Trout in Hill Country??

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Cboehle
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Trout in Hill Country??

Post by Cboehle »

so I'm in DFW and was looking at getting back out to ozarks for some trout while the bass are slow and stumbled across an article that said theres a natural trout population on the lower guadalupe, nearest the canyon lake dam, who knew?? not me... and after some research, looks like its also stocked and has a decent following?? sooo any kayakers tried this area, is it deep enough to pass, looks like several small dams near the lake? anyone tried the trout fishing, suggestions on access points or tackle?? also would be interested in any local guide suggestions for the first time out? thanks, tight lines
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Neumie
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Re: Trout in Hill Country??

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Cboehle wrote:so I'm in DFW and was looking at getting back out to ozarks for some trout while the bass are slow and stumbled across an article that said theres a natural trout population on the lower guadalupe, nearest the canyon lake dam, who knew?? not me... and after some research, looks like its also stocked and has a decent following?? sooo any kayakers tried this area, is it deep enough to pass, looks like several small dams near the lake? anyone tried the trout fishing, suggestions on access points or tackle?? also would be interested in any local guide suggestions for the first time out? thanks, tight lines
They're not natural per say, just stockers which can survive through summer since Canyon Lake releases water lower in the water column so it's much cooler coming out. They've also began releasing Brown Trout, though I'm not sure if they can survive the Texas summers like the Rainbows.

Here's som info on TPWD's website: Click. There are length and bag restrictions on different stretches of rivers. Ignore the parts about free access or leased property as those leases have expired. However, you can typically get day access at many of the parks for a minimal parking fee. For fishing less crowded waters (meaning no toobers) you'll want to stay above the "Horseshoe" (Between the two SH 306 crossings) and between 4th and 2nd Crossings (Rio Guadalupe Resort and Camp Hueco Springs).

There should be good flows for kayaking this summer due to all the rain this winter, spring, and early summer. Give ReelFly, Action Angler & Outfitter, or Gruene Outfitters a call before hand to get up to date information.

I've only winter fished for trout, so it's probably different during summer fishing, but I've caught them on zebra midges and black wolly buggers.
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JW FunGuy
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Re: Trout in Hill Country??

Post by JW FunGuy »

I actually caught this little guy below The Horseshoe. General consensus is that it is a rainbow born in the Guadalupe. So with consistent flows the Guad can be a natural trout fishery.
photo.jpg
Summer flow agreement is starting at 150CFS so water will start to warm up. It is not recommended to fish for trout when the water temp gets above 70.


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Ron Mc
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Re: Trout in Hill Country??

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Jerry, I can take you where to find wild-spawned rainbows any Sep/Oct. - the riffles and pocketwater below the busted weir in mile 5.
Try a dry-dropper (I use a parachute dry tied with unibobber).
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and of course I have this photo of spawning rainbows in the Guadalupe
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Here's my thread from fishing the Guadalupe tailwater late winter, with a few oldies but goodies thrown in.
http://www.texaskayakfisherman.com/foru ... 0&t=249412
Probably the best news is the progress we've had holding over browns the past five years - they also seem to have improved dry-fly fishing on the Guadalupe.
Even in drought years, wild-spawned rainbows have been reported down to mile 10 (probably spawned at Ingram's). I can take you to cold springs that far down that hold over good rainbows in drought.
This is Mystery pool, shallow dolomite on the left, deep fast channel and pockets on the right- you could hide a pickup truck in it.
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Kayakers on mile 4 in early May, when monsoon flows were running 1200 cfs
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you may be able to make them out here, but a few big rainbows against the bulkhead where I was standing when those kayakers were floating by
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http://www.grtu.org
all guides on the Guadapupe float with pontoon raft or drift boat
Great choice for a guide, Dan Cone is also VP Fisheries for GRTU
http://www.castellguideservice.com/
This Oct will be pretty remarkable for holdovers with the flows we'll have - we should hold fish to mile 16.
typical Oct holdover
Image

There was a natural population of Rio Grande Cutthroats in the Guadalupe documented by both Spanish and French explorers (who each recorded bass and trout as separate species), but probably drought combined with groundwater usage and natural climate warming eliminated them. (The Little Ice Age was 1300 to 1870).
The last native Rio Grande Cutthroats in Texas were in McKittrick Canyon, but a truckload of rainbows dumped there in 1920 overtook them. Of course there is still a wild reproducing population of rainbows in McKittrick Canyon, but no fishing allowed.
There are also native populations of rainbows in Mexico.
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Re: Trout in Hill Country??

