Confused rainbows...

Fished from noon till about 4:00 today and again, the fishing was pretty tough.  Steady fishing only netted 3 bows despite seeing many fish in the head of the pool. The odd thing was, these fish appeared to be engaged in spawning activity. They chased each other in small groups and several pairs were seen circling in what might have been a redd. While thoughts of fly fishers drift to turkeys and dressing, these trout seemed focused on procreation. Come on fishy guys and gals, this is the breeding season for browns, not rainbows. Then again, I'm a few thousand miles from my home waters and maybe things just work different in Texas. Or more likely, this is just an artifact of hatchery raised fish. I tried a lot of patterns today and nothing worked consistently. One on a #20 brassie, another on a #16 pheasant tail and the third on a 6mm egg.

Guadalupe River rainbow

We've arrived on the Guadalupe River in south Texas, a stones throw from San Antonio. We're renting a beautiful home right on the river, between two sets of rapids: the Ponderosa Ripple and the Devil's Playground. Each day I've witnessed at least a few fly fishers at each, hopefully attesting to the fine fishing there. After two days of disdainfully ignoring the local methods, I finally caught a nice rainbow on a white wooly bugger.

Most locals fish a couple of flies on an indicator but I wanted to use my traditional way of fooling river fish. Stubborn, and not too bright, I'll now emulate the local methods and maybe even start catching fish somewhat consistently. Here's the riffle the trout was feeding in before succumbing to my white wooley bugger.