekend I was fishing on a 5wt - my lighest, but I'll probably pick myself up a 2 or 3wt for christmas this year. I'm already looking forward to it, and that fact alone might make santa come a little earlier than xmas this year

Thanks for the link!

Keep on having fun. The real fun begins in March with the white bass run in the local rivers.