I'm looking for a good spot to go fly fishing in College Station, I feel like I've been spoiled getting to fish the Llano and Guadalupe. Is there anywhere thats not 3 hours away thats descent?

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Wanna be spoiled, drive three hours toward the gulf with the flyrod
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Nothing really good close.. Gibbons & Somerville are about it. Many of the smaller lakes and ponds died over the summer as the drought and hot summer sun cooked them to death.. No public accessible creeks that I know of are holding any fish currently and only a few private stock tanks survived so the fishing is going to be poor for the next few years even if the rain falls and we get back to near normal.. bummer.. a 130 mile trip up to the Brazos river below Lake Whitney is my favorite place to fly fish and the one place that isn't over-run with other activities besides fishing..

I am intersedted in hitting the Colorado near Bastrop this spring/summer. Looks like "Brazos" type water I am used to fishing...

Dave

I'm with hl&s on this one. I've spent quite a bit of time below the Whitney dam and love that area. It's a 2.5/ish hour trip, so that's not too bad. The coast is just as close, if not a little closer, and I plan on trying it out a couple weekends this spring/summer.

-Tom

HL&S, Do you think Somerville was able to hold enough water out in the middle of the lake to keep at least a decent bass population alive for the summer? I watched your video from last week after the rain, do you think there was enough rain water to help spread out any of the fish that survived?

The lake seems to have survived last summer as far the fish populations go as no major fish-kill was reported. But that means they might be overpopulated for the lake the size it is now.

At normal pool level the lake is only about 37 feet deep at the deepest part along the old Yegua creek channel out in front of the dam. The vast majority of the lake is much shallower then that and going lower during the summer will spell disaster.

I won't write Lake Somerville off just yet because another good flood will have more run-off and possibly get the lake closer to normal before it gets hot again.. I suspect the real danger is a major fish-kill sometime this coming summer but as of yet none have been recorded.

Nutrient rich flood water poses another risk with algae blooms and O2 depletion which can kill nearly everything.. It happened all over the state in the heat stressed stock tanks and small lakes..

Consider that the lake is half the size it was but with nearly the same number of fish as when it was full. Nature deals with overpopulation her way and it ain't pretty.. So we all should do the lake a big favor and catch a limit or two while the fish are still living..

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Thanks for all the suggestions. I actually went to Boerne the other weekend and was able to catch a glimpse of the very cold guadalupe. I guess trout would be out of the question there considering that its quite a bit up stream of Canyon Lake. But I'm bustin out the fly rod and going to scare something up, looks like Central Park has stocked trout this year already.

I used to like to fish the pond behind the Bush Library. It isn't that bit and I don't know what is in there now, but at one point there were some nice bass & lots of room for a backcast.

I am not sure how active the Brazos Valley Fly Fishers are these days, but that might be another source of information.

'99

Good point, I may get a hold of the BVFF. I tried out Central Park, I'm glad its not my first time fly fishing, because thats a tight fit for a fly rod. Additionally I didn't see anybody catching anything, and I didn't see anything feeding either.

I'm the president of Brazos Valley Flyfishers (BVFF) and we are still active but mostly just a bunch of old guys that like to shoot the bull once a month and fly fish once in a while. Our next meeting is March 8th and might be at the Brazos Center CCA banquet. My employer The Eagle newspaper is a corporate table sponsor of the CCA so I and the publisher will be attending the banquet. The Thursday night CCA banquet conflicts with the monthly BVFF meeting so I can't do both unless we combine them.

I live in bryan and I am facing the same dilemma as you washington ag.

Thanks for the info HL&S I actually might try to make it out to the meeting. Sometimes us youngbucks can learn something from the old guys. Papermouth, I may try to hit up the little brazos when it warms up a bit, its a pretty good walk up the river, lots of small things, but I think if the flow rate was a little better there may be some bigger fish in some of the small whirlpools. Also I obviously am familiar with fishing up north, so the small trout flies seem to gather the most interest, considering the size of some of the fingerling bass. Sometimes I get tired of this horifically brown water.

Any thoughts on the little pond at John Crompton Park? I know it is really new and has not ever been stocked (intentionally, to my knowledge) but didn't know if there might be something hiding out in there.