Post by pontoonman »

Can the no trespassing signs be ignored , or is it necessary to get permission when below the dam to Portage both up and down the River? Also, what about standing in the river next to a kayak to fish as there have been a few no loitering signs posted on riverbank in past years?

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Re: Trout in Hill Country??

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pontoonman wrote:Can the no trespassing signs be ignored , or is it necessary to get permission when below the dam to Portage both up and down the River? Also, what about standing in the river next to a kayak to fish as there have been a few no loitering signs posted on riverbank in past years?

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Any place you can wade in the river is legal. The trick is getting access. There is no legal access at the bridges.
Since every place on the bank is private property except the widely scattered state leases, it's best to have a livery set up, someone like Rio Raft or Whitewater Sports - each of these has two properties that are do-able in a half-day float.
The cool thing about these two is they cover two different parts of the river - Whitewater the horseshoe to 4th Xing, and Rio 4th Xing to between 3rd and 2nd Xing.
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Re: Trout in Hill Country??

Post by pontoonman »

Thanks for the info! I haven't been there in quite a while, so it seems things have changed. Used to be that people that were floating the tube Loop could be dropped off at the Road shoulders and out of the way, close enough so they could carry and walk down to the end of the bridge aprons, but someone had to pay for a parking spot. Is there any Public Access through the Corps of Engineers Park at the dam or are the trails too Steep and narrow?
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Re: Trout in Hill Country??

Post by Ron Mc »

you're right, there is public access at FM306 crossings on each end of the horseshoe, the only state road crossings.
Yes, there is public access at the dam, so you could plan a float from the dam to FM306, but wouldn't see the best part of the river, or the best fishing
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Re: Trout in Hill Country??

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Ok so this thread had caught my interest as I am an historian (masters in military history) and a more than avid fisherman. I had known about a population of cutthroat that had once been out in the Glass Mountains of west Texas and a population in the Rio Grande near El Paso both noted by Spanish explorers in the 16th century (1500s). I had no idea about a population in the Guadalupe River. Ron you were talking about a native population of rainbows in Mexico.
Are they natives or just introduced fish gone wild. My understanding of rainbows is that as a landlocked species they were only native to parts of Washington State, Idaho, and parts of British Columbia and that what we term as rainbows were initially spread outside of the Pacific coast by people breeding southern strain steelhead to replace native trout where they had been extirpated. Which is kind of ironic as the southern strain steelhead is all but extirpated in the US as it is with the last examples being collected in a storm water ditch near Malibu in the late 90ies. I will defer to local knowledge as I have no idea.
It’s kind of sad to think of how the landscape has changed throughout time and that people a scant three to four generations ago would hardly recognize the flora and fauna on the ground; the same ground they called home. The planting of non-natives and closely related (sub) species on top of vestigial populations of natives not to mention the destruction of riparian areas by agriculture and mining or even the modern subdivision neighborhood is mind boggling. Just about the whole of the east coast was denuded of forest by the turn of the nineteenth to twentieth century. This deforestation whether right up to a body of water’s edge or not is the most likely cause of the thermal pollution that killed off the populations of many cold water species between the lack of shade and the introduction of silt laden waters into the streams.
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Ron Mc
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Re: Trout in Hill Country??

Post by Ron Mc »

rainbows are native Pacific coast salmonids.
The 13 Mexico species and strains are all endemic fish derived from mykiss. Even Kern River goldens in CA have the same origin, though they were given a separate species.
Lefty Ray Chapa is the guy most boned up on the information I posted about Texas history - one of his ancestors was among the French naturalists, who explored the Guadalupe from its first settlement. (They actually thought they were settling the Mississippi, duplicating an error from La Salle's map.)

