By
Brook Elliott
Driving south
out of Dallas the plains and prairies of the Long Star State suddenly
wrinkle and thrust upwards. It's not whatanyone would call mountainous
though by any means. Still and all, the Hill Country is an anomaly that
stands high above the rest of Texas.
Roughly defined as a square bordered by Austin, San Antonio, Rocksprings,
and Llano, a dozen or so small rivers and streams twist and turn their
way through these hills, meandering their way into the Colorado and San
Antonio Rivers, and, eventually, into the Gulf of Mexico. Their names
reflect the Mexican and Indian heritage of the region: Llano, Blanco,
Medina, Lampasis, Frio, Guadalupe, San Saba, Nueces, and Sabinal.
Superficially, they are just small rivers, much as you find in many states. All are wadeable or floatable by canoe. All are tailor made for flyfishing. Cumulatively, they offer a special fishery unlike any other found in the world.
What makes them special
is the diversity of fish species, some of which (like the Guadalupe Bass)
are unique to these streams. There are largemouth and smallmouth bass
in these rivers, and a variety of panfish all grouped locally as "perch."
Among the latter is the rare and beautiful Rio Grande Perch, a bluegill-sized
cichlid that seems more at home in an aquarium than ranging free and wild.
We're on the South Llano, in a pair of canoes. Constance Whiston, a superb flyfisherman and guide out of Austin, is paddling with my son Chad. Adam Goodman is piloting my canoe. Adam runs a canoe rental service out of Goodman's Cabins, where we are staying. The flat in front of Goodman's is good fishing water in itself, and our goal is to reach it just before sunset. This was a busman's holiday for the guides, and all four of us would be fishing.
We'd launched at the low-water bridge in Telegraph, five or six river miles from Goodman's. The game plan is to fish the deeper sections from the canoes, then get out and wade the shallows, timing things to finish at the Goodman flat.
Chad drew first blood, with a "perch." It was a long-eared sunfish. He drew second blood as well, with a Guadalupe Bass. Smallmouth-like in size, shape, and disposition, the hard fighting 'lupes are found only in the Hill Country. They differ from smallies in the pattern of their medial line and the number of spines in their fins. They fight the same though, with the scorching runs, tailwalks, and head shakes that make smallmouth, ounce for ounce and pound for pound, the fightingest fish in the world.
We worked our way
downstream, taking a mixed bag of bass and perch, until reaching a spot
where the river widened, deepened, and slowed. Adam and I were upstream
fishing a backwater when we heard a happy yell. Chad was into a good fish;
a fish he thought, at first, was a bass. Turns out it was a fish from
prehistory.
A Rio Grande Perch more than eight inches long (big for its species) had
taken his Indestructible Bug with a vengeance.
Although male Rio Grande Perch can approach a pound in weight, fish that large are rare. Indeed, it's a rarity to catch any of the cichlids on a fly rod and those that do hit usually average four or five inches long. So Chad's catch was a true trophy that, once we finished photographing, he carefully released to fight another day.
We never did get to fish the flat in front of Goodman's. The fishing upriver was so good that it was completely dark before we reached the take out. After the kind of day we'd had however, nobody was complaining.
