Trout Season is upon us once again!

It is going to be a very exciting season of trout fishing this year in the Texas Hill Country. Trout have been stocked in the Guadalupe River, and we are ready to go. They will take a variety of flies including: san juan worms, egg patterns, girdle bugs, midges, and nymphs. With all the winter and spring rains from last year, the flow rate below canyon dam was much higher this summer than in years past. As a result, the mortality rate for hold over trout through the tough summer months was better than the last several years! “Hold over trout” is a term used for the fish that were stocked in previous year(s), and were able to “hold on” through the warm summer months. We are seeing and catching some very small trout, which we believe were born in the Guadalupe River, and held on through the summer months (despite many factors!). These holdover trout are a bit smarter, having been acclimated to the river for a while now, and are being caught on smaller midges and nymphs. The Texas chapter of Trout Unlimited (GRTU) is doing an excellent job maintaining and bettering the fishery on the Lower Guadalupe river. With the lower flow rate this year, we will be offering guided float (rafting), kayak, and wade fishing trips. We are also very excited to offer wade fishing trips on the Llano river, for rainbow trout, in order to get away from some of the crowds.

Bass Fishing

The San Marcos and Colorado rivers are both flowing and fishing extremely well the last couple of months, and have been receiving very little pressure from fisherman. We have recently pulled out several quality large mouth, Guadalupe, and smallmouth bass! We will continue to offer float trips on these rivers through the winter for bass, especially on warming trends, which increases your odds greatly at a quality river bass. The bass have been eating a variety of both topwater flies and streamers, or subsurface flies. Topwater bites have been mostly on deer hair poppers and divers in a variety of colors, as well as wood and foam head poppers. Streamers that have been working the best lately are slump busters or zonkers, Game Changers, and a variety of crawfish flies.

News and Updates

We spent the spring and summer months floating several different rivers with clients; targeting all of our local warm water species. Several clients were able to land their first common carp, along with a variety of other species, including guadalupe and largemouth bass on the Upper Guadalupe River (above Canyon Lake). We floated the Lower Colorado River and the Llano River, but spent a majority of our time on the San Marcos River. We even got the opportunity to put the raft in on the Devils River, and catch some clear water smallmouth bass! We mostly target both Guadalupe Bass and Largemouth bass, on these rivers but will take advantage of anything the river has to offer.
The wildlife was out in full force; the Spring rains trickled all the way up the food chain. We saw a number of foxes and bobcats prowling the river banks looking for prey; more this year than the last several years combined. One of the most memorable experiences, was getting to see my first colony of river otters in the Hill Country. I saw 3 adults, and was able to observe their behavior for a few minutes. They are very intelligent and fascinating creatures. We scared many droves of wild pigs rooting in the river bottom, and witnessed an extremely large flock of turkeys flying and roosting along the river banks. Have you ever witnessed an Osprey dive bombing the river and coming out with a fish? It is truly one of my favorite things to see while floating in the Texas Hill Country.

We participated in both the Loco Trash Bash, a river cleanup on the Lower Colorado River below Austin (hosted by All Water Guides and Yeti), and the San Marcos Get Trashed Event, a river cleanup on the San Marcos River (hosted by Pig Farm Ink). I highly encourage folks to get involved with these river cleanups. They are awesome events where the community comes together, drinks a couple beers, and gets dirty pulling all the trash out of some of our most beautiful resources!

Don’t forget to mark your calendars for Trout Fest 2020, February 22nd-23rd at Lazy L and L Campground! This event continues to get bigger and better every year. We hope to see you there! We will happily be donating a couple of trips to Trout Fest again this year to support GRTU!

We will be doing these fishing reports quarterly to keep you up to date on the current fishing season. For further, more detailed information on fly fishing conditions, river conditions, access points, and river section lengths, or to book a trip, please feel free to contact us. If you would like to follow along with pictures from our most recent trips, please follow us on Instagram (@go_outside_expedition_co).

More Info

For further, more detailed information on fly fishing conditions, river conditions, access points, and river section lengths or to book a trip please feel free to contact us.