There is a small group of friends that have hung around and listened to me babel about nothing important on more than one occasion. I don't get to go fishing with these friends enough, but when I do, It makes me appreciate them even more. A few days ago I floated the Llano River with my old friend Richard Hearn. Rich and I have known each other for about fifteen years. We worked together in the restaurant business, and together as guides in Alaska. Our inside jokes have inside jokes.
This particular day we both had a weekday off, so we made the commitment to get out on a Texas river. Yeah, were those guys hauling down the freeway, passing morning commuters, with a canoe on top of the SUV. We headed up through Fredericksburg, then near Mason to float the Llano. Rich had just read an article about the river and realized he had never had the opportunity to float it. Being a native Texan from Bandera, he had to remedy that before word got out. We floated from Simonsville Road to highway 87. That float is slightly less than four miles but there is a lot of shoreline and rock structures to fish. The rock gardens make this float impassable for rafts. Canoes are best for this section, and even then, there are some obstacles to consider.
Fishing was exceptional this time out. We caught mostly largemouth, and some sunfish. I couldn't get any top water action, but crayfish flies were very reliable when I let them get deep. I got the most gratification from a bass that I didn't land. I casted at the bank where the vegetation made a vertical wall. My lead-eye bunny leach hit the water hard and just before it sunk out of sight, the wall of vegetation opened up and a hefty bass inhaled my fly. Now, I was standing in the canoe, and I had just stripped the slack out of the line when I saw this happen. I immediately made an effort to set the hook with the rod and not with another strip of the line, a common mistake. The fly slipped out of the fish's mouth, and out of the water. The fish darted in the direction that the fly went, but was long gone by the time I swung the fly back in the water. It was an unfortunate mistake, but exciting to see.