As late as 1880, San Pedro springs in San Antonio was an artesian geyser-like spring - continuously spraying water 10' into the air.
Groundwater wells eventually relieved the artesian water pressure. No wonder the natives and Spanish considered the San Antonio river sacred.

Here's the Guadalupe headwater springs in Kerr WMA - my buddy owns the dry sendero uphill from here.
Image

As far as the Guadalupe tailwater goes, many native warmwater fish cannot reproduce in the cold tailrace. GRTU established the coldwater fishery as a legal Stakeholder in the water authority during the 1990s. The legal status obtained with guaranteed flows is also good for ANWR.
Last edited by Ron Mc on Wed Jul 31, 2019 7:05 am, edited 1 time in total.
bones72
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Re: Trout in Hill Country??

Post by bones72 »

I know how tailraces/dams effect fisheries all one has to do is look at how the TVA or the dam systems in Arkansas and Missouri have decimated native species. Gar, paddlefish, and even smallmouth in their southern range are all but gone in the drainages that have tailraces. Then there are species like sauger that actually benefited from the tailrace to a point but were adversely effected by walleye that folks thought were necessary.

You definitely have a wealth of knowledge on Texas history Ron that I would love to pick your brain about. It the outside the well known stuff. I knew about French misadventures but had not even the remotest clue about the San Pedro Springs. Just awesome information.
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Ron Mc
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Re: Trout in Hill Country??

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the point was GRTU took legal action to give protected status to the surrogate coldwater fishery, and won Stakeholder status in GBRA.
To me, even more importantly, guaranteed flows in the Guadalupe help protect the ANWR estuary.

One of my 20-year soapboxes is the need for desalination for public water supply.
E.g., Corpus Christi has taken their water from the Nueces since 1984, and is contracted to continue to 2054. Since 2003, Corpus water usage has encroached into the minimum Nueces discharge needed for environmental health of the Nueces bay system (defined in 1994).

If we don't have desalination for public water supply, the rivers will die and then the bays.
CCA is against the Harbor Island desalination plant, which is already approved by TCEQ, but to me, they're shooting themselves (and us) in the foot, because we need that plant to get Texas desal off the ground, the Quintana plant, and we need another (SAWS et.al.) at Indianola. CCA is being duped by Sierra Club, who wants to starve the people to save the shrimp - it will never happen.
San Antonio and Austin growth and increasing groundwater usage is detrimental to the Guadaupe and Colorado rivers, and Madagorda Bay to San Antonio Bay. New water permits will always be granted, and we're already decades behind the curve for needing desal for public water supply.
The same southern Californians who killed the largest mangrove estuary on earth within our lifetimes because of groundwater usage, have been moving their equities to Texas for 3 decades, and will continue.

While this argument may sound strange in this monsoon year, the next drought is coming. I watched the last drought, and finally gave up trying to fish through it.
The Guadalupe stopped once at Spring Branch, the source of the Trinity seepage aquifer, which takes up to 8 cfs from the river - it stopped once in 1955, the drought of record.
Because of increased groundwater usage, from 2005 to 2014, it stopped there in 7 of those 10 summers.

My other soapbox is phosphorus (winter) fertilizers, which are never needed in Texas, and should be banned (nationally, but especially in Texas). They're also flogged to men during every NFL game - run out and buy some, so the rivers can be dark green, too.
The hair algae that chokes our rivers is caused by fall fertilizer runoff, and increased algae blooms and red tides are occurring in the estuaries, bays, especially canals.
With increased groundwater usage, our rivers are going to have less and less water, with more and more fertilizer in it.
After the 2002 flood, it took GRTU 7 years to get a permit to move watercress from upriver into the flood-scoured tailrace. I noticed this past winter that all the vegetation that was taking hold has been replaced with hair algae.

Here's watercress in the upper Sabinal - before 2002, the Guadalupe tailrace looked just like this - the caddis fishing was incredible - though the caddis have somewhat come back, the watercress that started to come back is gone again - this time not from flood but because of fertilizer runoff.
Image
Last edited by Ron Mc on Wed Jul 31, 2019 7:11 am, edited 2 times in total.
bones72
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Re: Trout in Hill Country??

Post by bones72 »

I wouldn’t consider what you have going a soapbox but a necessary course of action. I have seen the extreme abuse of water/water rights in many places I have been especially Colorado where the Platte rivers, north and south, together with the Arkansas are overtaxed. Then there is also the extreme overburden on the Oglalla Aquifer. Rivers like the Republican and Arikaree that used to be perennial bodies of water only flow when there is extreme flooding. Between irrigated farming and towns/cities growing that vast underground lake that helped to support the rivers of the prairie is becoming diminished past the point that it can restore itself.
I also agree phos is way overused hence my mention of subdivisions in one of my posts to this thread. Back east the Ag industry is all but gone replaced by neighborhoods that are built right up to the water’s edge. Everyone wants a beautiful lawn and dumps unneeded volumes of fertilizer on it. They have destroyed the riparian areas of vegetation and replaced it with concrete and asphalt ensuring heavy silt and fertilizer runoff enters the water courses. This has destroyed the grass in the Chesapeake and replaced it with the algae you have mentioned that also helps rob the water of dissolved oxygen.

Really hope this does not happen to the Texas coast. So get up on your soapbox and preach on.
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Ron Mc
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Re: Trout in Hill Country??

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all our legislators are begging for e-mail contact - mine are probably tired of me - we can get them on the soapboxes that matter

And by way of practicing, when I lived Austin, never used P or N fertilizer on any of my lawns - nothing more than Ironite - Fe SO4 - to protect the lawn from summer sun.
(there's already copious P in our limestone and caliche)
Nice thing about Bulverde - here a manicured lawn is antisocial, because we were on the Trinity seepage aquifer long before SA moved out here.
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Re: Trout in Hill Country??

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Ron: When I lived in Ingram, I once launched my kayak at Mayhugh Crossing, just north of Hunt, and went downstream in the North Guadalupe to River Rd. A man-made dam, a beaver dam, several low-water crossings to portage, but it was a fun trip. Several catch & release largemouths. Lots of carp. Was I in a protected section of the Guad?

Desal is sorely needed, not only in Texas, but California big time. The world leaders in Desal are the Israelis. Israeli Desalination Engineers(IDE) are all over the world, making fresh water out of saltwater. They make giant vacuum tanks, pour saltwater in one end, boil it(at 160 degrees F!), and get fresh water. I built a foundation for an IDE plant in 1990 in St. Croix. The plant made 883 gallons of fresh water a minute, 1.3 million gallons a day! The greenie-weenies say we can't dump the salty water back in the ocean without ill effects. Guess what? Coastal people have been taking salt OUT of the sea for centuries with no detriment. Average ocean salinity world-wide is 3.5%. California is draining Lake Mead and drying up the Colorado River. But, they don't want Desal plants. Geez! Let 'em starve. TexasJim
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Ron Mc
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Re: Trout in Hill Country??

Post by Ron Mc »

Jim,
The forks of the Guadalupe are pretty much all accessible - great park and wade, or float. The wade down from Wagon Wheel has the most amazing geography.
Image
Mayhugh is a beautiful spot.
My favorite wade is down the south fork from Hunt crossing, fish the top of Schumacher's lake, up the north fork to the next weir, and back.
Magical days - even caught a big rainbow in June held over from a Hill Country Fly Fishers' winter stocking.
The neighborhood there treats the bank as a neighborhood common, and they don't mind if you hike the bank.
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Though there's a bit of riffle portage early, floating down from Wagon Wheel to a lower crossing (e.g. Bear Creek) gets you into some rarely fished water.
A real nice float is Flat Rock dam down to Turtle Creek
Or Turtle Creek to Center Point Lion's park.
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